1 post from 2006

I have been working on a shorthand writing system to represent martial arts moves. As I have mentioned before, one of the hardest parts of learning a new martial art is the memorization of the forms. The best way to memorize it is through practice, but how do you practice if you don't know what the moves are? If you have a video tutorial (especially a DVD set) then you are in great shape. If you have a book or hand out that contains the form, then you are in pretty good shape as long as the form has been demonstrated to you in class and you are somewhat familiar with it. If you have neither of these resources then you must memorize what you can from your training and that is all you can do. But, if you don't continue to practice the kata, even after having memorized it, you will forget it. This happens to the best of us, black belts included. The sheer number of forms a martial art contains almost guarantees this. Usually it only takes a little something to jog the memory though, as I mentioned before, a video or book is the prime example. But if these are not available then the student is left to fend for himself. My solution was to find a writing system that would allow me to transcribe the movements of the katas as I learned them. Then I could always go back and use the transcription as a reference. My solution was to first look for such a system. I did find one that was most interesting. It is called Movement Writing (http://www.movementwriting.org) and is a defined set of symbols used to record movement on a staff (much like a music staff). Originally for recording dance movements, Movement Writing was developed by Valerie Sutton in the 1960's and refined throughout the 1970's. There are various symbol sets used in Movement Writing, sets overlap and one set is called Sports Writing and includes symbols and structure for recording Martial Arts movements (http://www.movementwriting.org/sports/karate/). Although this is a great system, it is rather involved and can't be represented on a computer very easily. If I were writing a book about the Martial Arts, I would certainly spend the time and effort to translate all movements to this system for representational purposes. I was unable to find any alternative shorthand writing systems however. I'm sure they are out there, but no one seems to have published one yet for general use, at least nowhere that Google could find. So, like Val, I took it upon myself to create a system that could easily be used and most importantly, didn't require symbols so it can easily be represented in type written text. Unlike Movement Writing, my goal is only to refresh a person’s memory, not convey all the minutia of a martial arts movement. I've written a little software program to translate short hand notation into long hand notation and will be putting together a web page containing the software application and detailing the structure of the language itself for all to use. Hopefully it will continue to grow and be revised and improved upon.