Thursday, October 30, 2008

Logar Shin Kata

While our system primarily teaches Kenpo katas with some XMA (extreme martial arts) forms, this kata is a kung fu-derived kata from Hungar Karate (if I've understood it right). So, while we start most of our kata by saying: Kempo Kata, Long One: we start this one by saying: Hung Kata, Logar Shin. Logar Shin has more circular movements, lots of "kewsa" (can anyone help me with the correct spelling of this hand position?) and some moves that we don't usually do such as tiger claw.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's the origin of Hungar Karate? I've never heard of it. It certainly does look like its Kung Fu inspired.

Anonymous said...

Did you start learning this Kata ? Or is it for second degrees only ? Because if you did, I missed it completly and would love to catch up...
Agnes

BBat50 said...

I have all the same questions. And more!

One of my pieces of "constructive feedback" for our dojo would be that I'd like more explanations and more info. I'd like to know:
- more on the purpose and significance of each move
- more on the history and which movement it is part of

I'd gladly have a little less "lesson of the week" talk in exchange for some more substantative info. I wonder if they would consider, just for the advanced adults class, just on A days, replacing the one minute "message of the week" with an "info on the week" helping us understand more about what we're doing. We'd still here the message of the week on B days but we just wouldn't hear it more 1x or 2x this year.

I could (and should) ask more questions but I'm so busy, I don't like to be pesky, and the people who actually know are pretty busy too.

Anonymous said...

I have the same issue with my school sometimes. I want to know why we do a move a certain way or how a kata evolved. Luckily, one of my teachers comes from a school where everything is was questioned and analyzed as to origin and purpose and so its okay for us to speculate. At some schools asking those kind of questions is frowned upon for some reason.

Unfortunately, I know that there are a lot people out there teaching katas that they really don't understand the purpose of or even worse, out of ignorance, tell students certain techniques are meant to defend against a specific attack when its not.

For instance, I had someone explain to me that ab X block with my hands crossed at the wrist was meant to block a staff! I told him there was no way I would try to block a direct strike by a 1/2 inch thick staff with the thin bones of my hands and wrists.