As karate is primarily a striking art, I have always believed in punch bag, focus pad, kick shield and makiwara, training.

You may disagree, but one of my primary objectives with new and experienced karateka, is to encourage them to hit fast and hard. Not only is this an essential part of a striking art, such as karate, it's also good fun!

I am still shocked at how many karateka are not training with, punch bags, focus pads or makiwara!

I do not practice Shotokan karate just for fighting, I love everything about karate, kata, kihon and kumite, if I wanted fighting I would join a MMA gym, they take the best fighting techniques from all the martial arts and put them to practical use in the ring or cage.

Kata is often described as a set sequence of karate moves organised into a prearranged fight against imaginary opponents. The kata consists of kicks, punches, sweeps, strikes, blocks and throws. Body movement in the various kata includes, stepping, twisting, turning, dropping to the ground and jumping.

In this article we list the 26 standard Shotokan kata that are practiced by millions of karateka all over the world.

Several Shotokan groups have introduced kata from other styles into their training but when the Japan Karate Association (JKA) was formed by Nakayama Sensei, he laid these 26 kata down as the training kata for the JKA karateka. Even today, many thousands of Shotokan Dojo only practice these 26 Kata.

Everybody’s different, some karate-ka like high kicks, some like low kicks, but which one is better?

Tae kwon do, perform very high kicks, that are fast and powerful, some karate groups only practice kicking below the belt and some practice both high and low kicking.

I believe it’s all down to the individual involved. I personally wouldn’t recommend high kicks in self defence, but then again, I’m sure there are people who do recommend high kicks.

Really, it doesn’t matter what someone says or doesn’t say, because when it comes to self defence, you will do, whatever you practice! So if you practice head kicks, day in day out, there’s a high chance, that if you kicked whilst defending yourself, in a self defence situation, the kick will probably target the head.

The 'one for one' sparring exercise is an excellent way to develop certain Shotokan kumite skills, such as, timing, accuracy, speed, reflex, anticipation, stamina, relaxation and many more.

'One for one' sparring is where two karateka take it in turns to attack and defend, the first karateka attacks with one attack, the other karateka blocks and counters with one strike, the first karateka then repeats the process.

This exercise can be useful when trying to anticipate your opponents next attack, one for one is a continuous exercise, where there should be no let up in the cycle (attack,block attack,block ,attack,block,etc) , each attack you execute, try and 'out smart' your opponent, try to gain the upper hand and by so doing, control the fight.

Master Gichin Funakoshi (1868–1957) was the founder of Shotokan karate, but one of the main people to regulate shotokan karate into a system, was Master Masatoshi Nakayama (1913–1987).

Master Nakayama was a senior student of Master Funakoshi and in 1949 they formed the Japan karate Association (JKA).

Master Nakayama helped form the JKA instructor training program (kenshusei), which I believe, was one of the reasons karate spread across the world at such an incredible rate.

The senior sensei that graduated from the JKA instructor training program are now legends in the world of shotokan karate. Phenomenal Sensei, like Hirokazu Kanazawa, Keinosuke Enoeda, Yoshiharu Osaka, Tetsohiko Asai, Hiroshi Shirai, Masahiko Tanaka, Mikio Yahara, Masao Kawazoe, Takauki Mikami, Yutaka Yaguchi, Shiro Asano, Hideo Ochi, Shigeru Takashina, Fujikiyo Omura and many more!