Why Traditional Karate Is Not Effective for Self-Defense

[chinto]

perhaps I have just been lucky, but in both systems of Karate I study the Sensei's have insisted on Bunkai sessions where first at lower ranks the kihon applications are looked at, and at higher ranks you find the others hidden there. Karate is a very efficent and effective art! Most of your older arts are, as they were developed not for sport, but survival!

there are in most of the older arts, strikes, blocks, locks, brakes, throws and take downs, and this is not just Karate, but Jujitsu, Kung Fu, Silat, and on and on.

 

[lonewolfofmibu]

I say it's not so black and white as "karate is or isn't effective" because I've seen and trained in both ends of the spectrum, I've had traditional matial arts instuctors that claimed they were deadly weapons but had never been in real fights and I've had soft spoken teachers that I would never fight not even with a hand gun.
I truely believe you can take any martial art from Aikido to Taekwondo to karate to Brazilian Jiujitsu and adapt it to any situation if you train it right, yeah if you train half heartedly and only train for very specific matches chances are you'll be embarrassed in a real fight but if you take your training seriously and train to against many different opponents from many different styles you'll be ready for what life throws at you

 

[SacredCoconut]

It probely has been pointed out alredy, but i think the writer has wrong meaning of self defense.

Best self defense is not to get into fight, in the case you do have to defend, i would not do it unless must (someone hits you with out much warning, most likely some drunk guy). If it realy would be against experinced fighter or group, running awey or giving them money or something is most likely better option for SD. I don't see the kata training karateka starting fight unless must, but i can see the reality based (edit) guy wanting to show his skills inte the streets. hardest part here is to have the right mind set, which karate probely helps with.

If you want skills to FIGHT then yeah some reality based art may be better, but in self defense i see that as less important factor. I know every school is not same and this may be different at some places.

 

[Tez3]

It probely has been pointed out alredy, but i think the writer has wrong meaning of self defense.

Best self defense is not to get into fight, in the case you do have to defend, i would not do it unless must (someone hits you with out much warning, most likely some drunk guy). If it realy would be against experinced fighter or group, running awey or giving them money or something is most likely better option for SD. I don't see the kata training karateka starting fight unless must, but i can see the MMA guy wanting to show his skills inte the streets. hardest part here is to have the right mind set, which karate probely helps with.

If you want skills to FIGHT then yeah some reality based art may be better, but in self defense i see that as less important factor. I know every school is not same and this may be different at some places.

MMA people don't want to 'show their techniques on the street' anymore than anyone else. Many MMA are also karateka as well as Judokas,TKDists etc. so much for mindset. MMA people aren't anymore aggressive than anyone else, in fact they are liable to be less so outside competition, they spend their aggression up in training and comps leaving them quite mellow actually!

 

[SacredCoconut]

Yeah i know its not everyone, it was just example, probely bad one at that. If we take it in the contects of first post, MMA guy should not train in traditional arts, which i feel like help with the mind set.

 

[chinto]

It probely has been pointed out alredy, but i think the writer has wrong meaning of self defense.

Best self defense is not to get into fight, in the case you do have to defend, i would not do it unless must (someone hits you with out much warning, most likely some drunk guy). If it realy would be against experinced fighter or group, running awey or giving them money or something is most likely better option for SD. I don't see the kata training karateka starting fight unless must, but i can see the reality based (edit) guy wanting to show his skills inte the streets. hardest part here is to have the right mind set, which karate probely helps with.

If you want skills to FIGHT then yeah some reality based art may be better, but in self defense i see that as less important factor. I know every school is not same and this may be different at some places.

I do not agree that some how the so called "reality based" schools are any better in general. In fact most teach a modified troop style which is not intended to face a trained fighter any way. all that said, it is more about the man then the art in many ways.

 

[Em MacIntosh]

Situational awareness, dealing with the adrenaline dump and making/taking an escape rout are not a part of the curriculum of any traditional style of karate I've ever had experience with. Karate teaches you muscle memory through technique so that during the aforementioned and unaddressed adrenaline dump you'll move instinctively the way you've practised (unless you become catatonic or prone). Karate can't give you real life experience. Karate can't teach you to deal with panic and can only teach you a little about pain. It won't address the psychology of courage, of being assaulted or coping with maliciousness. While you may think some of these things are covered in class, application is a shock to any sane person.

To defend yourself you have to be able to use your karate and that's 4/5ths of the struggle. Also keep in mind an assailant will have some kind of force multiplier, be it a knife, an ambush, friends or all of the above. There's a time for viciousness and you won't learn that in karate either. Being assaulted causes a traumatic paradigm shift and this injury takes a lot more to heal than bruises and broken bones.

