"The easiest and the hardest kata to learn " - Itosu
On March the 26th I attended a four-hour seminar taught by Sensei Iain Abernethy (7th Dan). The contents of the seminar involved two bunkai drills for Tekki Shodan / Naihanchi. Before I go into a bit more detail I want to emphasize how important this kata is, I hope this post will support that.
The first drill we were taught was based on gripping and trapping the aggressors arm and using said moves from the kata to defend yourself and escape. This was great as I love the "grappling" side of karate and believe it should be implemented a lot more than what it is. The second one was a flow drill, this was aimed to allow both students to work on attacking with this kata and the other defending with this kata. Again a lot of grips, grabs, traps, etc.
I enjoyed Sensei Iain Abernethy's approach to teaching his drills. One minute you would be laughing at one of his many martial arts stories, then you would be fully concentrated when he spoke about his previous Sensei, then be fully immersed in the actual drills with your partner. This made the four hours only feel like a couple of hours. One of the old Sensei's that he spoke about was Choki Motobu who was probably one of, if not the biggest believer in Tekki Shodan / Naihanchi. Choki Motobu was believed to have only taught this kata to his students, that it was the only one they needed. That it contained all you needed in terms of combat.
I think there is some truth to this, but I think in order for this to be the case you have to really dive deep into this kata and look at all the options for bunkai (application). For example grappling distance, striking distance but also against different attacks, not just classical OI-ZUKI.
"The kata would take more than one lifetime to master" Otsuka
I would like to just finish this off with saying that if you ever get the chance to train with Sensei Iain Abernethy, then please do, it's definitely worth while and might give you another perspective on your bunkai.
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