bashing karate

Discussion in 'Karate' started by Humblebee, Aug 2, 2008.

  1. Humblebee

    Humblebee PaciFIST's evil twin

    Hi Guys,
    I've never practised Karate but have always thought of it as a Kickass MA in terms of self protection on the street.
    Lately I've been and watched a few kyokushinkai Karate classes and those people are as hard as hell.
    So why do people say Karate is ineffective (take kickboxing instead) for self defence because it looks pretty damn hard to me.
     
  2. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    because they know nothing?

    there's also the fools that took karate for like a week and got beat up.
     
  3. Moosey

    Moosey invariably, a moose Supporter

    "People" sneer at anything.

    Karate is too this, kung fu is too that, MMA is too the-other.

    In the grander scheme of things, it matters little.

    If you ever want someone to tell you karate is awesome, just ask me - I'll be happy to oblige! :D
     
  4. Humblebee

    Humblebee PaciFIST's evil twin

    There was one woman training who was quite fat(sorry). Anyway she started sparring with a guy and my eyes nearly popped out of my head, This woman was like an elastic band in terms of flexibility and as fast as hell and believe me she was no small lady.
    I was really impressed with this class and how good the students were no matter what shape or size they came in.
     
  5. Humblebee

    Humblebee PaciFIST's evil twin

    If you ever want someone to tell you karate is awesome, just ask me - I'll be happy to oblige! :D[/QUOTe

    feel free.

    I trained boxing and kickboxing for some time but these guys and this style of Karate is impressive.
    I am thinking of crosstraining Karate with a new Jujitsu class i've also recently found.
     
  6. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    It's due to the no-contact & semi-contact karate that has spread throughout this land of ours. The good stuff you have to dig for due to the fact you can't fleece as many people with stuff that actually hurts. Not just karate, many arts.

    Moosey looks chilled!
     
  7. Humblebee

    Humblebee PaciFIST's evil twin

     
  8. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

     
  9. liero

    liero Valued Member

    i must admit. full contact schools are few and far between comparitively
     
  10. Hapuka

    Hapuka Te Aho

    Karate is great but it might not suit some people. I recommend you to do a bit of research on the different styles and check out local clubs and see what you think.
     
  11. Sweeper

    Sweeper Banned Banned

    It's great that you're enthused, but what is your enthusiasm based on? A fat woman who's flexible? Hitting hard (but I take it no head shots?).

    There are many reasons to knock karate:

    1. Forms are a waste of time, and it's your money. They are absolutely worthless, and karate spends 25-50% of time on them.

    2. No grappling. Grappling is essential for self defense. Want proof? Look at MMA matches, look at youtube street fights.

    3. Unrealistic, archaic techniques and stances you can't pull off in sparring.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chuck Liddell w/ Kempo, but his base is wrestling from college.

    If you want a striking art, I would look into Muy Thai, Western Boxing, Savate, Kali, or Jeet Kune Do (Concepts).

    Karate is OK, but not good. If you train it hard and augment it with grappling, you'll be fine, but why bother when you could just do muy thai? You can't polish a turd.
     
  12. callsignfuzzy

    callsignfuzzy Is not a number!

    Forms by themselves are, in your words, a waste of time. Forms with realistic applications aren't bad. In fairness to your statement, though, I hadn't found what I consider good applications until very recently. And the amount of time spend on kata may vary. I've been in classes that did hardly anything besides kata, and others in which it was an afterthought.

    Karate will sometimes include grappling, usually in the form of throws and sweeps. And again, the good kata applications include realistic grappling. It's missing adequate groundfighting, though, and most schools don't spend that much time on locks and throws.

    Such as?

    And GSP with his Kyokushinkai, Machida with his Shotokan, Ryo Chonan and Genki Sudo also have karate backgrounds... And just 'cause these guys crosstrain doesn't make karate ineffective, any more than Matt Hughes and Randy Couture studying boxing and submissions makes wrestling ineffective, or Kenny Florian and Big Nog studying Muay Thai, boxing, judo, and wrestling makes BJJ ineffective.

    The biggest problem with karate is that, along with TKD, judo, boxing and wrestling, in order for the "sport" to grow the realism had to suffer. In karate's case, most of the time the sparring is semi or non-contact, which hurts realistic performance. And instead of disecting a traditional form and going, "well maybe this is a hair grab instead of a block", we get the XMA stuff, with kids doing acrobatics to techno music. A lot of karate has been "boxercised" for about a century now. It used a lot of the same moves that you'd use in a real fight, but it's done for excercise, or "character building", and popular perception in the West, thanks to things like "The Karate Kid", gives people the impression that it's something psudo-mystical instead of a good fighting art. People are more concerned with "finding their center" instead of smashing an attacker. And then you've got the belt factories, with guys getting a black belt within a year. Again this goes back to the nature of semi-contact point sparring. Guys think they're tough 'cause they're good at playing what amounts to a game of tag. Full-contact training is a great regulator.
     
