The depressing state of karate

[Kertol]

The time thing is a bit of an issue, and why I am so glad I can point to Miyagi and say “it’s time to update somethings” because that’s exactly what he advocated.
Either some MT/KB style training needs to be brought into karate to get that quick boost into some sort of practical skills, or karateka need to spend 6-12 months in something like MT/KB.

the 50s-60s saw a lot of evolution, very much inline with miyagi’s quote about learning from other styles. That’s how KB came to be, that’s how shotokan got its high kicks, but then around the 70s or 80s people no longer wanted to change anything or make anything new.

so yeah instead of adapting a combat sport to self defense I think we NEED to adapt a self defense style to combat sports

But why do we need to adapt a self defense style to a combat sport if not everyone is interested in combat sports? Those who are interested in combat sports can pressure test their self defense style under those rules but a lot of people are interested only in practicing Karate mainly for self defense which is it's intended purpose.

To add some input to the original point you made this thread for but I trained with a guy who competed in a local men's Shotokan point fighting tournament in the United States about 11 years ago and he said they were landing full power strikes on one another similar to the karate kid tournaments you mentioned. Figured I'd add that info for whatever it's worth since I vividly remember him saying that.

 

[Kertol]

What I am talking about isn’t watering anything down.
How useful is self defense training g if your kid gets beat up 4 months or a year in because the self defense methodologies take so long to translate to practical skills?

All I’m advocating is including training methodologies that result in greater short term success/progress on top of methodologies that set up the long term excellence.
The cross training or pre-training I already mentioned, but I don’t understand your insistence on pigeon holing karate to specific methods only when all the ‘old masters’ were all about changing and advancing.
If someone wants to do things the same way for 100 years that’s fine, but there’s no reason to force karate to stay the same, and stop the evolution that it’s always had.
That mind set would have seen karate never start, and we’d just be with tegumi or Kung fu and people saying if you want to strike just train Kung fu, or if you want to grapple just do tegumi

I see what you mean, it does take a lot more time training in Karate to be able to defend yourself compared to other arts so this is something Karate should at least adapt a little to in order to fix this issue.

 

[JohnPJones]

I see what you mean, it does take a lot more time training in Karate to be able to defend yourself compared to other arts so this is something Karate should at least adapt a little to in order to fix this issue.

yes, if it takes you 2 years just become kinda sorta competent then something needs to be added or changed if your goal is self defense i imagine you would want to be able to defend yourself as soon as possible, rather than 5 years into it.

just adding 1 round of continuous sparring every 4-8 classes I think would help with that quite a bit.
Back in the day it seems like a lot of the founders of the modern styles and their contemporaries and their teachers all seemed to start training formally around 10-14 years of age, but tegumi itself was a game and many young boys were already well versed in wrestling when they started their training, so it’s almost like Te (of the time) was merely polishing up grappling abilities and teaching striking, rather than starting from scratch like we have today.)

 

[MilkManUK]

yes, if it takes you 2 years just become kinda sorta competent then something needs to be added or changed if your goal is self defense i imagine you would want to be able to defend yourself as soon as possible, rather than 5 years into it.

I think honestly if your goal is self defense / self protection you are better served investing time learning about situational awareness, body language, avoidance etc as it is easier to become proficient in these skills in a shorter space of time than potentially complex physical movements that can take a long time to become second nature, especially if you are limited to a few hours a week of training.

I am not in anyway suggesting to neglect physical fighting skills at all, but that it is extremely worthwhile learning about pre-fight indicators and avoiding the fight where possible. If it does look to become unavoidably physical, then hit hard, hit fast and hit first.

 

[MilkManUK]

I think honestly if your goal is self defense / self protection you are better served investing time learning about situational awareness, body language, avoidance etc as it is easier to become proficient in these skills in a shorter space of time than potentially complex physical movements that can take a long time to become second nature, especially if you are limited to a few hours a week of training.

