When does karate stop being karate?

[Tayski]

Weird how when I’ve shared that same video here in other threads about full contact karate everyone else seems to have accepted it as full contact.
What gloves competitors wear has nothing to do with if a competition is full contact or not. The last half they’re not even wearing the gloves most often associated with point fighting.
But also I hate to tell you KB, MT, boxing, and MMA are all trying to score points…

you are correct I did say the entirety. I misspoke.

Funny that you replied on the glove thing (what gloves they wear has nothing to do with full contact or not indeed), but decided to completely ignore the much bigger point which is that they're pulling strikes back and not trying to cause damage.

You say that "KB, MT, boxing, and MMA are all trying to score points", in those you don't just try to score points, you also try to wear your opponent down, hit them hard and try to finish them when the opportunity arises. That's quite a big difference. Also a big factor is that when judging for decisions how much damage was caused is taken into account, even more so than how many flashy techniques you threw with no visible consequences. Quite the opposite from that point-scoring video where people are trying to land many strikes with no real intent to cause damage.

I'm getting this weird vibe from you that you've never competed in full-contact yourself if you're not able to tell the difference. Am I right?

 

[panamaican]

Late to the party but here's my perspective and it might be long.

Karate is a system of training and a philosophy for fighting. The training is the three k's: kihon, kata and kumite. As a training system, the lowest level of training is focused on developing the proper kinetic chain for a wide range of movements. Whether it's blocks, punches or kicks, the kihon is supposed to help develop every step in the chain. But like everything, it can be corrupted and result in counterproductive results. By using this very formalized system of training something, like the front snap kick, the kihon hopes to eliminate weaknesses in every portion of the kick but the goal is not to maximize the formalized steps of the front kick. The goal is to transition from the formalized training steps into a fluid natural kick that reflects the karateka's specific physical traits.

Too often, picture perfect kihon becomes the goal instead of the transition to the goal. And the technique becomes about "looking" right, instead of becoming more personalized and effective.

Kata falls into a similar category where the performance of kata and encyclopedic knowledge of applications starts taking over the goal of learning how to personalize the application of the kata to the fighter.

On the other hand, kumite goes the other way. Instead of being a method of personzlied the application of kata and kihon to the individual, it becomes an end in and of itself. It's how you end up with kickboxing and the utilization of the most basic, widely applicable techniques - kicks, punches and blocks. For example -- without training for the application of the pulling hand, one can still be a great fighter but without that puling hand, that hikite, one has moved further from the philosophy of what karate is trying to train.

Karate stops being karate when any of those things happens -- when kihon training stops being about developing the kinetic chain towards more effective and personalized fighting, when kata stops being trained for personal modification and when kumite stops being about the integration of kata and kihon and instead becomes purely about winning fights.

When the system of training loses sight of the end goal of the kata, kihon and kumite then you don't have karate anymore. You have a martial art that is still effective and looks like karate but is a significantly less effective training tool than other types of combat training. And once that happens, you might as well find the most effective training tool for your goals because it won't be that thing that looks like karate.

 

[JohnPJones]

Funny that you replied on the glove thing (what gloves they wear has nothing to do with full contact or not indeed), but decided to completely ignore the much bigger point which is that they're pulling strikes back and not trying to cause damage.

You say that "KB, MT, boxing, and MMA are all trying to score points", in those you don't just try to score points, you also try to wear your opponent down, hit them hard and try to finish them when the opportunity arises. That's quite a big difference. Also a big factor is that when judging for decisions how much damage was caused is taken into account, even more so than how many flashy techniques you threw with no visible consequences. Quite the opposite from that point-scoring video where people are trying to land many strikes with no real intent to cause damage.

I'm getting this weird vibe from you that you've never competed in full-contact yourself if you're not able to tell the difference. Am I right?

Bro not every shot in MMA boxing, KB, or MT is always super hard or full powered either.
Unless your position is that they chose to highlight strikes that earned fighters penalties idk how you claim a video depicting full contact punches to the face, a massive body slam, and a full contact knee to the head or chest isn’t full contact.
You chose to criticize the stupidest things like gloves, a kiai(which people do in knockdown regularly), and a single blocked kick that you say was pulled.

