Often one sees clubs practice bunkai regularly and sometimes quite well in terms of technique. However, often the speed of a true combative situation is missing. Sports Karate provides a very good arena to develop timing and true combative speed (and learning to negotiate that first incoming strike thrown at a distance), but, how does one translate a similar speed and timing result to bunkai given its usually complex and brutal techniques - which are more difficult to control than simply “pulling a punch or kick”?

An obvious but not often implemented approach is – practice and repetition! Many karate clubs will drill point fighting speed combinations and kumite for 20 minutes a night in a class repeating maybe just 20 combinations year-in and year-out (of course the corresponding speed and control develops). Rarely do clubs ensure they focus on a small subset of kata so that a trainable 20 self defense combinations are drilled in high frequency to achieve great speed and power. Remembering that bunkai tends to develop our close in fighting skills and point kumite is about the distance situation.