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The term Kaiwan Karate originates from Japanese and means ,The remarkable ability of the empty hand’.

Kaiwan Karate is a new style of Karate-Do which was created by Master Georg Gross in 2008. He did not only take advantage of the knowledge, the longstanding experience and the techniques of different kinds of martial arts, but also profited from his studies of the science of sport.

This style is mainly based on the so called Katas. Their function is to teach the different techniques of Kaiwan Karate step by step to the students. The basic idea for these Katas was to assign all techniques to the various grades. This way it was possible to determine from the very beginning which techniques have to be trained for each examination. The classification of the techniques took place under the consideration of the difficulty and the dangerousness in the use of a technique. In the further process of the development of the Katas it was very important to put each of the techniques into one Kata of the correlating grade. This way it is ensured that all the techniques of Kaiwan Karate have been taught during the education in martial arts and none of the techniques will be lost when the style is passed on to younger generations.

Besides teaching and passing on techniques the Katas also contain many self-defense techniques which enable the students to defend precisely and safely against attackers.

If you press the button Kata in the menu there will be an overview which shows that always two Katas are required for an examination in the beginning.

The yellow belt and the orange belt form the basic level (sho kyû) in Kaiwan Karate. When the students reach the green belt they already enter the middle level (chû kyû). This level also contains the blue belt. The students of the upper level (saidai kyû) represent their knowledge and prowess by the two brown belts. From this level onwards the students have to perform three Katas in an examination because then the weapon Katas are introduced. The upper level is followed by the master level (mei jin/ tatsu jin) which is divided into the different Dan-grades (shodan = 1. Dan; nidan = 2. Dan; ...).

When the Karatekas of Kaiwan Karate reach the 4. Dan they should be able to go into all different directions in Karate because they should have the knowledge and experience to understand other styles and train there. This is the reason why the Katas for the 4. and 5. Dan (godan bzw. rokudan) are named after the four points of the compass.