  13. Sweeper

    Sweeper Banned Banned

    It's an inefficient expendure of time no matter how you slice it. So you found an application for it that made sense... so? Just apply the thing in live sparring and forget the kata.

    When I said "grappling" I was including, of course, the largest and most important branch: ground fighting. Yes, it has it's sweeps and locks, but I seriously doubt they would be effective against a BJJer or wrestler; mainly due to a lack of mat time, a lack of live sparring w/ the move, and that it probably just wouldn't work.

    I think the whole thing is bad compared to the best striking arts: muy thai and boxing. In Karate and TKD, you practice all these moves like some marching mummy on Prozac, but when you fight all that goes away and you're just bouncing on your toes throwing round houses and crappy punches.

    If you want to say Kyokushinkai and shotokan are as effective as BJJ, muy thai, and wrestling, uh... go right ahead.

    Tell me how you smash the Muy Thai guy or BJJ guy with your karate. Lay out the game plan for it. Let's say your Karate champion that is going to take out the best BJJ and Muy Thai and MMA have on order trains just like you want: hard, old school. What's the most likely scenario?

    The muy thai guy will clinch him and elbow and knee the living crap out of him.

    The BJJ guy will close, take it to the ground, and choke him out. (It's happened countless times and is documented on video).

    How does karate change those outcomes? I believe it would have to change so much that it isn't even "krotty" any more, but maybe I"m wrong. You tell me....
     
  14. callsignfuzzy

    callsignfuzzy Is not a number!

    So you're against drills?

    Except for that last part, I agree with you. Learning throws and locks from karate is about as silly as learning punches and kicks from BJJ. But your original statement was that grappling was completely lacking. It isn't. It doesn't get nearly enough training time, but it's there.

    I practice the moves how I fight. It works for me. And again you've pointed out how things are commonly taught, which I also noted in my first post. But the fact remains that the same punches, kicks, knees and elbows that exist in boxing and MT also exist in karate. The syllibus is comparable, just the common method of training sucks.

    When trained correctly, they absolutely are just as effective in their respective theaters. Again, you wouldn't train BJJ for kicks, karate for goundfighting, wrestling for punches, or Muay Thai for submissions.

    You're very much missing the point. I'm not saying karate is "better", I'm saying that in its field it's "comparable", if properly trained. Yes, it can be substituted for Muay Thai and boxing, if you want to train striking. I've given at least four MMA fighters who utilize karate. Muay Thai wouldn't fair any better against grappling systems. In fact if you look at the early UFC events, the first ten or so, those representing "karate" won more often than those representing "Muay Thai". By and large it was still a grappler's game. And in the interest of self-defense, that's OK, because the likelyhood of having a protracted ground battle in the street is much lower than in a match-fight. The grabs, strikes, and standup grappling found in karate, if taught properly, are more than adequate to defend yourself.
     
  15. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

  16. pauli

    pauli mr guillotine

    i'm a big fan of bashing karate. most karate out there is absolute garbage. fortunately, my negative attitude hasn't scared off any of the white belts yet.
     
  17. Torre

    Torre Valued Member

    To Sweeper: about karate's effectiveness compared to muay thai, look no further than the late Andy Hug. And some of the more recent K-1 fighters are karateka. Semy Schilt, Francisco Filho, Musashi, Glaube Feitosa etc.
     
  18. Humblebee

    Humblebee PaciFIST's evil twin

    maybe you should take up yoga you seem quite negative.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2008
  19. flammee

    flammee Valued Member

    Do MMA/Muay Thai/BJJ schools train thugs who attack people on the streets, or why do you think that fighting these people is relevant?

    And even if I trained muay thai, it wouldn't make me immune to attacks of muay thai people, it would just take better or maybe bigger MT-guy or two of them to beat me up. I don't really know how it's where you live, maybe there are MMA-muggers on the streets, but here definitely isn't. And at our local MMA-school's website there is text that they don't train criminals or violent people. So, I don't really think it would be realistic situation to need to fight MMA/Muay Thai/BJJer. On the context of self defence, fighting MMA/BJJ/Muay Thai/Judo/Boxing/Wrestling people or elephants/lions/riot polices/martians/mechs or whatever just isn't relevant.
     
  20. Svart

    Svart Valued Member

    Yes a lot of street fights end up on the ground, but the way you speak is almost like every person you ever get in a fight with outside a pub will be a seasoned BJJ practician. There are many fights where its just a few swings.
    I agree that obviously BJJ etc is going to help if you end up hitting the pavement. But, well what if you are both standing. Theres no point being brilliant at ground techniques if you are the only one on the ground, unconcious at that.
     

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