patrick de block

The distinction I learned was between waza and kata. Kata is waza +, and by that I mean that waza are what you do and kata are the waza with how to do it. This + can be certain movement principles or they can be IP/IT/IS. Another distinction is omote and ura, where omote is what you see, the surface and ura is what you don't see, the backside.

And I think it is telling that most pre-war students all had solo-exercises and some post-war ones too.(I don't know what every aikido teacher does or did.) Clearly they felt the need to teach that + outside of the waza.

And as an analogy, I learned to play the piano and my teacher insisted that I played music and not just the notes.