Specific question about katas

So I know katas get argued about and I'm hoping (probably in vain) to avoid the katas are useless no they aren't fighting. I searched back through the forum but didn't find the answer to my question underneath all that.

Here it is: katas mainly train muscle memory, from what I can tell. As a gamer I know full well muscle memory is a pretty big double edged sword. It's really awesome about 75 percent of the time. The other 25 it's following it's coded rotes even when it's a bad idea.

My concern is that in a fight this would lead to fighters doing stupid things like blocking punches that aren't coming or kicking at opponents when they were prepared for a kick 2 seconds ago, due to the being the next move in the kata that their muscle memory was churning out.


On another note, wouldn't falling into kata during fights make you a repetitive and therefore predictable fighter?


What I'm looking for isn't "lol yer ryte bro lol kottas are bad bro lol" please instead respond specifically to the points I brought up, and tell me specifically why I'm either absolutely right, sort of right sort of wrong, or if I'm a stupid idiot for even worrying about it.

Oh and tangentially, why is the stance in a kata completely different from a fight stance? No one's ever explained that...