 

[Tayski]

Bro not every shot in MMA boxing, KB, or MT is always super hard or full powered either.
Unless your position is that they chose to highlight strikes that earned fighters penalties idk how you claim a video depicting full contact punches to the face, a massive body slam, and a full contact knee to the head or chest isn’t full contact.
You chose to criticize the stupidest things like gloves, a kiai(which people do in knockdown regularly), and a single blocked kick that you say was pulled.

It's not unusual for point scoring karate highlight videos to show a few fouls to make it look impressive and tough. I've even seen highlights of knockdown tournaments where they show someone getting knocked down from a head punch, that doesn't mean they're legal.

The strikes in the video are not landed full contact with intent. And it's not a coincidence that they're wearing the typical continuous point-scoring gloves, I've worn them myself in such tournaments that we called "clicker". It's also not a coincidence that all the other videos you posted of full contact sparring and tournaments they're all wearing boxing gloves and not those "clicker" mitts.

I have competed in Knockdown tournaments and watched hundreds of videos of Knockdown fights through the years and I'm yet to see someone kiai in a knockdown fight let alone from a strike that didn't land. You're full of crap.

Also that head kick wasn't even blocked, the guy who threw it pulled it back before it even landed.

You have clearly never competed and can't even tell the difference between full-contact and point scoring.

 

[JohnPJones]

It's not unusual for point scoring karate highlight videos to show a few fouls to make it look impressive and tough. I've even seen highlights of knockdown tournaments where they show someone getting knocked down from a head punch, that doesn't mean they're legal.

The strikes in the video are not landed full contact with intent. And it's not a coincidence that they're wearing the typical continuous point-scoring gloves, I've worn them myself in such tournaments that we called "clicker". It's also not a coincidence that all the other videos you posted of full contact sparring and tournaments they're all wearing boxing gloves and not those "clicker" mitts.

I have competed in Knockdown tournaments and watched hundreds of videos of Knockdown fights through the years and I'm yet to see someone kiai in a knockdown fight let alone from a strike that didn't land. You're full of crap.

Also that head kick wasn't even blocked, the guy who threw it pulled it back before it even landed.

You have clearly never competed and can't even tell the difference between full-contact and point scoring.

Which video exactly have I posted of anyone wearing boxing gloves?

Surely you’re not referring to this one?

 

[Dece]

I saw a video from the Machida dojo on facebook. They were using thai pads and apparently based on the comments most karatekas claimed they were not teaching real karate if they used pads in training.

 

[Azam]

Why remove it? It doesn’t really hamper the ability for karateka to learn to fight when pressure testing and sparring are done alongside kata and kihon training, and kata does have benefits of its own.

And goju has been doing sparring and competitions like this for a very long time. Not sure when kudo became a thing but my organization was training with sparring like this from roughly the 70s until fairly recently. I’m hoping I can influence a bit of a revival of that before things are too far gone.

Simply because Daido Juku Kudo is not karate. It's a budo art that concentrates on the sportive aspect of combat as well as the "art" part of martial arts. Daido Juku is the martial art - Kudo is the combat sport.

No kata because it takes valuable time away from other more effective tools like pad drilling, bag drilling or partner drilling.

Kata has benefit when you are training solo - that's about it. Otherwise it's the least important thing to spend your time on imo.

As far as I know about Goju - they only recently started implemented knockdown and kudo like competitions after seeing how popular they were becoming. Not really any evidence it started in the 70s like you say.

The space helmet you see in some karate styles specifically comes from Kudo headgear that was made in the 70's because it needed a new type of headgear for competitions.

Higaonna's org is the only one I know that does knockdown competition and tbh I think the calibre for this type of competition there is very poor.

If your goal is simply to learn to fight there’s only one thing you need to do, and that’s as simple as actually fight.
Kata doesn’t take away from drilling, because it is a drill of its own.

where’d you get your data on how most goju karateka spar/compete?

Of course kata takes away from drilling.

How much of your kata do you actually use when fighting? Do you use uchi uke, shuto uke, juji uke etc etc?

If your goal is fighting or self defense - kata should be the last thing in your bucket list.

Using bunkai for self defense is a bit meh to me because no other art relies on kata to derive self defense applications except karate. It puts imo a stupid emphasis on kata that is mind boggling.

 

[Azam]

You're just embarrassing yourself at this point, if you think that's full contact and not point scoring you clearly don't know what you're watching "bro".

