Kata sounds like a ‘dance’. How is it ‘combative’?

Kata may sound a bit rigid and ‘dance-like’, but the reality is that Kata provides a safe method to learn dangerous combative skills. Every partner is different in terms of size, strength, speed, coordination, skills. Along with different partners are the different groupings of Kata within the SMR curriculum. You must come to understand and deal with all these variations each time you train with a different partner, and within a different group of SMR kata. This variation is what gives SMR a rich and vibrant training methodology. Having the structure of ‘Kata’ in which to do this learning provides a relatively safe process.