Just like karate isn't responsible for teaching ethics to your children, it isn't responsible for traumatising you to prepare you for the dark parts of humanity. Keep fit and stay out of bad situations (assess a room when you walk into it and know where the exits are). Maintain a healthy level of prejudice on the street and listen to your gut.

 

[SacredCoconut]

I don't know if you understood my post little wrong, but i just pointed out that the skill to win fight does not make you good in self defense, in this case MMA. If your in good shape, right mind set and information how to deal with it, you probely can have good SD, knowing how to evade it in advance belongs here to. From these karate at least in my mind helps with shape, mind set and depending on school information.

Oh yeah my MMA example was realy bad, as someone who compeats, most likely does everything he can do to avoid trouble.

 

[Tez3]

MMA fighters are perfectly able to defend themselves if need be even on a stag night ( hence the 'drag'), I know these lads, good fighters both of them and it goes to show that 'what you train is how you defend yourself 'on the street' isn't such a truism after all. Enjoy.

 

[SacredCoconut]

Yeah MMA will be able to defend him self, but in my opinion that dosen't make him good in "self defense". Yes MMA will give you things that will help with self defense as well as karate, and my post was just about, how karate is useless in self defense and MMA is not. Ofc it does helps as it is Mixed Martial Arts, if it did not, most MA would not help. Am i realy that bad at writing it, or do people jump in to conlusions too fast?

And my point about avoiding, was that it may bring problems with competing. I'm not sure, but coudn't that get you ban in some events?

 

[Tez3]

Yeah MMA will be able to defend him self, but in my opinion that dosen't make him good in "self defense". Yes MMA will give you things that will help with self defense as well as karate, and my post was just about, how karate is useless in self defense and MMA is not. Ofc it does helps as it is Mixed Martial Arts, if it did not, most MA would not help. Am i realy that bad at writing it, or do people jump in to conlusions too fast?

And my point about avoiding, was that it may bring problems with competing. I'm not sure, but coudn't that get you ban in some events?

What makes you 'good' at self defence is the will to survive.

When the OP says 'traditional karate' it's meaningless, there are many styles and many ways of teaching karate, you cannot dismiss them all as useless for self defence. It's like saying food is bad for you, it raises too many questions.

What was karate originally designed for? Have a think about this, it wasn't designed for dancing around and/or philosophical thinking.
It can work very well for self defence but then many people defend themselves perfectly well without knowing any martial arts at all.

 

[SacredCoconut]

I think so too, but the one who wrote this dosen't seem to think so. When i read it, i thought he makes it seem like MMA is better, because you can beat someone up. Did i understand the opening wrong?

Well arguing about karate vs MMA in SD is prety pointless, as alredy stated depends on school. I was in impression that you missunterstood me, and i was trying to straight it up.

 

[K-man]

I've just gone back and re-read the OP and also my posts of over three years ago. At the time I thought, from my experience, that the OP was wrong in many areas and that the reality based SD I was teaching was vastly different from the karate he was describing. Three years down the track and I have changed from a Japanese based style to an Okinawan style. The difference between the two in application, understanding and practice is substantial.

Now when I read the OP I am reading an article written by someone who has very little understanding of the real martial arts and more particularly, karate. I can agree that it may take longer to be proficient in traditional MAs, but even that is not necessarily the case. When I read the part regarding kata I see he has absolutely no idea of the application of kata, and when he talks of fine motor skills being part of karate, I can't think of any techniques I teach that rely on fine motor movement. He talks about rigidity and unrealistic stances but has obviously never seen the fluidity of Okinawan Goju, or the application of the foot work involved in the stances.

I've recently returned from my third overseas trip in as many years, purely for training RBSD. That training is all gross motor, all close contact and all brutal. It does not rely on being attacked first although it could be used where the attack was unexpected. (That introduces a whole new area of situational awareness.) It is all kata based and kata alone.

i suppose what I'm restating is that 'traditional' karate should contain everything you need to defend or survive. If you think is doesn't, then either that style or more likely the instructors are at fault. What I was taught thirty years ago was good basics but very limited understanding. The article in the OP is talking about the type of karate I was exposed to then, not what I teach now.
:asian:

 

[OldKarateGuy]

