Knowing karate doesn't help very much...

[Bill Mattocks]

Frankly, I don't think too much of this article, but I thought I'd share it for that reason. See what you think of it.

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/mma-kids-fighting-090810

The After-School Ultimate Fighter

Forget basketball when the son heads back to school this year. Boxing, too. The biggest sport of the new century is mixed martial arts, and it's time to start grooming your champion.
By David DiSalvo

Let's be honest: No child has really considered karate a "sport" since the days of wax-on, wax-off — and no father has really wanted his son to be anything less than a varsity captain since the days of, well, we can't remember when. But now the age of MMA is upon us, and many youngsters are looking up to Dana White more than their local NFL quarterbacks. And so, a compromise: it is no longer impossible for today's twelve-year-old Brazilian Jujuitsu prodigy to become tomorrow's Brett Favre.

...

Besides, karate lessons didn't really help a generation of bullied kids who discovered that fights almost always degenerated into on-the-ground chaos — no polish, no finesse, no twirling butterfly kicks. Those skills, which might've impressed tournament judges, were useless against street-savvy brawlers. Alan Belcher can personally testify; he started training at eight years old, and eighteen years later he's a top five UFC middleweight. If a child is attacked, "knowing karate isn't going to help very much," Belcher says, "but BJJ gives them a fighting chance."

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Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/mma-kids-fighting-090810#ixzz0z4I0nGF2​

 

[Omar B]

Besides, karate lessons didn't really help a generation of bullied kids who discovered that fights almost always degenerated into on-the-ground chaos — no polish, no finesse, no twirling butterfly kicks. Those skills, which might've impressed tournament judges, were useless against street-savvy brawlers.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/mma-kids-fighting-090810#ixzz0z4JcMZ25

Wow, uniformed about karate much. Why is it everyone seems to think karate is useless on the ground or that it's all flowery movements? Yet much of karate's strikes are packaged as Krav Maga or Hisardut or some other MA and it's suddenly revolutionary. I've seen karateka fight and it was not anything near pretty, in fact it was pretty brutal and as aggro as you could get without ripping limbs off and beating the opponent with it.
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[Carol]

Karate lessons won't do squat if they are not properly taught. Period. If a kid's karate class is warming up with jumping jacks, a good bit of oh-s/he's-sort-of-moving-the-right-way, and then closing with dodge ball....that kid is not learning much karate.

What makes Karate so powerful is its strong, rigid strikes. Some folks say their style is softer...but the way to make a hard style softer is to incorporate circular movements and more grappling moves -- not by throwing uncommitted strikes with no power behind them.

 

[Brandon Fisher]

I wish people would actually do some reaearch so they can have at lease a partially educated opinion before they make fools of themselves.

 

[Cirdan]

Many people are checking out Karate Dojos now with the new Karate Kid movie. Understandably he feels the need to tell us what the real deadly art is.

Be warned: the kids will also experience unmistakable pain, so overprotective parents will have to check themselves. Well-executed movements and joint-manipulations aren't fun, and tapping out too late can result in a hyper-extended elbow, dislocated shoulder or worse.

But soon, perhaps, they'll be ready for counterintelligence missions abroad. "This training has grown immensely, especially since 9/11," says Colon of the NYC Krav Maga school. "People want to protect themselves from guns, knives, baseball bats and terrorists. The simple fact is that it's not nice out there."

Missions?​

 

[Steve]

I have a couple of comments. First, that kid in the picture is about to get his guard passed. I don't know what the hell he thinks he's doing.

Being serious, I'll just comment based on what I've seen locally. The big advantage that I see in an MMA/BJJ type school over a "traditional" karate school is that the kids in an MMA school learn age appropriate skills that they can execute at full speed against a fully resisting partner. There are bloody noses sometimes, and tears sometimes, but the skills and abilities that they're gaining are practical and usable. Also, they are rewarded based upon tangible, demonstrable progress.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Karate doesn't help with bullying? News to me. Helped me quite a bit when I got bullied.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Actually, come to think of it, of all the fights I got into, only two went to the ground, and in both cases, punching still worked pretty good.


I have a lot more experience in martial arts and grappling now, but still...

 

[ralphmcpherson]

Karate doesn't help with bullying? News to me. Helped me quite a bit when I got bullied.

Me too, I did a bit of karate in early highschool and it certainly helped when push came to shove. Its funny that he says bjj would give them a fighting chance. I know nothing about bjj so excuse my ignorance, but does bjj teach punching, kicking and striking in general? Ive never been in a fight that ended up on the ground, it was strikes that helped me, my father always told me NEVER go to the ground in a fight and I tell my kids the same thing. The only time I saw guys go to the ground in fights at school it resulted in someone getting kicked (quite brutally at times) by half a dozen of the bullies mates while on the ground. I could accept that karate combined with bjj would be great but to pin point one art as 'useless' while talking up another seems to me like abit of bad publicity is required due to all the youngsters flocking to karate after the latest karate kid movie.

