Amazon / Sports / IAIN ABERNETHY
REVIEW
Iain Abernethy's app is a karate library hiding behind a Fire-tablet wrapper.
A single-instructor teaching channel built for practitioners who already know who Abernethy is. The Fire app is functional, dated, and entirely about the content inside it.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 4 MIN READ
Iain Abernethy
KINETIC APPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES LLC
OUR SCORE
7.0
AMAZON
★ 5.0
PRICE
Free
Iain Abernethy has spent thirty years making the case that the kata in karate are not aesthetic exercises but encoded fight manuals, and that practical bunkai — the partner-tested application of every move — is the whole point of the art. His seminars sell out from Glasgow to Atlanta, his podcast is the most-listened-to martial-arts podcast in the English language, and his teaching has reshaped how the practical-karate movement reads forms.
This app is the bag that holds all of that. Open it on a Fire HD 10 propped against the dojo wall, and you have video, podcast audio, and PDF lesson plans in one place. The interface is plain. The catalogue is enormous.
The honest framing: this is an app that exists because the content needed somewhere to live, not because Abernethy’s team set out to build a beautiful streaming product. Subscribers know what they’re paying for, and what they’re paying for is in here.
The app is a delivery mechanism for one man's three decades of bunkai research, and that is exactly enough.
FEATURES
The app is a streaming front end for Iain Abernethy's instructional library — video lessons, podcasts, written articles, and downloadable PDFs covering practical karate, kata application (bunkai), and self-protection. Content is organised by series rather than by belt rank, so a brown-belt looking for Naihanchi applications scrolls through a list of Naihanchi seminars rather than a structured curriculum.
The Fire build does the basics: Chromecast-style send to a Fire TV, offline download for the longer seminar videos, podcast playback that continues when the screen locks, and a single search field that hits across all three content types. There's no notes feature, no progress tracking, and no way to mark a kata as "studied" — features that competing martial-arts platforms like BudoVideos and Karate Mart Pro have offered for years.
Subscription is the only access route. The annual tier unlocks the full back catalogue, which is the meaningful number — over twenty years of seminars Abernethy has filmed in dojos across the UK and US.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The content is the product, and the content is excellent. Abernethy is one of the most respected voices in practical karate — a 7th dan, full-contact competitor turned researcher, with a teaching style that strips the mystery out of kata without disrespecting the tradition. Each video shows the kata move, the partner drill that decodes it, and the resistance test that proves whether the application holds up. That structure is rare in martial-arts video.
The podcast back-catalogue is the sleeper hit. Abernethy has interviewed most of the serious practical-karate community over the years, and that archive is now on the Fire tablet in your dojo bag.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The app design itself is years behind where it should be. The home screen is a flat list of "latest" tiles with no curation, no curriculum path, and no recommendation logic — a beginner opening this for the first time has no idea where to start. The search returns title matches only, so a query like "elbow strike" misses videos that demonstrate elbow strikes without naming them in the title.
The Fire build is also a clear port of the iOS/Android original. Buttons sit too small for the 10-inch Fire HD screen, the video player doesn't remember where you left off in a 90-minute seminar, and the offline downloads occasionally re-download themselves after an app update. None of this is fatal, but it makes the subscription feel cheaper than the content deserves.
CONCLUSION
This is a niche app for a niche audience, and within that niche it does the job. Karate practitioners who already know Abernethy's work will subscribe because the library is here and nowhere else. Anyone else — including martial artists from other styles curious about practical application — will struggle to navigate it. A real curriculum view and a smarter player would lift this into the 8s.