Well first off rhythm really has nothing to do with it. Those little steps are for maneuvering and getting you into and back out of range and positioning you to attack. You can't really fight someone from five feet away unless you have a weapon. At four feet that becomes more possible from a kicking standpoint but is still too far for you to use your hands for attacking. Any attack with them will fall short while exposing you to being countered and so you will generally need to get a fraction closer to attack with your hands effectively if you are of average height.

"Fraction" here is the key word in all this as there is a very small range for your attacks and from how far away you can be and they land with power and do damage. Sometimes you can get too close also and that's especially true for kicking more so than hands. How well you are able to close that fraction of distance and execute your attacks and throw your combinations in relation to your opponent and his movements is critical for you being effective with them.

Now you might think that taking big hops or big steps would be better since you would have to take fewer but that brings about other problems for you then. Taking big steps or big hops makes you more susceptible to being countered because they take longer. That gives your opponent more time to react and counter and taking bigger steps or hops is over committing. You can't suddenly stop yourself as easily or check your forward progress and momentum as quickly as you can by taking smaller steps or hops.

I suggest you do some reading about Joe Louis (karate-not boxing) and maybe consider getting one of his books and read about set points for fighting and some of the footwork and positioning aspects he talks about. Understanding these things and being able to use them to your advantage is critical in you being able to use your techniques and combinations effectively.

First off you're completely wrong about your thought about not having a rhythm. You can't break a rhythm unless you have one. The real trick is that you don't make your rhythm obvious. But for beginners you're going ot have your rhthym obvious because you're a beginner. You're not going to change that until you get more practice in.

So do you're told and that's it.

While the bouncing worked in sparring for me a lot of times I'd be damned if I ever used such a thing in self defense. There are huge differences between sparring and self defense. I would never fight the way I sparred. It would be suicide.

In sparring, first you have to learn rhythm. If you don't know rhythm then you have no way of breaking the rhythm. Once you learn rhythm then you work on how to break it.

I am getting the idea you are talking about sport karate that has a habit of bouncing up and down while sparring/competing...? If so that might work for sport, but any good fighter will destroy someone that bounces in a real fight. I have broken several people out of bouncing when working out with me. They think that because they do well with it in tournament they can do the same with someone that is fighting them for real. so far I have yet to find anyone that can prove me wrong face to face. It is not that I'm that good, it is simply that it is to easy to attack them when they are most defensive.

....

your suppose to have 5 rhythms and and not just one, you suppose to use multiple stances and not just one.

stances are meant to change and not meant to be static

if you only have one stance and one rhythm you will be predictable

I just don't understand why we have to take little steps/jumps. I mean I know it's suppose to be for "rythm", but I thought you shouldn't have rythm (because then your opponents can "read" you more easily?), and aren't wasting energy?

But this isn't to bash the sport stance, I just want to know the pro's and cons of it and can you use if somebody tries to fight (and you can't walk away for some reason).

Thanks.