I am not in anyway suggesting to neglect physical fighting skills at all, but that it is extremely worthwhile learning about pre-fight indicators and avoiding the fight where possible. If it does look to become unavoidably physical, then hit hard, hit fast and hit first.

Or "zanshin" if you like.

 

[SandisLL]

I think honestly if your goal is self defense / self protection you are better served investing time learning about situational awareness, body language, avoidance etc as it is easier to become proficient in these skills in a shorter space of tim

Situational awareness and especially knowledge about traps where criminals might attempt to lull in is not less than 50% from skills needed for body guards, cash and valuables transport security etc like professionals.
Tricks used by criminals are sometimes looking innocent and yeah, when I had heard stuff from retired criminal police specialist, stuff he talked about was more than 66% already not strange for me, another part was new stuff, guy from not nice hood area.

. If it does look to become unavoidably physical, then hit hard, hit fast and hit first.

The most problem with TMA is if they compete under semi contact and pause after first time successfully had defeated an opponent after first his attack etc. While boxer, wrestler, KBer does not have such problems.

Next problem taught by a lot of TMA instructors: keep hands down, cos this does not create impression in conflict that you are aggressive etc.
Ofc I don't agree with position like a boxer in combat stance with closed fists nor also with idea that student always will be faster than someone in front of him, it is a bit delusional approach.
However there TMA tutors does have different approach and part of them are cross trained.

Since combat arts IRL are taught only in person, I suggest to use as self defense instructor someone with a bit rough background and at least cross trained, not only TMA one style specialist.

Power punching for self defense should be trained at least on heavy bags not on makiwaras or in the air and ofc on actively resisting, completely uncooperative opponents.
Not like to stop punch before body, after connected on the body or just traveled 2-3 inches after impact.

Do not teach that SD is point competition or even pro boxing: they are not SD, none of them.

Karate normally had lost any respect after last olympic games. Yeah, I do know that it isn't karate, what from this.
Ppl had saw this " beauty " and karate does have name recognition and other bullshit more than sambo only in anglo saxonian world, where titles and belts matters more than ablitiy to punch ppl. Karate ir most overrated combat art in the world due to training methods.
If they had used heavy bags like in MT, KB or boxing a lot on daily basis, instead of air pushing they had more reputation.

They does not have enough credit in europe and never ever will have if they push air and conduct stuff like we had saw in Oly games bullshido, yeah, I know that this isn't karate per se by idea alone.
While punches and kicks are IRL effective etc. If had taught properly.

 

[SandisLL]

Trap one: someone is asking you to come in certain place, maybe some ft from position where you are.
You are thinking that you are superior than he is or situation is like there is no danger and you are coming where he is.
Doesn't matter is he 120 lber or 300 lber, most likely if attack is planned, you will get attacked from behind while being busy with this one element.
Worse thing if they will attempt to play it as attack from you. Like someone is telling you something and you are coming closer to him and this is recorded on CCTV but without voice recording. Then attempts to blackmail and accuse.

Use at least voice recording options in situations when you might be provoked.
Next fine trap: someone is asking you to tell the road etc things, some youngsters accidentally are maybe even till fighting, while in this time someone is clearing your pockets or beating from behind with intent to debilitate.
These are 2 from common things they might use.

 

[JohnPJones]

I think honestly if your goal is self defense / self protection you are better served investing time learning about situational awareness, body language, avoidance etc as it is easier to become proficient in these skills in a shorter space of time than potentially complex physical movements that can take a long time to become second nature, especially if you are limited to a few hours a week of training.

I am not in anyway suggesting to neglect physical fighting skills at all, but that it is extremely worthwhile learning about pre-fight indicators and avoiding the fight where possible. If it does look to become unavoidably physical, then hit hard, hit fast and hit first.

all of those things should be included in a modern self defense circiculum already, however for some people there will be situations where violence is unavoidable for one reason or another

 

[panamaican]

What I am talking about isn’t watering anything down.
How useful is self defense training g if your kid gets beat up 4 months or a year in because the self defense methodologies take so long to translate to practical skills?