There's so much open to interpretation, when one says "self-defense". If you've trained in, say, sparring or serious kata, then you would be expected to breathe under pressure - rather than, say, like all new karate students, holding your breath under stress. Didn't we all do that the first time testing or competing? You would also hope someone trained in the classic MA would move about, and not stand still. These are lessons hopefully learned in most martial art training. Then there are the specific block and strike techniques, or take downs, probably pretty similar but certainly with variation (in efficiency) by style and/or instructor. How about some non-specific feeling of how to think and act during a fight? For instance, in boxing, you might be accepting of getting hit, albeit with a good blocking and protective technique. The same might be true of some traditional martial arts, perhaps deriving from how each point sparring philosophy works. Stupid, maybe, but true. So, in some styles, point fighting to a time limit with no limit of points scored, and maybe, little or no emphasis on defending oneself. However, in real world fights, I always - emphasize always - expected and attempted to avoid getting hit at all costs. I was not willing to trade techniques. (I got hit enough even with this attitude) So, analogous to the Japanese centric "one punch, one kill" feeling, of say, shotokan sparring with an Ippon win of a single strike. Certainly we have all seen point sparring which rewards stances, techniques and strategy which would be disastrous in real life.
I see some comments about avoiding a fight being some kind of MA trained response. Probably true, I think, but very limited in application. We hope our students would walk away from a senseless ego-based fight, but of course, in real life, walking away is not usually an option if you didn't instigate the issue in the first place. Also, there are those for whom avoidance is simply not an option, law enforcement or the military, for instance. Personal violence in such is not just unavoidable, it's part of the job description.
I was on a police department in a major urban area, with a high crime rate and a poor inner city. For the first 20 years or so, I did Judo. I picked just a few techniques which seemed to work for me, and practiced them all the time, from different positions, etc. Rarely, I might do something different from the Judo playbook, instinctively, and I used to surprise myself when I did. I had two or three strikes (palm heel and ridge hand my favorites), two or three takedowns, wrist-bars, sweeps, and they made up 90% of my fighting. But I also think the intangibles, breathing, movement, clarity of thought, learned on the dojo floor were invaluable too. Toward the end of my career, I switched to karate, but can't really say I used much of it in a real-world sense, because I was older and not in a position to encounter personal violence very often. I should also qualify this as admitting I used a blunt instrument rather than my fist whenever I could. So, nightstick or flashlight to the head or body...not really a traditional martial art.
Last, you can't train for martial spirit. One has heart, or not, However, students can - and do - learn that getting punched in the nose is not the end of the world, that a little blood won't kill you, and that usually, mental toughness can be the defining factor in a fight. Well, some fights anyway.
So, I agree that traditional martial arts can lead to an ability to defend oneself. Some styles may lend themselves to more efficiency than others, and certainly, there may be a few styles - or more likely, some instructors - whose training could lead to a disaster in the real world. But, if the question is, does traditional martial arts training make you better at defending yourself, how could the answer be anything but "of course."

 

[SenseiRuss]

I beg to differ:

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/

 

[K-man]

I beg to differ:

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/

I'd just like to say two things.

1. I wish he was Goju.

2. I wish he would visit Australia more often.

:asian:

 

[seasoned]

I'd just like to say two things.

1. I wish he was Goju.

2. I wish he would visit Australia more often.

:asian:

He's built like some of the Okinawa's.

 

[Tez3]

He's built like some of the Okinawa's.

Roflmao! he's one of my favourite people.

 

[Curlykarateka]

Karate was built to defend peasants from armed samurai, arguably knife fighters fight very differently but karate can adapt. I mean sure, a guy isn't gonna walk up and perform a lunging stab or clear cut slash. He's gonna get in close and stab me in short, quick movements. I have no idea how to deal with that kind of attack other than "can't see his hands, punch him in the throat" BTW the one hit kill does exist. Ushirogeri to the solar-plexus, a powerful hand technique to the throat. any of those would end a fight. Also, best self defense against an armed attacker, just give him the bleeding wallet. Kata is a training exercise to the best of my knowledge, a way of developing technique and breathing and showing us principles of fighting. Also, it is not religion, but a common philosophy all TMA practitioners should share, one of perpetual self improvement and using Martial arts for the good. Martial arts ought to teach us so much more than how to fight, but also how to not fight. Also, karate fighters are not stiff or rigid, and the stances are very effective at harnessing the power of the body, protecting vital areas and mobility. I can doge from nikoashi dachi as quick if not quicker than I can from a standard boxing stance. Some senseis may only stick to the traditional, in my dojo one the main things we do is develop our own self defense methods. "curlykarateka-ryu" rather than Goju-Ryu, developing and honing a natural response to any attack. I could go on, but I'll finish by saying that you should not dismiss a way of fighting without having studied it deeply first, with a decent sensei.

 

[TimoS]

Karate was built to defend peasants from armed samurai

No it wasn't