Karate's effectiveness

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PunchDrunK7

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would an upper lever black, black or brown belt in your average form of karate have the technique to be a sucesfull striker in mma ? both offensively and defesnively ? I'm trying to get a grasp on which striking styles are the most stripped down, linear and efficient
 
well ... any form of karate, i'm looking for a way to take boxing technique and make it more " fluid "
 
I was going to be a prick about this but no doubt others will do the honours so I'll try and answer seriously..

Short answer, IF the karateka has trained with effective striking in mind and learnt the necessary tactics to use them in a sporting arena then yes!

But I wonder about this comment: "i'm looking for a way to take boxing technique and make it more " fluid ""

Unless you are taking the piss, I would have a look at your boxing technique!! Boxing is arguably the most fluid of the striking sports.

Karate is a civilian form of self defence, Boxing is a sport whereby you aim to knock your opponent out by punching them. I would say that Boxing would be more useful for MMA, don't you think?

(btw I'm a Karate instructor so this isn't a dig at Karate)
 
Serious trained Karate could give you cardio, bone conditioning, reflex, resilience, good kicks, elbows, and knees, dodge.
It only lacks punching in the face, for the karate filosofy is to trade less as possibly, so we are not used to keep trading punches with gloves, so if you intend to learn karate as a stand up mma base, you better complement it with boxing or kick boxing.
As for self defense, karate is very effective.

But keep in mind that most karate gyms now a days are giving very poor-sport oriented training, as my sensei says "if you are not getting tired, and feeling pain, the training is not working!!".

For further info about karate mma fighters I recommend you yo see Lyoto Machida (from Shotokan), and Andrews Nakahara (from kyokushin).
And in k-1 Glaube Feitosa, Francisco Filho, Everton Teixeira, Semmy Schilt, Fabiano Silva.
 
Any form of Karate other than Kyokushinkai is considered ineefective. Of course, one might cite Lyoto Machida as an exception but the guy's an anomaly... If not the first to usher in a new breed of strikers.
 
Kararte, in general, is not very helpful for MMA. I've got a black belt in Yoshakai. some concepts are important (finding range, using angles, etc.), but boxing is, by far, more helpful for MMA.
 
Any form of Karate other than Kyokushinkai is considered ineefective
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If you qualified that with "FOR MMA" then that might be considered valid. Kyokushin obviously trains people in full contact fighting but it's still sport. I don't know if they also train in the practical side of things as well (Ben Kyokushinkai's comments would lead me to believe they do - at least in his club).
 
A lot of people make the mistake saying it is useless, when blitzing is the most underutilised weapon in mma, used in boxing by roy jones in mma by machida and fedor.
 
some karate schools are great, but the no punching to the head needs to be addressed because it means you don't learn to defend against full power attacks to the head

My instructor is one of the top security experts in our area and he has had karate trained guys on his staff before, some 4th and 5th dans and they have been useless in real life encounters because they don't pressure test getting hit in the face so they don't have that natural defensive reflex.

In one incident, my instructor and one of these guys were attacked with some guys with knives at an event. My instructor by reflex put his arms up to cover up, took a slash to the arm but was then able to disable his attacker. The karate guy was slashed right accross the face because he tried some unuseable karate block to block the knife attack

for MMA, Muay Thai is way better

or at a minimum karate + boxing
 
While i agree with the majority that karate techniques are ineffective for MMA there is alot to be said about the benifits of some of the attributes that karate can instill. My boxing coach was a South African Notianal Karate champion in his youth.

These skills namely speed and crispness in his strikes he claims helped his boxing out alot(I'm sure its the same for MMA). That said whenever we spar he boxes he doesn't use any karate techniques.
 
I would never recommend someone take karate if they wanted to get into MMA, but people that come in to MMA from karate backgrounds usually have some pretty nasty kicks. Aside from that, from my experience, they also have good blocking/evasiveness, but tend to lack in hand movement and ground skills.
 
dr.feelgood said:
I would never recommend someone take karate if they wanted to get into MMA, but people that come in to MMA from karate backgrounds usually have some pretty nasty kicks. Aside from that, from my experience, they also have good blocking/evasiveness, but tend to lack in hand movement and ground skills.
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best post here-the simple answer is yes it can be; the complex answer is that it depends on the curriculum and quality of the school, when training muay thai/boxing/etc your almost GUARANTEED a high level of contact and legit sparring/realistic training. Which is why it translates over so well; w/karate u never really know it depends and changes from school to school.