All I’m advocating is including training methodologies that result in greater short term success/progress on top of methodologies that set up the long term excellence.
The cross training or pre-training I already mentioned, but I don’t understand your insistence on pigeon holing karate to specific methods only when all the ‘old masters’ were all about changing and advancing.
If someone wants to do things the same way for 100 years that’s fine, but there’s no reason to force karate to stay the same, and stop the evolution that it’s always had.
That mind set would have seen karate never start, and we’d just be with tegumi or Kung fu and people saying if you want to strike just train Kung fu, or if you want to grapple just do tegumi

That argument can be applied to pretty much everything. Who expects their kids to master self-defense training within a few months. But if done right, most kids should be able to throw a straight punch, basic mae geri, the main blocks and twist out a wrist grab by another kid pretty early in their training. But that's with training centered on things that matter as opposed to marching up and down the room punching and kicking empty air.

But as I said, that argument applies to everything - how useful is shooting practice if your kid is still losing basketball games 4 months into their training? Respect that things take time to learn right. And learning self-defense is no different. Kids will win and lose conflicts along the journey, just like they will in everything else they learn.

As for what you're advocating, you're missing the point. You say "Apply new age training methods to generate short term success/progress". I don't disagree. If you want to get better self-defense training, absolutely incorporate newer training methodologies. Newer equipment, strength training tools, visualization techniques, etc. But the goal is still self-defense.

You want to incorporate short term training methods for combat sport success, not for self-defense success. They are different short term goals and different long term goals. If you want better short term self-defense, absolutely evolve. If you want better combat sport success, go where the long term goal is already combat sport success and then evolve therein.

It's like a person looking at a car and saying "That should evolve for deep sea diving." And then I say "Well, you should probably buy a submersible and alter that to meet your needs, it's better than buying a car and trying to turn the car into a submersible." The person would have to make too many changes to the car when there's already a better tool for the job. The car-sub will never be better for deep sea diving than the submersible that was always a submersible.

If someone wants to do combat sports, they should start with a martial art that is already fine tuned that way. It's smarter than taking something like karate and trying to alter the art to get to their goal. For them, maybe the hard part is simply accepting that karate isn't as good for that goal.

And I understand your position. When I started learning karate, one of my first questions was "How do I defend the jab?" I got an answer and over the years, I've learned plenty of answers. But the simple truth is that boxers defend the jab better and they don't have to alter boxing to do so. If I really want to defend that jab quickly, I needed to go talk to boxers and not karatekas. Which I did and led me down my own road of cross training and accepting that every art has limitations, you don't get better by demanding that boxing adjust to teach and defend kicks, you go train something that already incorporates kicks and do the individual work of combining them in your personal style.

 

[JohnPJones]

That argument can be applied to pretty much everything. Who expects their kids to master self-defense training within a few months. But if done right, most kids should be able to throw a straight punch, basic mae geri, the main blocks and twist out a wrist grab by another kid pretty early in their training. But that's with training centered on things that matter as opposed to marching up and down the room punching and kicking empty air.

But as I said, that argument applies to everything - how useful is shooting practice if your kid is still losing basketball games 4 months into their training? Respect that things take time to learn right. And learning self-defense is no different. Kids will win and lose conflicts along the journey, just like they will in everything else they learn.

As for what you're advocating, you're missing the point. You say "Apply new age training methods to generate short term success/progress". I don't disagree. If you want to get better self-defense training, absolutely incorporate newer training methodologies. Newer equipment, strength training tools, visualization techniques, etc. But the goal is still self-defense.

You want to incorporate short term training methods for combat sport success, not for self-defense success. They are different short term goals and different long term goals. If you want better short term self-defense, absolutely evolve. If you want better combat sport success, go where the long term goal is already combat sport success and then evolve therein.

