Does any one else have these "aha!" moments? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNIpiG26tvQ?

Yes we all have those aha moments or at least we should. I've said it here plenty of time of how one day when I was training and working on the pinan kata. I couldn't understadn why we ended teh kata on 2 block. It is a leg blog and a upper block. This didn't make sense. How does this end the threat? it can't. I block a kick and a high strike and they just give up and stop fighting. I asked my instructor. He explained that that there are hidden techniques within our kata. When I learn the bunkai it will make better sense. He was right!

I have actually attended a seminar and the guy in the video was one of the instructors. One thing that o recall that he taught us was something from tai chi. it didn't make sense to my natural thinking. But it works. it was about the flow of energy. We had to allow a person to put us in a joint lock. We are in a cat stance. Then when we put our heel to the ground it created a short so to speak and caused enough of a disruption of energy flow that the pain temporarily left. It is in that split second that allows you to counter or escape the lock. I was skeptical, but went along with it doubting it. But when I applied it it worked.

That was just last year.

Yeah, and I can not believe the black belt in that video. I learned applications for 'upper blocks' at about orange belt and knew at that time that upper block did not work as an upper block against a punch and there are more applications than just what this guy showed. That is kind of where the kata come in. You know the 'exercises' that everybody thinks are so useless and trashes? I guess this is a classic example what happens when you dismiss kata or just go through the mindless motions of it. You end up not knowing what the motions are for.

The same is also true for the chambering of the hand. Yes, we tell white belts chambering helps learn correct motion for the punch. It's all they can really understand when they just start but there is a lot more to it than that. I learned that when I learned Naihanchi Kata which too is about yellow belt.

It's sad that they don't teach this stuff anymore the way I got to learn it and you have to find these 'aha' moments on youtube when your teacher is the one who should teach you this. This is really the things that make martial arts so much more fun than just learning how to hit hard and then matching up in competitions to see who can hit harder. To me this is brainless.

Yes, I get aha moments all the time in Aikido. There are things I learn there that I see in my TKD forms.

Actually, I try to attend Karate seminars when I can, and when I do - such as PugPaw's seminar last year, and hopefully again this year - I learn things about my own style. The more I learn about other styles, the more I learn they're more similar than they are different.

It isn't always that TKD instructors don't teach these things, but having different perspectives and different ideas often answers questions that either I didn't know or that no one knew the answer for a long time.

That is why I never dismiss styles - there is always something to be learned from someone, somewhere, sometime.

By the way, I thought that was a great video. Thanks for sharing.

That is what we are all supposed to get from studying Kata. There are many real applications for each move, stance, block, strike, ...etc. Kata is not a static form that we just practice. It is a puzzle that we are supposed to take apart and learn things that are not what they appear to be.

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I have had many of these moments watching Iain Abernethy's video's on YouTube. Once you realise there are no blocks in karate it starts to make a lot more sense.

Happy training.

There are people here including myself, who have been saying that this is what kata training teaches the karateka.

Those "aha" moments are knew to you, not to me... I've been doing this kind of training for decades.

You mean has anyone else figured out alternative applications of common movements?

...yeah. It's kind of a thing.

Well my instructor said can you do that live after tons of calestenics and taking no supplements when all the other belts next to you in rank above and below get to take anything they want cause you dont want to be with who I know.

That is the purpose of bunkai, to figure out applications