Some of the Things Wrong with Classical Karate Training

Some of the Things Wrong with Classical Karate Training

by Al Case

You know, the martial art of Karate sometimes gets a bad rap. You see all the UFC guys knocking the stuffings out of their opponents, and you wonder why, if Karate is so darned good, you don't see it in the octagon. The problem, to be honest, lies with Classical Karate training methods.

In traditional karate classes students are lined up in a mass, and they kick and punch and do everything as one unit. This is fine, for beginners. The sad fact, however, is that one rapidly travels through being a beginner, and then needs to have a different teaching method.

Class exercises are fine to warm up, but there is no real exchange of information going on between teacher and student. Oh, you think that everything is in the forms, that you just need to do the forms and enlightenment will burst upon you? Well, true to a certain extent, but there is also the fact that if you hold to this opinion too hard you are saying that karate is for stupid people.

Oh, I'm deadly serious about this. Look, Karate, be it Shito Ryu or shotokan or uechi ryu or whatever, depends on understanding physics. And, once a person has mastered the first set of physics, there is another set of physics having to so with the mind and the spirit. But, because of ancient training methods, methods that were used more to control children than teach them, nobody in the martial arts really knows what the second set of physics is.

Let me take one example and work with it a bit. I had a student who had terrible form, and he had taken a year of traditional martial arts training. He was terrible, but-smile in the eyes of his sensei-he was very rigid.

So his shoulders overextended, his body was always turned the wrong way, his punches wouldn't hurt a six year old girl, but he was deemed good because he was rigid. All his muscles locked into place at the execution of technique. And, you can see this same tendency on any number of youtube Karate videos.

Now, one of the first principles of real combat is, 'a sitting duck is a dead duck.' Heck, the reason that thug told you to stand still when he's talking to you was because he wanted a stationary target. And this goes against the real karate somebody would learn if they could get past the rigid, no data teaching that is offered in nearly every karate class in the world.

Real Karate is liquid, and the focus points are so short they can't be perceived, and the karateka is able to move in any direction without preparation or telegraphing. True Karate is like a whip, and only the fist tightens, and that momentarily when it smacks through some fool's face. Karate is a study in motion, not in rigidity, and that is just one of the problems with Classical Karate Training.

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