Performing team kata

With practice, and thought, your team can put on a very impressive performance

Team kata is a fascinating event, and can sometimes be a wonderful thing to watch. And sometimes not… Here are ways to make sure your team’s performance has the best chance of winning.

I cannot stress strongly enough, that team kata is – wait for it - a team event! I know that some of you are saying, “Well duh!” right now, but to referee team kata, you’d think that this fact was not obvious to half of the competitors. You are not in competition with your team mates to be the fastest, the strongest, the loudest, or the most graceful.

The most fundamental judging criteria of team kata is synchronisation – how well you keep in time with each other. When you are performing, you do not want any of the three judges' eyes (no, not a three-eyed alien judge, there are three judges, each of whom have two eyes) to be drawn by any one person’s performance.

The most instant way to draw a judge’s eye, is by being out of time with your team mates. Once you have a judge’s attention, you’re probably going to keep it for a while, so better not to attract it in the first place.

However, even if you’re in time, another easy way to attract the judge’s attention, is by performing the kata differently to your team-mates. If they perform a move gracefully, and you perform it strongly, or they perform it with flair and you do it in a very direct and minimal way, the difference will show.

One really common mistake is made when you have one team member – usually the leader, who is more experienced than the other two. This person often feels the need to prove himself by performing the kata extra well – usually stronger or quicker, or sometimes with exaggerated breathing. Whilst this is understandable – the higher grade wants to show himself to be worth the grade – it is a complete no no. There is absolutely NO ROOM for ego in team kata. I don’t mean ego as in, “Look at me, I’m the best”, but ego, in the sense that you want individual recognition at all. In team kata, you must completely sacrifice the self for the group. Each of you must be indistinguishable from each other. If you want recognition, go earn it in the individuals.


Whilst we’re on the subject of no ego, when you’re practicing, you cannot afford to be precious about receiving feedback or even criticism from your team mates. Too many people become defensive and fragile during team kata, and it’s particularly odd, because it’s an event that requires a high degree of personal and collective criticism and comparison. If you don’t like being negatively compared to people, train harder or choose a different event…


Returning to the subject of performing a kata the same way – how do you decide the best way to perform a kata? You have a number of choices – you can ask a high grade to tell you how to perform it; you can decide amongst yourselves or with the help of a spectator which way looks best; you can decide amongst yourselves which way is easiest; or you can simply come up with a policy. I think that a policy is usually the best solution. A policy is the group’s idea of how to perform a move. It may not be the usual way it’s performed, and may be chosen simply because you like it that way, or because that’s the way that two of you already do it. However, a policy is simply the way that your team decides to do a move. The key thing is not the choice of policy, but having a policy in the first place. Take the 2nd move in saifa – do you pull your arms as you step away, or do you pull, then step? Different instructors teach different answers, but so long as you all use the same policy you cannot be marked down for choosing one way or the other.


Choosing a kata

The key element in deciding which kata to perform, will usually be the katas that each person is familiar with. It’s vital that you only perform a kata that all three team members know very well, because having to perform in time with your team presents far greater stress than a solo performance, which in itself can be stressful enough. Under pressure, any lack of familiarity will likely manifest itself as forgotten or poorly executed moves, which is the worst possible scenario.

In an ideal world, you will all know every kata up to 4th dan, enabling you to choose the kata which is best suited to your group. Obviously, different katas lend themselves to different body types, but given enough practice and knowledge, any kata can be made to look fantastic. The question is, how dedicated is your team to winning?

Experienced judges will all understand that it’s far harder to keep in time when a team is doing the fast bits very fast, the slow bits very slow, with a varying but appropriate rhythm. Thus, a kata such as seiunchin, which is mostly slow and graceful and relatively easy to perform as a team, will probably score lower than empi, which is explosive, with lots of difficult moves. The rules on kata judging say that the difficulty of a kata should be considered, thus, a perfect team empi will score better than a perfect team seiunchin. In an ideal world...

The sad reality is that the organisers are usually short of high-graded judges by the time the team events are on (usually late in the day) and even 1st and 2nd dan black belts often do not know the highest katas. Thus, if your team performs one, it may get away with mistakes that it would not do, in a lower kata. Also, although judges are not supposed to judge a kata performance according to the way that they perform it, most do, thus, your team may be marked down in a lower graded kata simply for performing a kata in a different way to the judges expectation.

All of that aside, the UK men’s nationals in 2006, were won by a team who performed bassai dai, and who practiced together for a total of less than three hours. This proves that lower katas can win (although they rarely do) and that there’s a lot of room for better teams to get in there…

Lower grades always feel as though they have less chance, but with practice, they can make an earlier kata look impressive. Probably best not to do 1st or 2nd katas though. They're just not complicated enough.

15 ways to improve your team kata

1. Practice, practice, practice

2. Have a well-rehearsed policy for the walk-in, and bow – it sets a high expectation before you start the scorable part

3. Don’t use audio cues such as exaggerated breathing to trigger movements – simply learn each other’s timing

4. All three of you must keep your heads up and maintain visual focus on your imaginary enemy

5. Use audible counting to learn the pauses for slow to fast bits – punch, 2, 3, 4, kick; or hit, pause, hit; or some similar device. Once you are all used to it, drop the audible counting, but count in your head. After a few weeks of that, stop counting altogether – it’s a needless distraction.

6. If you are not fast movers, slow down the overall pace, so that you can still make the fast bits appear fast in contrast to the slow

7. If you are doing a Goju kata, make it graceful. If you are doing a Shotokan kata, make it powerful.

8. Video yourselves from time-to-time to check for the fine details.

9. Check that you use the same hand shapes for open-handed techniques.

10. Be aware of the transitions between moves, and be careful not to compromise your posture by leaning or being too floppy.

11. Practice in a triangle facing each other or in front of mirrors sometimes, to check your timings.

12. Sharp head turns are a good way to add explosiveness to a slower kata.

13. Do not set a plodding or even pace (even if that pace is fast). Group your moves according to bunkai and perform them at an appropriate pace.

14. Set your relative stance height according to your least flexible person, rather than one or two people revealing the inadequacies of the other person or people. Otherwise, you simply point the judges’ attention to your weakest member, where it may well stay.

15. Perform a kata that is perfect in every way. Piece of cake!

Thanks to Sensei Ian Manning for the photos