First of all in that video they're wearing the typical point-scoring mittens. They're also pulling back their punches, the guy throwing a kick at 1.35 literally pulls it back before it lands so as to not make contact, at 2.06 they're exchanging punches which touch but they're trying not to make hard contact then one of them is literally shouting kiai's when he throws his punches, lol. The rest of the video is much of the same with guys touching for points and avoiding hard contact apart from that guy landing a knee (which doesn't even look to the head) and the other guy going down. Those are not full contact fights, they're continuous semi-contact point-scoring kumite, if you think otherwise let's stop the conversation here because you don't even know what you're watching.

You said "Been in goju for 20 years and the entirety of the goju kai organization which is one of the two largest organizations for goju does that kind of sparring and competition." So of course worded like that one would think those 20 years were spent in Goju Kai, either way you said "the entirety of the goju kai organization does that kind of sparring and competition", now you're saying it's not the entirety because you just don't know and you just can't find a single piece of footage to back it up. That video with "kudo-esque rules" as you call it is from Goju Ryu in Russia but I don't see anything about Goju Kai on it.

How often people train IS relevant because if you train 2-3 sessions a week but most of those sessions is spent on other stuff like kihon, kata, 1-step kumite and so on well guess what those who spend the entirety of their training sessions on actual fight training (like in KB, MT or boxing as you mention them) with full-contact sparring they will simply be better fighters quicker, that's quite obvious. So going back to what I said again, kata is a waste of time for someone whose goals is fighting.

Anyway it seems that we're going in circles and you're obviously changing your stance and what you say constantly and you can't even tell the difference between a semi-contact point scoring tournament and a full contact one. Great that you enjoy Karate but from all your threads and posts I get the vibe that you're trying to convince yourself that Karate is great and you're making the right choice by sticking to it. It also looks like you're trying really hard to convince others of the same thing.

There is a good chance that the goju ryu full contact competition from that video (in Russia) - might be influenced from Kudo/Kyokushin like competitions.

I think it's quite normal in Russia for circles (especially TMAs) to mix. I remember seeing some Russian uechi ryu guys doing knockdown karate as well. I think Russia is an exception but not the norm. At least not my experience from goju in the UK - they mostly do point contact here except the Okinawan lot - but like I said if I wanted to do knockdown - I'd do kyokushin where they do it better imo.

 

[Azam]

Oh look more goju continuous sparring with throws and takedowns




knockdown

Also for blackbelts - the sparring here in both videos is awful. Don't mean to be offensive - but the quality of blackbelts here is simply poor.

Also guy in first video seems like a douchebag (punching him in the face when it looks like its only meant to be knockdown and does it multiple times with a goofy smile on his face) - I'd have leg kicked him into oblivion.

 

[SandisLL]

How often people train is irrelevant.

No, it is relevant.
Even for a pro an interrupt in training means a lot.
I really had saw not cool example: guy had good fight, later get injured and was not able to train several months in row, then almost year after last fight, he barley scrapped a draw with debut lad, who year ago was worse than he. Okey, at least this shame didn't happened in big fight undercard.
When he was not able to train, this lad was able to train and he had improved a lot during this timeframe.

But also I hate to tell you KB, MT, boxing, and MMA are all trying to score points…

No, on judges cards fight ends if it wasn't done in distance.
KB actually does have special rules for discipline " kick light " and this, yeah, might be something like semi contact karate: KD and KO there isn't aim, you can't beat too hard.
KB still isn't kick light.

Boxing fight: it is not easy to finish good guy in distance, via TKO, KO etc.

Fighters like Canelo too can't finish all opponents in distance, no one claims that their punches aren't effective.
Canelo vs Jacobs : Canelo wins on points.
GGG vs Jacobs : GGG wins on points.
Pirog vs Jacobs : Pirog wins via stoppage.
By this criteria Pirog is better boxer than Canelo and GGG and YES, I agree with this version.

 

[SandisLL]

I think it's quite normal in Russia for circles (especially TMAs) to mix. I remember seeing some Russian uechi ryu guys doing knockdown karate as well. I think Russia is an exception but not the norm.

In Northern, EE and central europe, FSU countries so called " hybrids " too are not rarity.
Like example: guy did x or y when was kid, teen, then was am KBer who had competed in am boxing too.

