Kata is Form: Deliberate Practice.
At the Business Agility Conference I talked about how I apply my thinking as an athlete to the way I work and life in general. To accompany this, I wrote a short paper on the key concepts, you can read it here:
Business Agility Institute Conference, Ironman Mindset
As a teenager, and until I went to sea in the Royal Navy, I studied Shotokan Karate. In fact, after a 30 year hiatus I have recently returned to it with a goal to have it as a life long pursuit.
The word karate is a combination of two Japanese characters: kara, meaning empty, and te, meaning hand; thus, karate means "empty hand." Adding the suffix "-do" (pronounced "doe"), meaning "way," i.e., karate-do, implies karate as a total way of life that goes well beyond the self-defense applications.
Shotokan is very much about the precision and practice rather than the ‘Kumite’ of the freestyle sparring. Kihon is the study of the moves, and so part of the practice is to repeatedly and deliberately repeat blocks, punches, kicks and other moves with an emphasis on perfection. We would repeat, very slowly and deliberately, each block kick and punch attending to every detail of the position of our hips, breathing and a very low and strong stance.
Every Sunday we would perform ‘Kata”. Kata translates as ‘form’ from Japanese. With repeated deliberate practice we would perfect a different Kata for each grading and I would diligently practice each Kata hundreds of times. Returning to Shotokan 3 decades later I can remember all of the 9 Katas required to achieve a Black Belt Dan Grading. I have to admit that practicing Heian Nidan last week, I am somewhat rusty:
I achieve great delight, still, in attaining as close to perfection as I can. To quote Jim Kwik “Practice makes Progress”.
As a Triathlete, I experience the same - with the same precision, in swim training. Every winter, after each season, our coach will bring us back to the basics of hip rotation, arm movement and deliberate practice. Breathing it fundamentally important, which I believe is true with everything we do. Unlike running and Cycling, Swimming has a greater emphasis on technique over strength or fitness. There are several ideas that I can take from Kata that apply to Swimming, and from swimming to work.
Indeed, now that I have just completed the Kiwiman Double XTRI, in the next 6 weeks, I will be focussing on going back to basics with swim drills with a coach watching and correcting me.
“Slow is smooth – Smooth is fast”.
This was a phase used by the US Army Special forces. In Swimming it means that by slowing down the technique and breaking it down to the component parts one can perfect them and be more effective at full speed. One of my swim coaches, Haydn, required me to wear a bleeping metronome in my swim cap as he observed that my arms were going far too fast, creating a lot of turbulence in the water but not necessarily driving me through the water quickly.
“Don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you CANNOT get it wrong”
This was the go to thinking of Stephen Farrell, a long time friend and head coach of my Triathlon club. This phrase is attributed to many people and I think originally George W. Loomis. In 1902: " Amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong. " As applied to Swimming, it is about practicing a drill repeatedly until it is neurologically hard wired. Then it becomes unconscious and when I’m fatigued towards the end of the swim part of the race I tend not to pick up bad habits in my form which may slow me down.
For the neuroscience enthusiasts what we are doing here is creating neural pathways in the basal ganglia, rather than depending on the conscious but energy hungry prefrontal cortex. This is especially important for motor movement and much of what we do everyday is automated in this part of the brain.
Try this to see for yourself. First fold your arms. One will be in front of the other. Then try the alternate arm in front. It will feel weird and awkward. After a few days or consciously and deliberately folding the arms alternate to the way you previously did it becomes easier and sub conscious. Congratulations you have just rewired neurons in your brain. It is that plastic.
Another important point to note here is that if you had asked me how my swimming was, I would have said “at best average”, but not have been able to pinpoint any specific weaknesses. Only my coach could identify things that he could see, such as my elbow position or hip rotation or how my breathing was causing me to twist my torso. I needed the external viewpoint and feedback in order to improve.
Practice alone would never achieve this however hard I tried, I needed the theory and expertise from a coach to guide me towards continuous improvement. The improvement approach was to isolate a particular movement and repeatedly practice, aka Kata, until it has habitual. For example we would exaggerate the lifted elbows so that we could rewire our brains for the correct motion. This is not just applicable to martial arts or swimming, it is equally important in anything kinaesthetic and also very applicable to our thinking patterns at work, although we are rewiring different areas of the brain.
In management theory, we often hear of Japanese Principles, and in particular the Toyota Product System, TPS. When I read the 2009 book “Toyota Kata” by Mike Rother, the concept that I took from it was that there are the visible parts of Toyotas Results and Lean tools and practices, such as Andon, Gemba walks and Heijunka, but the essence of their success is about the invisible stuff.
The systematic, scientific way of thinking and acting and managers teaching people this way of thinking. In addition to this I am inspired by the book “Peak” by Anders Ericsson, and how he emphasises the importance of deliberate practice.
The important thing to take away is that Lean Thinking and Toyota Kata are complementary. One will not work without the other. Deliberate practice can rewire our brain and this is not just in motion but also in cognition. Often we have unconscious thought patterns that might only be observed by an external coach who knows the theory and can assist with exercises to modify through habit our thoughts and actions.
It was Mike Rother who introduced me to the folding arms exercise, and I would highly recommend seeking him out on YouTube as his talks on Toyota Kata and how it is a way to rewire our thinking is very insightful. Here is one example for KataCon which is in a few weeks and I am planning to attend: KataCon
In summary, Kata is used in martial arts (and by extension in any sport or physical endeavour) to hard wire the brain so that there is cognitive ease in repeating the action precisely. Toyota Kata is about repeated cognitive patterns which rewire our way of thinking to a new state. Toyota Kata is about thinking and team collaboration whereas Kata in general is about perfecting personal mastery.