Context

From the "Putting Kata Back at the Heart of Karate" series:
Article 1. Context.

Column by Bill Burgar, author of Five Years, One Kata.

This is the first in a series of articles and serves as an introduction to some of the subjects to be covered. We start by looking at context then cover aims and objectives, rules, use of kata as a tool to meet your objectives, visualisation, history of karate and other topics that the contemporary karateka should be familiar with in order to develop and broaden their knowledge and skill.

Karate training methodology has changed over the course of time. In its long history different practices have sprung up to meet the varying objectives of the practitioners in any particular time period.

If we have a clear understanding of what the particular objectives of karateka were in each era it helps us to put their practice methods into perspective, and, more importantly, it brings a sharper focus to our understanding of our own methods.

In this article I'll take a look at the context of typical karate training in the contemporary dojo and show how the context determines the practice methodology. When you have finished reading you should have a better understanding of your training context, your aims and objectives and how this affects your method of practice. You will also be in a better position to ask questions about the discrepancies between your objectives and the method being used to train you. If you are an instructor then you will have some ideas about how to improve your training methods to match the expectations of your students more accurately.

First, we need to be clear about what we mean by "context". The context in which you train is the unique collection of all the factors that have any influence on what you do. This includes: your aims and objectives (for example are you training for competition, self defence, fitness, and so on, or a mixture of those functions?); the rules of those functions (e.g. competition rules, self defence rules, e.g. the law, or physiology rules determining how fit you can get and so forth); your teachers and their personal motivations, their individual preferences and their aims and objectives.

Your context is unique to you, alone, and nobody else. It may be closely aligned to the people who train alongside you, but make no mistake, it is just about you. Ultimately, this means that you must find your own method of practice that is best suited to you, which in turn means that you and only you are responsible for determining how best to train. Of course, to start with as a beginner, you don't have sufficient experience to know what to do for the best, which is why you need a sensei. The word sensei is often translated as 'teacher'. However, this inaccurate translation is not very helpful. Literally translated 'sensei' means 'one who has gone before', i.e someone who has greater experience and who can act as a guide; someone who acknowledges that your experience will be different but who can help you find your way when things are not clear for you; a mentor.

So, the first thing to do is to make a top level list of what you want out of your training (your key areas) and then put that list into a priority order, most important first, down to least important. This key area list will typically be between one and five subjects. For example: The list for one person could be fitness, social, self-defense; another might list: self-defense and fitness only; yet another might put down: winning competition, fitness, fun; or maybe: art, grades, personal satisfaction. As you can see from these examples just setting down a simple key area list for each person, before we even go into any great detail, shows how varied people's expectations can be. Writing down comprehensive objectives can be a daunting, difficult and time consuming task. This technique of writing a few key area words is a very good step in the right direction. For club instructors it is a worthwhile exercise to get all of your students to give you such a list every 6 or 12 months so you can better tailor your instruction to your students’ requirements. It is interesting to note that the composition and order of the list will often change over time for each person as their interests and motivations change.

Having looked, briefly, at the effect that our objectives (key areas) have on our context (I'll return to objective setting in a future article) let’s turn our attention to the rules that are in effect for the particular theatre of operations that you are training for. There are always rules; often people will say, "out on the street there are no rules". But this is not true, there may be fewer rules than on the mat but they are there. In addition, the rules that govern your behavior may be different to your aggressor's. Your rules are created both internally and externally. The external rules are, for example, the law, environment, physics and engineering principles. Internal rules are created by your morality and your humanity, what you are and are not prepared to do because of the degree of rightness/wrongness or your ability to de-humanise your aggressor sufficiently to inflict the required degree of injury. Remember, in a self-defence situation there is more than one fight. First there is the mental battle of wills, the physical action (if it happens), the possible legal battle afterwards, and the following moral battle with yourself (did I do the right thing?). In competition, you would hope that both you and your opponent would be operating under the same set of rules (although depending on the quality of the refereeing, sadly, this is not always the case). However, each competitor will know how far s/he is prepared to bend the rules to ensure victory.

Again, you can readily see that each person will have a different and unique set of rules that they are operating under furthering the uniqueness of their karate context. I'll come back to look at rules in more detail in a later article.

Finally for this article, let’s take a look at the effect that your instructors and peers have on your context. The first point to note is that all of the people around you in the dojo have a different context to you; this means that the training practices in use may not directly match what would be best for you. For example, let's imagine that your main goal was winning competitions with an end goal of representing your country. However, if the people around you are practicing mainly for self-defence then much of your time will be spent doing things that are poorly targeted at your goal. In order to meet your goals more efficiently you must have a good contextual match with those around you.

From an instructor's point of view it is important that you take the time to understand the goals of your students and to create an environment around them that is best suited to them all achieving their goals. To do this you must ask questions of them so that you can better understand their context. Also, it is important to look at the rules they will be operating under and to teach them accordingly. For example, if a student says that when it comes to it they really don't think that they could gouge somebody's eye (the morality/humanity rules they operate under), there is no point teaching them techniques to gouge eyes because they won't be able to use them. You'd need to find techniques that will fit in with their rules so that they will be able to use them - even if, in your view, their rules are wrong. Alternatively, you can determine the context and ensure that your students conform to it. In this case you have to understand that many people will not want to remain in your dojo; your choice.

So, in this article I've given you a brief overview of 'context', describing what it is and the various factors that affect it. You've seen how it is unique for each person and how it is important to understand each student's context when teaching them, and to understand your instructor's and peers’ contexts.

In the next article I'll go into more detail about setting objectives to give you a sharper focus on your training so that you use your training time better and get more out of it. Before then you should write down your key area list and have it to hand when you read next month's article.

About the author: Bill Burgar is a 6th Dan, a member of Rick Clark's ADK organisation and author of the advanced karate text Five Years, One Kata which is available on-line and to order at all good book shops. Buy at Amazon via http://www.martialartspublishing.com/