Sports Karate vs. traditional fighting – is your Dojo’s curriculum working these synergistically? Why each evolved the way they did and why analysis makes them synergistic.
O Does your dojo have a check system for decision based training towards either dealing with an untrained attacker versus an elite karate athlete? o Do you have a 1:1 link to your fighting training, kata form and bunkai in a way which also relates to tournament kumite performance? o Do you engage in the correct tournament fighting approach, or street fighting approach when training? The recent evolution in sports karate and research into rejuvenating karate bunkai has required schools to change training curriculums in order to be correct and effective in their fighting.
Embracing the old and the new Ways is a difficult but necessary challenge to make ones’ karate a complete and educated empty handed fighting art.
Understanding why modern day karate evolved is a worthwhile journey.
Asp?SecID=302> Most of the world’s Japanese karate community has evolved to where it is because of: o a sports approach with rules o starting a fight at distance away from the opponent o training methods that allow the masses to follow in a group class o use of a very small range of techniques.
Modern day Japanese karate dojo(s) who have revived their kata bunkai knowledge to encompass original applications now have the complication of technique diversity compared to modern approaches seeking excellence in just a core few techniques.
Before karate entered Japan Kata revolved around these self defense scenarios and also included: – fluid, round and open hand techniques rather than the rigid stiff bunkai often seen in Japan which assumes a linear “Karate style” punch as the primary entry in to the application.
Mainstream Japan’s karate approach is at the least related to the Japanese mainland mindset, its sports nature and Japanese Zen arts as they are practiced in Japan.
In comparison Tae Kwon Do & Kung Fu dojo(s) have a very large variety of kicks compared to what one would see in a Japanese mainland Shotokan dojo and often more hand technique types that Japanese karate.
Modern Japanese karate is designed for beginners to quickly comprehend and has evolved into something the masses can handle.
Counter i.e. Black Belt Modern sports physiology has merged with sports karate to help that domain understand how to move faster, with more agility and powerfully.
An often mentioned point these day by the sports karate community is the sports physiology research that reveals that contraction before expansion leads to a faster technique.
These are all real and great uses of sports physiology data but the traditional karate arts have been talking about contraction-expansion in technique delivery for 100s of years.
Many argue than the evolution of sports karate practitioners to fight from about 3 meters apart is the result of age, talent, experience level and the rule based system.
Moving beyond just “Block counter” In discussing Koryu karate we now move to side 2 of the flow diagram in Figure 2.
The koryu karate arts of Okinawa represent their fighting approaches in kata with more of a one-to-one match of form to application.
In these scenarios we have an untrained male attacker and the series of responses is more complicated than that of the Modern Japanese karate practitioner in that in now aims to involve seizing and sub-missing.
In some of our closely associated dojo(s) in the Traditional Japanese Karate Network we have experimented with expanded kyu grade curriculums.
How does an organization maintain such a board knowledge base with true insight into each subcategory of fighting? One way to cope with the need of a karate style, or organization, to encompass each of the different segments of karate at the “Omote” level of understanding and execution is to balance the organization with instructors of specializing domains.
As a final comment very few of us who practice karate will ever use its physical content.
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