The same grapplers, a lot of guys had competed in both: greco- roman and freestyle or variant like: guy had trained in and competed in sambo and freestyle. When reach higher level, ofc sole art remains.
The same caucassian grapplers/ wrestlers not rarerly had cross trained even during their teen years.
Russians too: Fedor had medals in judo and sambo, Khabib too is cross trained before he turned into MMA fighter.

 

[panamaican]

Of course kata takes away from drilling.

How much of your kata do you actually use when fighting? Do you use uchi uke, shuto uke, juji uke etc etc?

If your goal is fighting or self defense - kata should be the last thing in your bucket list.

Using bunkai for self defense is a bit meh to me because no other art relies on kata to derive self defense applications except karate. It puts imo a stupid emphasis on kata that is mind boggling.

I somewhat disagree with you here, as it relates to kata. To be clear, I'm not saying that you're wrong only that I don't think it's the only valid perspective.

Within the structure of karate, I think kata are an excellent method of teaching broad concepts and biomechanical movements that are applicable to self defense. IMO, a student would do the kata 2-3 times to help teach those movement patterns and then move into drills based on applying specific sequences within the kata, wrapping up with some light sparring with the goal of applying the techniques themselves.

In that sense, kata doesn't take away from drilling but serves the same purpose as teaching a student a sequence before you start teaching them to apply it. And that's something every martial art does. They teach a skill, get the student to familiarize themselves with the movements and then quickly move into pressure testing it. I think karate schools do it backwards by spending the class doing drills and then pinning katas on the end of the class with no attachment to the techniques covered in the preceding hour of instruction.

Going through a variety of sports and martial arts, many of them apply this. In boxing, no one fights like they hit the speed bag or shadow box but few people say don't hit the speed bag or shadow box. In soccer, people do cone drills and dribbling drills but playing the game is never like dribbling through cones. Few people say "Don't do dribbling drills, only play games." The problem arises when people start pretending that mastering the the speed bag and dribbling drills are the goal, instead of treating them like a small part of their training. Understanding what they're supposed to teach and not extending them beyond that.

 

[SandisLL]

Karate already is expensive stuff, plus there damn a lot of time for katas, belts etc too are not for free.
Complicated terms, all this stuff.
For simple guy some boxing, KB, MT, maybe KK and like this looks more lucrative.
Also, karate does have xx styles and they does have xxx headquarters. Hierarchy like in church and other stuff.

Ofc, if there is a lot of time and money, I think not that bad.
To earn money with karate isn't easy and for self defense might be easier to sell some 6 months crash course and like this.

 

[Sweeptheleg7]

Time spent on Kara training is time not spent on other more useful things like drills, padwork, sparring, or strength and conditioning. There's only so much time someone can train and only so many sessions a Dojo runs, if chunks of those sessions are spent on kata it's not the best use of the time if one's goal is fighting or competition, and I say that as someone with 5 years in Shotokan and then 5 years in Kyokushin.

The majority of Goju Ryu Dojos don't do that type of sparring or competitions, some do but it's definitely not the majority. The level is usually sub-par and that's no surprise since there are so many other things to focus on in the style and most people only train Goju Ryu 2 or 3 times a week.

I used to think kata was useless too. For sport fighting, it doesn’t really help but over the years of injury due to muscle imbalance, I now have a different perspective. Karate is a journey and not necessarily about getting as good as possible as fast as possible. It helps the practitioner 1) not over train 2)train both sides to address muscle imbalance 3)train transference of power while in good posture 4)train efficient power by utilizing the kinetic chain theory 5)works in focus, relaxation and concentration and body awareness. Strikes are performed in a strong posture where energy doesn’t get wasted or leaked to a poorly aligned body part. There is a reason why people deadlift with a straight back and not a rounded back. You can deadlift with a rounded back and often you see people do so when hitting their prs, but it’s not ideal.

This is really just a training tool. It’s best to train the way you fight but you don’t always have to. One of Jack Dempsey’s punching drill come into mind. There is a drill where you have to be very low as is your punching in a very low ceiling where your crouched down. It’s basically a drill that helps to develop the legs and power punching. He’s not advocating fighting like that but it’s a drill to develop a skill or attribute. The same can be said of kata.

Can you do something better in its place probably. I actually would rather do like just one kata and do it well than to do a bunch, kind of like what tai chi does.

