Learning karate like a new language

When you learn Karate, you are first introduced to individual techniques, such as single blocks and strikes. If we compare learning Karate to learning a new language, you can think of these like the letters of the alphabet. Several techniques strung together may form words. The practice of basic techniques is often simply called “basics”, or Kihon in Japanese. To stay with this analogy, sentences are thus formed by stringing several basic techniques together, for example, in Kihon Ido, which means, “moving basics”, because you step and thus move your body while you block and/or strike.

Typical for Karate are Katas. A Kata is a sequence of movements used for training and to demonstrate technique. In the context of learning Karate, learing Katas then can be akin learning how to form paragraphs.

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