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Another distinguishing characteristic of the Kung-fu.toa
SImorgh is the rich diversity of techniques, about 18.000.
It takes about twelve years to master all of them, that is if
you train two or three times in a week. P.B. Hulshof: "Even I wouldn't know
technique no 12.453. But I do know I know it, and that's because of
the Kata. Each Kata is a group of techniques combined into a sequence. This is
done in order to help you remember your techniques more easily, but also to
learn combinations of techniques so you can use them in a fight." Some
people consider a Kata to be a mock fight. Most moves can be used in multiple
ways. Changing you intention of a movement just a little can turn a punch in a
defensive move and vice versa. In the prelimary movements of a technique often
are hidden shots or grips, adding to the total number of techniques found in one
Kata.
The unarmed techniques are spread over eight Kata, of which
the first Kata (Anatova) consists of 150 techniques and 480 techniques. It takes
about a year to learn the first Kata. The following Kata has about the same
number of moves, but contains many more techniques, because every move can be
used in several ways. After this the Kata become longer, the longest being Kata
5 (Mayena, which means fighting), consisting of over 600 kicks, each of which
can be performed in several variations. As you can see, it takes a while to
learn this Kata, and even longer to perform it well, because this must be done
within ten minutes.
Each Kata has it's own system. Kata 1 is based
on blocking and Kata 5, as said, is based on kicks.
Besides these 8 Kata their are also Kata for
several weapons: sword, say, stick, bo, knife, tonfa and nunchaku.
These Kata will only be tought to people of higher level and
whose behaviour is in such a way, that the teacher deems it responsible to teach
these to these persons. Responisble behaviour is extremely important, because
you will not only leran the Kata, but also how to fight with these weapons.
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