 

[JohnPJones]

I saw a video from the Machida dojo on facebook. They were using thai pads and apparently based on the comments most karatekas claimed they were not teaching real karate if they used pads in training.

Ya there’s a bunch of butthurt ‘traditionalists’ out there who will claim any deviation from how things have been done for the last 70 years isn’t real karate.

look at the comments of the KC events, apparently a lot of people think if you’re not misusing hikite you’re not doing karate lol

 

[shinkyoku]

Ya there’s a bunch of butthurt ‘traditionalists’ out there who will claim any deviation from how things have been done for the last 70 years isn’t real karate.

look at the comments of the KC events, apparently a lot of people think if you’re not misusing hikite you’re not doing karate lol

Nothing new under the sun.
I once had a high ranking Shotokan practitioner literally shouting at me at a meeting for a karate federation, that "kyokushin is not real karate because you hit full force and knock people out!"
I have always wondered how these purist think. Not only do they spurn modern sport science (you must do those harmful oldschool strength exercises, and stopping to drink water during a grueling 2 hour session is for weaklings!), you must also never include new training methods or equipment (despite old okinawan karate masters using both primitive mits and punching bags). And if there are any weighttraining it has to be the old Hojo undo type equipment.

Now I am a traditionalist is some regards. I do not want to remove the seemingly "useless" stuff just because it is not working or allowed under sport rules -or just because it is not trained realistically anymore (I am more along the lines of if we cannot get something to work, what are we doing wrong?). But I do want to add new knowledge and not stagnate.
How many competitive weightlifters or runners today train as people did in the same sport a hundred years ago? How many boxers or wrestlers? Why are not karate practitioners allowed to take advantage of advancements in sport science, technology and modern rules?

This is not only seen among trad karate "purists" either. Plenty of outsiders seem to think that if karate adapts to modern times or adopts new rules or equipment it is no longer karate. Look at all the people claiming karate practitioners are not using karate punches any more once they put on boxing gloves. Wearing Gi or not? Who really cares except for the looks!

"Shu - Ha - Ri" -the old budo concept for progress of learning, translating (very roughly) in meaning to "copy - modify/explore - transcend". You start by copy slavishly. Then you break free from the copying to start to modify things to fit you, exploring on your own Finally you go beyond the old and create something for yourself.
All too many seems to be permanently stuck in the "copy" phase.

I actually find much of the slavishly copying of previous masters quite strange traditionally. Chojun Miyagi, founder of Goju Ryu was famous for teaching different things to different students. Always modifying the syllabus, techniques and kata to personalize it for each students size, bodytype, talents and so on. If something was a bad fit for somebody, it was modified (both what was taught and how it done -he was not above drastically modifying katas for individual students) or simply removed -he might get taught something the others did not instead.
Only a few years after his death (before his death really) all his students started arguing about which one of them had learned the correct way, and each started their own little faction for their students to copy what they had learned. Talk about missing the point!
In early Shotokan under Funakoshi, advanced students were actively sent to train judo, aikido and other karate styles to deepen their understanding and skill. That is not done in shotokan today, and the purists complain if someone tries to crosstrain.

 

[MilkManUK]

Nothing new under the sun.
I once had a high ranking Shotokan practitioner literally shouting at me at a meeting for a karate federation, that "kyokushin is not real karate because you hit full force and knock people out!"
I have always wondered how these purist think. Not only do they spurn modern sport science (you must do those harmful oldschool strength exercises, and stopping to drink water during a grueling 2 hour session is for weaklings!), you must also never include new training methods or equipment (despite old okinawan karate masters using both primitive mits and punching bags). And if there are any weighttraining it has to be the old Hojo undo type equipment.

Now I am a traditionalist is some regards. I do not want to remove the seemingly "useless" stuff just because it is not working or allowed under sport rules -or just because it is not trained realistically anymore (I am more along the lines of if we cannot get something to work, what are we doing wrong?). But I do want to add new knowledge and not stagnate.
How many competitive weightlifters or runners today train as people did in the same sport a hundred years ago? How many boxers or wrestlers? Why are not karate practitioners allowed to take advantage of advancements in sport science, technology and modern rules?