It's like a person looking at a car and saying "That should evolve for deep sea diving." And then I say "Well, you should probably buy a submersible and alter that to meet your needs, it's better than buying a car and trying to turn the car into a submersible." The person would have to make too many changes to the car when there's already a better tool for the job. The car-sub will never be better for deep sea diving than the submersible that was always a submersible.

If someone wants to do combat sports, they should start with a martial art that is already fine tuned that way. It's smarter than taking something like karate and trying to alter the art to get to their goal. For them, maybe the hard part is simply accepting that karate isn't as good for that goal.

And I understand your position. When I started learning karate, one of my first questions was "How do I defend the jab?" I got an answer and over the years, I've learned plenty of answers. But the simple truth is that boxers defend the jab better and they don't have to alter boxing to do so. If I really want to defend that jab quickly, I needed to go talk to boxers and not karatekas. Which I did and led me down my own road of cross training and accepting that every art has limitations, you don't get better by demanding that boxing adjust to teach and defend kicks, you go train something that already incorporates kicks and do the individual work of combining them in your personal style.

Idk the reason to stagnate karate when karate was almost continuously evolving until roughly the 70s-80s (.2nd or 3rd generation of white people to start teaching and opening dojos)

 

[panamaican]

Idk the reason to stagnate karate when karate was almost continuously evolving until roughly the 70s-80s (.2nd or 3rd generation of white people to start teaching and opening dojos)

Evolving is fine, it's good. But evolving as a self-defense art is not the same thing as evolving into a combat sport art.

Can we start with the basic agreement that self-defense and combat sports aren't the same thing and rely on different skills and principles?

 

[Noodles03]

Can we start with the basic agreement that self-defense and combat sports aren't the same thing and rely on different skills and principles?

I remember listening to Adam Chan talking about the differences of sport fighting and self defense. It was in interesting podcast and I like how Adam dissect the forms of combat.

 

[StopDucking]

Was on r/karate and asked for the community’s thoughts on a full contact point fighting ruleset, ya know like his point fighting used to be back in the day.

I was told there are currently 2 organizations that do it already. Curious I looked into the organizations, first on YT, none of the videos showed anything that looked like full contact, and so I googled them to find their rules…long story short one literally said light contact in its first line of sparring rules and the other has moderate contact, and contact that draws blood listed as penalties.

so the fact that people even thought these were full contact leagues was really depressing

You went on a karate forum to present your revolutionary "idea" despite knowing nothing about karate. What did you expect?

First of all, there are like 50 different styles of karate, just like there are different styles of boxing such as Western boxing (usually referred to as just "boxing), Chinese boxing (aka sanda), Thai boxing (aka muay thai), etc.

When it comes to karate, the 2 most popular styles worldwide are shotokan and kyokushin. Shotokan is no-contact, kyokushin is full-contact. Go on YouTube and watch videos of kyokushin world championships. You're welcome.

 

[panamaican]

I remember listening to Adam Chan talking about the differences of sport fighting and self defense. It was in interesting podcast and I like how Adam dissect the forms of combat.

For people following up: His explanation starts at 6:40.

I have to agree with him. He also said it better than I have.

It reminded of how my approach to the art is shaped by by former teachers. When I started learning karate, it was from people with law enforcement and military backgrounds. We covered the traditional stuff but I was also introduced to important concepts like positioning, recognizing the signs of an attacker, why you shouldn't try to fight multiple opponents or people with weapons when you're unarmed, that you're no going to beat a bullet, etc. The principles that would apply to winning a fight in the ring or a cage weren't important.

I was told, I should never find myself directly face to face with someone figuring out distance with a jab or testing their reaction time or other important combat sport principles. These things were inevitable when you learn how to spar but not if you needed to get away from an angry drunk who may or may not have a knife. Now, I'm not a self-defense specialist, far from it. But I know enough to know that winning a kickboxing match requires me to make choices that self-preservation says I shouldn't make.

