Sensei Kalish writes:

In karate, we spend a lot of time on kata. Kata is a stylized system of movements that helps to demonstrate a karate practioner’s skill and technical mastery of specific precise movements. Kata is art. It can be very basic when you are beginning (step and punch), or it can be incredibly specific when you advance in rank and skill and learn the nuances of all of the moves (your hand is placed here, your foot is turned this way, etc). That’s what makes kata challenging and fun.

Kata teaches us many things. It teaches us discipline, focus, perseverance, the technical aspect of traditional karate moves, the ability to flow from one series of movements to the next. But most importantly, in my opinion, it teaches us that in our art (and in life) there is always room for improvement.

I have been doing kata for close to thirty years. Taikyoko Shodan was the first kata I ever learned. And I have learned and re-learned it from many instructors, and performed it thousands of times. Every time I perform it, I find something new, something that I can improve upon. It is possible that I may have mastered the kata, but I have never performed it “perfectly.”

This is the Heart of our Art: Hattatsu Ryu – “The System of Progressive Growth”