Another distinguishing characteristic of the Kung-fu.toa SImorgh is the rich diversity of techniques, about 18.000.
It takes about twelve years to master all of them, that is if you train two or three times in a week. P.B. Hulshof: "Even I wouldn't know technique no 12.453. But I do know I know it, and that's because of the Kata. Each Kata is a group of techniques combined into a sequence. This is done in order to help you remember your techniques more easily, but also to learn combinations of techniques so you can use them in a fight." Some people consider a Kata to be a mock fight. Most moves can be used in multiple ways. Changing you intention of a movement just a little can turn a punch in a defensive move and vice versa. In the prelimary movements of a technique often are hidden shots or grips, adding to the total number of techniques found in one Kata.
The unarmed techniques are spread over eight Kata, of which the first Kata (Anatova) consists of 150 techniques and 480 techniques. It takes about a year to learn the first Kata. The following Kata has about the same number of moves, but contains many more techniques, because every move can be used in several ways. After this the Kata become longer, the longest being Kata 5 (Mayena, which means fighting), consisting of over 600 kicks, each of which can be performed in several variations. As you can see, it takes a while to learn this Kata, and even longer to perform it well, because this must be done within ten minutes.
Each Kata has it's own system. Kata 1 is based on blocking and Kata 5, as said, is based on kicks.
Besides these 8 Kata their are also Kata for several weapons: sword, say, stick, bo, knife, tonfa and nunchaku.
These Kata will only be tought to people of higher level and whose behaviour is in such a way, that the teacher deems it responsible to teach these to these persons. Responisble behaviour is extremely important, because you will not only leran the Kata, but also how to fight with these weapons.