This is not only seen among trad karate "purists" either. Plenty of outsiders seem to think that if karate adapts to modern times or adopts new rules or equipment it is no longer karate. Look at all the people claiming karate practitioners are not using karate punches any more once they put on boxing gloves. Wearing Gi or not? Who really cares except for the looks!

"Shu - Ha - Ri" -the old budo concept for progress of learning, translating (very roughly) in meaning to "copy - modify/explore - transcend". You start by copy slavishly. Then you break free from the copying to start to modify things to fit you, exploring on your own Finally you go beyond the old and create something for yourself.
All too many seems to be permanently stuck in the "copy" phase.

I actually find much of the slavishly copying of previous masters quite strange traditionally. Chojun Miyagi, founder of Goju Ryu was famous for teaching different things to different students. Always modifying the syllabus, techniques and kata to personalize it for each students size, bodytype, talents and so on. If something was a bad fit for somebody, it was modified (both what was taught and how it done -he was not above drastically modifying katas for individual students) or simply removed -he might get taught something the others did not instead.
Only a few years after his death (before his death really) all his students started arguing about which one of them had learned the correct way, and each started their own little faction for their students to copy what they had learned. Talk about missing the point!
In early Shotokan under Funakoshi, advanced students were actively sent to train judo, aikido and other karate styles to deepen their understanding and skill. That is not done in shotokan today, and the purists complain if someone tries to crosstrain.

Great post.

 

[panamaican]

Nothing new under the sun.
I once had a high ranking Shotokan practitioner literally shouting at me at a meeting for a karate federation, that "kyokushin is not real karate because you hit full force and knock people out!"
I have always wondered how these purist think. Not only do they spurn modern sport science (you must do those harmful oldschool strength exercises, and stopping to drink water during a grueling 2 hour session is for weaklings!), you must also never include new training methods or equipment (despite old okinawan karate masters using both primitive mits and punching bags). And if there are any weighttraining it has to be the old Hojo undo type equipment.

Now I am a traditionalist is some regards. I do not want to remove the seemingly "useless" stuff just because it is not working or allowed under sport rules -or just because it is not trained realistically anymore (I am more along the lines of if we cannot get something to work, what are we doing wrong?). But I do want to add new knowledge and not stagnate.
How many competitive weightlifters or runners today train as people did in the same sport a hundred years ago? How many boxers or wrestlers? Why are not karate practitioners allowed to take advantage of advancements in sport science, technology and modern rules?

This is not only seen among trad karate "purists" either. Plenty of outsiders seem to think that if karate adapts to modern times or adopts new rules or equipment it is no longer karate. Look at all the people claiming karate practitioners are not using karate punches any more once they put on boxing gloves. Wearing Gi or not? Who really cares except for the looks!

"Shu - Ha - Ri" -the old budo concept for progress of learning, translating (very roughly) in meaning to "copy - modify/explore - transcend". You start by copy slavishly. Then you break free from the copying to start to modify things to fit you, exploring on your own Finally you go beyond the old and create something for yourself.
All too many seems to be permanently stuck in the "copy" phase.

I actually find much of the slavishly copying of previous masters quite strange traditionally. Chojun Miyagi, founder of Goju Ryu was famous for teaching different things to different students. Always modifying the syllabus, techniques and kata to personalize it for each students size, bodytype, talents and so on. If something was a bad fit for somebody, it was modified (both what was taught and how it done -he was not above drastically modifying katas for individual students) or simply removed -he might get taught something the others did not instead.
Only a few years after his death (before his death really) all his students started arguing about which one of them had learned the correct way, and each started their own little faction for their students to copy what they had learned. Talk about missing the point!
In early Shotokan under Funakoshi, advanced students were actively sent to train judo, aikido and other karate styles to deepen their understanding and skill. That is not done in shotokan today, and the purists complain if someone tries to crosstrain.

I agree with what you're saying but I think the problem isn't that people don't want to apply new training methods so much as people have lost the point of the original training. As you note with Shu-ha-ri -- the point was always to transcend the forms and kihon into a personalized style that reflects thein individual. It is that concept that got lost with arts like Shotokan, arts that became obsessed with copying the old forms instead of using those forms as the springboard into an individualized style.

The failure to move past "copy" isn't a problem with karate, the martial art. It's a problem with a lot of teachers who don't realize that they're not properly training their students on how to move from beginner to advanced.