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.