Matthew Sylvester has been training in the Martial Arts since 1991. He currently studies Ao Denkou Jutsu, Kempo Ryu Karate, Tae Kwon Do and Shunryu Kempo.

Kata, patterns, forms. To many people, these three words can signal the start of a tedious half-hour trying to perform a set of movements to the air against an imaginary opponent/ opponents. Often, when they ask their instructors what the moves are actually designed to do, they are given answers that leave even more questions and doubt as to the validity of the answer. One example of this is the TKD instructor that informed his students that the u-shaped block is designed to block a staff attack! Why an attacker would hold their staff vertical and thrust it in such a way that it could be caught in their opponent's hand is beyond me. Another interpretation is that it is grabbing the groin and the neck.

I also questioned as to why the techniques seemed designed to combat only one opponent at a time and why, if we were learning to attack and defend against opponents, that we were not shown how to use these in the self-defence lessons that we had.

The blocks that we were shown also confused me as they were never employed in sparring, something that took up a lot of our training. Most blocking was done by parrying or slapping the attack away rather using an inward forearm block to smash into their arm. There must have been more to kata than "waving one's hand around in the air and dancing when a kata is practised" (Clark, 1992).

Three step sparring was also confusing. Block the attack three times and counter with a move that would usually, at best, only result in the attacker pausing before continuing to come at you. Where were the routines that we were practising in patterns? The two seemed to be completely different. Even after I met Professor Rick Clark in 1995 I still struggled with my patterns as I was often told that they were not designed to be pressure point attacks, despite Professor Clark having proved the complete opposite.

My eyes had been opened however, and I tried to apply them as much as possible. It was hard to persevere when all around me seemed either ignorant or uninterested in what I had been shown and I became dissatisfied. As a result I moved away from TKD into Kempo Ryu, an art with no patterns to learn and which concentrates on defeating the opponent as quickly as possible, with the option to stop a defensive action and withdraw. This particularly appealed to me because I was also a Special Constable at the time, and to throw a full power side kick would be frowned on to say the least. Nor would it be a reasonable way of restraining the opponent.

It was whilst studying Kempo that I again attended a Professor Clark seminar and met Sensei Ken Tucker. Although I was now in a formless art, I was immediately able to see how to apply the techniques that Professor Clark was teaching to Kempo. My whole studying of Kempo took on a new light as I finally realized just how devastating to an opponent they could really be. I was invited to train with Sensei Tucker and started to learn the Heians, all the time learning their applications (Bunkai) and seeing more and more links between such diverse arts as Shotokan, Kempo and Ninjutsu. Something would be shown to me during a Shotokan lesson and I would still not be convinced, for example, and then I would be shown the same move in a Ninjutsu lesson and it would click. I would then be able to apply it in my study of Kempo.

Now, when I practice my patterns I do so knowing that I am learning techniques that will help me defend myself should I ever be unable to run away. I owe my new found knowledge and inspiration to both Sensei Tucker and Professor Clark. Future articles will attempt to open the eyes of the uninitiated and to show applications that can be used in arts other than those the patterns are designed for.