Some of the drills I use with my son reflect that. My favorite (and his) is when I make him stand facing a wall and when I yell "go" he has to immediately turn around and defend himself from whatever attack I'm throwing from whatever position I've placed myself and get away. The point being that he can never know where the threat is and the point is not to stand and bang with me. This is a pointless drill for combat sports because, in those cases, I always know where the opponent is and I'm not trying to get away, I'm trying to knock him out. I want to engage him, not escape from him. He's not going to grab my wrist and pull me into an alley or a van. All of the wrist escapes of karate might still be useful in the ring but they're more useful for those things.

Anyway, long-windedness aside, I think Adam Chan was pretty spot on about this subject.

 

[j123]

You went on a karate forum to present your revolutionary "idea" despite knowing nothing about karate. What did you expect?

The karate manifesto leading to the dictatorship of the gojo-proletariant, and purging of borgeois-combat athletes via gulag-dojos

 

[JohnPJones]

You went on a karate forum to present your revolutionary "idea" despite knowing nothing about karate. What did you expect?

First of all, there are like 50 different styles of karate, just like there are different styles of boxing such as Western boxing (usually referred to as just "boxing), Chinese boxing (aka sanda), Thai boxing (aka muay thai), etc.

When it comes to karate, the 2 most popular styles worldwide are shotokan and kyokushin. Shotokan is no-contact, kyokushin is full-contact. Go on YouTube and watch videos of kyokushin world championships. You're welcome.

Knowing nothing about karate? Bro I’ve been in the karate community for over 20 years….idk what you heard in your brain when you read that post but it certainly wasn’t what I posted.

 

[JohnPJones]

Evolving is fine, it's good. But evolving as a self-defense art is not the same thing as evolving into a combat sport art.

Can we start with the basic agreement that self-defense and combat sports aren't the same thing and rely on different skills and principles?

As someone who has self defended and defended others I can tell you that combat sport training did a lot more to prepare me for real world violence than ‘self defense’ training ever did.

 

[panamaican]

As someone who has self defended and defended others I can tell you that combat sport training did a lot more to prepare me for real world violence than ‘self defense’ training ever did.

I didn't say one couldn't apply one to the events of the other. That's like claiming that because a boxer tries MMA or vice versa that boxing and MMA use the same skills and principles - they don't, they have overlaps and can be applied in each others arenas, with differing degrees of success, but they're not predicated on identical principles. They are different.

I asked if we can agree that self-defense and combat sports aren't the same thing and rely on different skills and principles?

 

[JohnPJones]

I didn't say one couldn't apply one to the events of the other. That's like claiming that because a boxer tries MMA or vice versa that boxing and MMA use the same skills and principles - they don't, they have overlaps and can be applied in each others arenas, with differing degrees of success, but they're not predicated on identical principles. They are different.

I asked if we can agree that self-defense and combat sports aren't the same thing and rely on different skills and principles?

I agree they’re not the same, but in my experience combat sports training methods will work better than the methods touted as ‘self defense’
And bottom line is that if you cannot fight you cannot defend yourself from an attacker.

 

[panamaican]

I agree they’re not the same, but in my experience combat sports training methods will work better than the methods touted as ‘self defense’
And bottom line is that if you cannot fight you cannot defend yourself from an attacker.

They're not the same. So you shouldn't train them like they are, just because there are some overlaps.

If combat sports training methods work better for fighting (at least the type of fighting that you're valuing) then doesn't it make sense to train with people who are focused on maximizing combat sports efficiency? That is the part of your argument that still doesn't make sense.

1) Combat sports and self-defense are not same.
2) Combat sports methods work better for fighting.
3) Identify combat sports training arts.
4) Don't train in those combat sports, train in something else and try to make that something else into combat sports.

Right between 3 & 4 is where things stop making sense. Once you identify combat sports training arts, like MT, boxing, wrestling, etc., you haven't explained why people should skip those things for karate? I keep reading "karate should evolve" but evolve into what? A combat sport training art -- then why not just train MMA, kickboxing, MT, etc.?