A puzzle With A Million Pieces…

Sensei always says that karate is a puzzle with a million pieces; the only way to ensure you learn is to take home one new piece, every night. I’ve always felt that this applies to almost anything in life, but it’s particularly true where it involves karate. To the average layman, karate may look simple and it may be assumed that it’s all kicking and punching. In reality, there are multiple moving parts (pun fully intended) behind learning and developing one’s skills in karate.

I bring this up because I recently read a post online that basically says that you need everything to learn karate. You need kata, you need limited, you need sparring, you need drills, etc… And that’s quite accurate. You need all aspects of the art in order to achieve mastery over it. Depending on how spiritual you find yourself, you may understand that one truly never completely masters karate. There will always be SOMETHING to learn. But I’m referring to karate in its most simple and general terms.

What I mean by this and why I bring it up, is that one can’t choose to “specialize” in karate. I’ve known students and practitioners who were far better at sparring than they were at learning and developing their katas. Unfortunately, they need their katas no less than the one who seems to be poetry in motion while doing them. Learning the foundation of proper form before jumping into sparring is integral to one’s safety and proper self-defence; not least of which is the need to learn the art properly.

I’ve seen students who depend solely on form. They make their way through the lessons without ever making contact with a target or another practitioner. This is also a flawed approach, as karate requires the practitioner to experience the sensation of the impact of their strikes, to develop muscle memory and to learn how to have proper bone alignment so you don’t break every fucking bone in your hand because you decided to throw a punch! Form alone won’t get you there…

That’s why it’s so important to get all the pieces of the very large puzzle that is karate. You need form. You need sparring. Hell, you need cardio and muscle development. Meditation, proper nutrition, proper sleep… I can go all day, the point is, the are many moving parts to ensuring that your martial arts journey not only safe and effective but a good use of your time. You may like the look and feeling of pounding away on the punching bag. You may even be quite fast and good at getting that strike out. But it will serve you quite poorly if you haven’t learned the proper form to get the result you need from that strike. So be sure to collect all your pieces. A puzzle with a missing piece looks terrible, indeed. ☯️