At higher levels serious injury is prevented only by a high sensitivity of both participants to important concepts being taught and trained for.

This adjustability of kata training is found in other Japanese arts with roles of attacker and defender often interchanging within the sequence.

[4] Many martial arts use kata for public demonstrations and in competitions, awarding points for such aspects of technique as style, balance, timing, and verisimilitude (appearance of being real).

The kata are executed as a specified series of approximately 20 to 70 moves, generally with stepping and turning, while attempting to maintain perfect form.

The practitioner is generally counselled to visualize the enemy attacks, and his responses, as actually occurring, and karateka are often told to "read" a kata, to explain the imagined events.

Judo kata preserve a number of techniques that are not permitted in competition or in randori, including punches, kicks, and the use of the katana and other weapons.

"[citation needed] Taekwondo patterns have multiple variations including Palgwe and the more popular Taeguk forms used by the WTF.

[citation needed] Other Asian martial arts refer to forms by various terms specific to their respective languages, such as the Burmese word aka, the Vietnamese quyen and the Kashmiri khawankay.

[citation needed] In historical European martial arts and their modern reconstructions, there are forms, plays, drills and flourishes.

[citation needed] More recently kata has come to be used in English in a more general or figurative sense, referring to any basic form, routine, or pattern of behavior that is practised to various levels of mastery.

[9] In Japanese language kata (though written as 方) is a frequently-used suffix meaning “way of doing,” with emphasis on the form and order of the process.

[18] Edgar Schein suggests an organization's culture helps it cope with its environment,[19] and one meaning of kata is, "a way to keep two things in sync or harmony with one another."

A task for leaders and managers is to create and maintain the organizational culture through consistent role modeling, teaching, and coaching, which is in many ways analogous to how kata are taught in the martial arts.