 

[Omar B]

You know, this thread for some reason has me all keyed up! Not only did I spell uninformed incorrectly in my initial post, but I was almost totally incoherent because I was so mad.

MMA is popular now, it's trendy so of course kids are going to like it. I cannot fault the kids for looking up to great athletes because even now as an adult many of my heroes are athletes.

What gets me crazy are these people who speak ill of Karate without any understanding of the art at all. What's a butterfly kick anyways? The writer talked about one and in my 24 years of Seido Karate (and Judo with the same Sensei), Choi Kwang Do, that summer of Bujinkan I've not come across any such thing. Sounds like something you hear about in a movie.

Other newer arts seem to inspire the less knowledgeable to bash an older systems. There would be no Krav Maga or Hisardut or any number of other systems without Karate. Yet you take Karate, strip it down, hobble it and sell it as something new and it's a revolution. Too flashy? You should work out with my group. No ground skills? Have you even entered a dojo before, pretty much every self defense set ends on the ground. Seems like the journalist's knowledge of Karate extends as far as movies and a strip mall dojo.

It's funny because I talk a lot with my friends who many of them are musicians and you see the same thing there too. A strong dislike, even hate sometimes to the classics, when classical music is what established the rules, scales, usage, the entire grammar of music. But why learn all that when you can spin a turntable? It's the same thing here, why learn this whole huge "unwieldy" thing called Karate when you can just learn enough to impress your friends.

 

[Touch Of Death]

If you master karate you will find that most of the time you aren't doing squat. That was the whole point of learning karate. A little awareness combined with a little logic, and you will find that you don't fight all that much.
sean

 

[girlbug2]

Here we go again--bash one art to promote another.

Will people ever learn; it's not the art that wins the fight, it's the practitioner.

 

[ralphmcpherson]

You know, this thread for some reason has me all keyed up! Not only did I spell uninformed incorrectly in my initial post, but I was almost totally incoherent because I was so mad.

MMA is popular now, it's trendy so of course kids are going to like it. I cannot fault the kids for looking up to great athletes because even now as an adult many of my heroes are athletes.

What gets me crazy are these people who speak ill of Karate without any understanding of the art at all. What's a butterfly kick anyways? The writer talked about one and in my 24 years of Seido Karate (and Judo with the same Sensei), Choi Kwang Do, that summer of Bujinkan I've not come across any such thing. Sounds like something you hear about in a movie.

Other newer arts seem to inspire the less knowledgeable to bash an older systems. There would be no Krav Maga or Hisardut or any number of other systems without Karate. Yet you take Karate, strip it down, hobble it and sell it as something new and it's a revolution. Too flashy? You should work out with my group. No ground skills? Have you even entered a dojo before, pretty much every self defense set ends on the ground. Seems like the journalist's knowledge of Karate extends as far as movies and a strip mall dojo.

It's funny because I talk a lot with my friends who many of them are musicians and you see the same thing there too. A strong dislike, even hate sometimes to the classics, when classical music is what established the rules, scales, usage, the entire grammar of music. But why learn all that when you can spin a turntable? It's the same thing here, why learn this whole huge "unwieldy" thing called Karate when you can just learn enough to impress your friends.

I have to agree with all of that and I can understand your anger towards an article such as this because as a tkdist I constantly see uninformed dribble written about my art. The only thing I know for sure is that the people writing these articles really do know nothing because if they had even the faintest idea about karate they wouldnt write this tripe.

 

[seasoned]

Here we go again--bash one art to promote another.

Will people ever learn; it's not the art that wins the fight, it's the practitioner.

Along with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

 

[rlp271]

I don't like the article either, but who goes to Esquire for martial arts advice? I don't think the article will change anyone's mind about things. Least of all about wanting their son or daughter to be a successful high school athlete. Parents, especially those that peaked in high school, do tend to live vicariously through their children. If anything, write to the editors of Esquire, let them know how uninformed the guy is politely, so they won't ask him to write another BS article.

 

[Blade96]

hated it. The guy is a muppet.

 

[Touch Of Death]

hated it. The guy is a muppet.

You leave the Muppets out of this!
Sean

 

[Big Don]

I'm 37, I can count on one finger the number of fights I've gotten into in the last 25 years... A confident state of mind, takes care of 99% of problems.

 

[Bruno@MT]

I'm 37, I can count on one finger the number of fights I've gotten into in the last 25 years... A confident state of mind, takes care of 99% of problems.

True, that. Living in a good area and not visiting bad parts of town also helps.

BJJ does have an advantage though. When used properly, the other kid does not go home with a broken face. People these days get upset if johnny goes home with a broken nose, black eye and cracked ribs. But if johnny goes home with a bruised ego, scratches and perhaps a painful wrist / shoulder / elbow... then they won't be nearly as upset.

 

[Makalakumu]

Karate was a mixed martial art. Then it got packaged and stylized and pigeonholed to death.

I wrote my book in order to peel back the layers of the onion and get to the core of what was really going on. Now, I have no compunctions about telling someone I train in karate.

Myself and my students have been able to defend themselves at all levels and against a number of weapons.

It works.