Kata or one steps? Or how about meditation or non contact sparring? Excessive bowing?
I hated board breaking myself.
Making up history to go with random practices. Thinking that the old ways are always best. Thinking they can fight, making tired excuses when its proved that they can't......
"Free fighting one steps", that's what we called a set of techniques that only used kicking in defense in HKD. Like my TKD one-steps, they had steps where you'd cresent kick an incoming punch, or do a twin jumping roundhouse kick in response to a jab.
I never really enjoyed practicing those.
Willybone, that was one of my most hated thingds to practice too.
Two on one sparring. It was done with no contact, yet no breaks either. So basically two guys would attack you and your job was to keep them in a line so you only had to deal with one at a time.
That is a decent strategy for dealing with 2 unarmed attackers, but the partners in the drill would just keep coming and since you couldn't hit them all you could really do was evade and backstep. Practicing glorified running away for 2 minutes seemed like a waste to me. I was actually failed on a Dan test in this area because I actually fought each guy instead of just blocking and running.
Drlling how to put down 2 attackers could be done much more effectively and still be fairly safe.
I'd like to elaborate on my opinion about the benefits and drawbacks of no contact TMA.
It always frustrated me, because it totally negated power as a variable in a fight. Being bigger than most other guys I trained with, it was like having your best attribute taken away.
I disagree with the notion that it builds great control. Not that it doesn't develop control, I knew guys who could punch you and hit the hairs on your mustache. Just that the control to be able to come super close but not hit doesn't automatically mean that you can hit your target devastatingly. Some guys with good control would punch the bag like a wet disrag.
Similarly with kicks, guys with awesome flexibility could do all kinds of acrobatic jump kicks and real fast spinning and lead legs moves. But I would get kicked in the face full force and not get dropped.
The biggest benefit of no contact is that it allows anyone to train, but also anyone to train with anyone else. I couldnt help but agree when a 35 year old guy who leaves work early to train would give me a look of disgust after being paired with a 12 year old for "self defense" drills.
A person can hardly expect to be able to handle real world combat when the environment they train in doesn't even put them in stressfull mental situations, let alone dangerous physical ones.
The claim of "I could if I wanted to" is both childish and unrealistic. I am not advocating bare knuckle fighting with people being knocked out routinely, but there must be a sense of realism when you train, or else dont call it Karate.
Ancestor/tradtion/founder worship as an excuse not to think.
Mark
without a doubt, CMA's horse stance training.