but yes it can and there are many guys who are eff using it or come from that b/g and accredit it as contribuiting to their sucess -semmy schilt (kyokushin) ed 9mm harris (karate/tkd) gsp (kyokushin) rory markham (kyokushin) machida (shotokan) louisea (karate/tkd) shonie carter (karate/sabaki) guy mezger (karate) liddel (kenpo)

alot of other guys too; but these are all i can think of and if u are familiar w.karate u see alot of the tendencies-off/def

karate gets a bad rap due to mcdojos but its still quite eff-but just like everythng else u have to be openminded trained realistically and trained hard
 
im brown belt at shotokan and only a bit is useful in mma, the kicks you are shown are really helpful as they can do allot of damage , but the punches are a tad bit silly but help for speed and pulling of sweeps is virtually impossible.
 
Im a bb in an offshoot of shotokan and it can be very useful. "However I agree with devante, it depends on the teacher. my sensei's best friend a 3 time world champ thai boxer so we have a fair amount of outside influence to our style. We also arent as strict about the curriculum as a lot of other realy traditional schools are, we believe if it works then it works.
 
i figured the school and location of it to be a major factor.

throw something about " mcdojo" in here.... (_______)



By "fluidness", which honestly isn't even a word.. i mean a more open and less restrained form of boxing, i.e machidas striking with his hands high and wide, compared to someone tucking a tight gaurd and very limitied ability to pull off shots if they're not set up properly. like rashad.

i think i could use nick diaz a good example of what i mean, he always gets those little jabs in there from odd angles with good snap, while guys like james i. could never pull that off because they're strikings too " robotic " in a sense.

i'm only looking for ways that would work, the most basic, cut down and refined techniques to create a hybrid with . the standard ways are all to easy to fall into patterns with, predictability in striking is the anti christ. gotta keep it flowing, growing and changing .
 
Naming fighters who came from a karate background is not right, because MMA and even K1 is still relatively new

If MMA started 50 years ago, guys like GSP would have trained MMA from young, just like the new generation is doing now. They have gotten to the top despite their background in an extent

It's just like when Triathlon came on the scene, the first wave of champions were ex cyclists/runners who adapted. Now the champs are people who have trained triathlon right from the start
 
IMO Karate would be a bit of a step backward from boxing if your looking to improve upon the fluidity of striking.

There are two interpretations of fluidity. fluidity of movement and the physical flow of the movements and fluidity aplied to the human psyche.

Karate does not really posses an elevated level of either as it is not really regarded as one of the more fluid arts sets of arts. It is actually pretty rigid and designed to deliver calculated explosive power shots. Look up some conventional Karate sparring and tournament videos and there is not a lot of smooth fluid movement.

Boxing is fluid psychologically. The way the human body is structured, striking is a reciprocating action. Weather linear or circular what one side of the body does the other has to compensate for to maintain balance and it is instinctual for humans to attempt to stay square to an opponent when attacked. Boxing does a really, really good job of efficiently delivering intent considering these two factors.

Now, if physical fluidity is more of a priority than mental fluidity then take a look at Kali, Silat, Systema and Shaolin Kung fu. They all have very fluid motions regarding striking at the expense of brute force.
 
Nicodemus said:
IMO Karate would be a bit of a step backward from boxing if your looking to improve upon the fluidity of striking.

There are two interpretations of fluidity. fluidity of movement and the physical flow of the movements and fluidity aplied to the human psyche.

Karate does not really posses an elevated level of either as it is not really regarded as one of the more fluid arts sets of arts. It is actually pretty rigid and designed to deliver calculated explosive power shots. Look up some conventional Karate sparring and tournament videos and there is not a lot of smooth fluid movement.

Boxing is fluid psychologically. The way the human body is structured, striking is a reciprocating action. Weather linear or circular what one side of the body does the other has to compensate for to maintain balance and it is instinctual for humans to attempt to stay square to an opponent when attacked. Boxing does a really, really good job of efficiently delivering intent considering these two factors.

Now, if physical fluidity is more of a priority than mental fluidity then take a look at Kali, Silat, Systema and Shaolin Kung fu. They all have very fluid motions regarding striking at the expense of brute force.
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I agree and disagree. I thinks its all in how you train. The movements from karate that I normally think of as flowing are more setups for a big shot rather than a series of big shots. anyway
 
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