Reworking Karate into a practical yet "safe" fighting art.

[Bonk]

Hello. I am a 1st degree black belt in Shotokan Karate with four years of Taekwondo experience, two years of casual boxing experience, and a few months of BJJ.

I have made a few threads across various sites about this topic, including this site. To paraphrase, I intend on teaching Shotokan Karate in the near future, either in my own dojo or in a fitness club. On one hand, I do not want to teach the strip-mall touch-sparring Karate you see in America so much. On the other hand, I do not want to teach a brutal, injurious form of fighting that would turn off the casual enthusiast in the way Kyokushin or Ashihara Karate would. Instead, I want to teach a simplified form of Karate that focuses on mastery of basic techniques, full-contact sparring, and strength training. In other words, I want to teach Karate not as a "self defense" art nor a "fighting" art, but rather as a way to strengthen the average person and instill a level of controlled aggression that they can use to either protect themselves or compete in tournaments, whether they're a casual or competitive enthusiast, respectively.

The way I plan on doing all of this is to teach students the "practical" techniques of Shotokan (i.e. the jab, cross, hook, uppercut, elbow, knee, roundhouse kick, and front kick), focus on perfecting those few techniques, disregarding the impractical stuff like complex joint locks and finger strikes and acrobatic kicks and such, focusing on strength training to make the students more durable, applying everything with full-contact sparring, and doing limited kata training to keep the traditional aspect of the art alive (and of course to let students compete in kata if they desire). Bag work and partner drills will also be a heavy part of training.

I have taken advice from previous threads on this topic and there are a few problems I would like to solve:
-In regard to sparring, I think making it full-contact is essential, but I want it to remain accessible. In other words, I want to prohibit any face contact and perhaps any leg contact, keeping the sparring "body only." My thought is that this will not only make students more resistant to being hit and more comfortable with hitting an opponent (which strength training will help with), but will also remove any apprehension of being hit in the face or legs, as well as eliminate any risk of injury to those areas. I predict that most of my students will be casual enthusiasts who do not want to risk such injuries, but I still want them to experience some level of pressure during sparring. Is this realistic? Can this ruleset be modified in any way?
-I do not want my dojo to be a glorified kickboxing studio. I intend to keep it "Karate." Are there any ways to keep the training more traditional while still adhering to the practical mindset as described above?
-What sparring equipment would suit this training style best? No gear, light gloves, heavy boxing gloves, chest protectors, etc?
-How would I work kata into this? I don't want to teach the basic Taikyoku and Heian katas because I find them silly. Tekki seems appealing as a beginner kata. A few of the "black belt" kata seem simple enough to teach to a beginner (Hangetsu for example). Any thoughts?
-Are there any downsides to not requiring students to wear a gi? I find the Karate gi to be troublesome and annoying. Most Karateka I know actually prefer to wear shirts instead of gi tops whenever possible. Can I just ditch the gi altogether and still have it be "Karate"?
-Is this plan economically viable, and if not, how could it be modified as such?

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

 

[Flying Crane]

I am going to be honest with you: the nature of your questions suggests to me that you are not ready yet to take on this endeavor. If you were, I would anticipate that you have some solid ideas in place already as solutions to these issues, things you have learned and ideas you have developed from the training you have already done, and some input from the outside could be useful. Instead, it sounds to me like you are looking for someone to simply tell you how to do it.

You have an idea of what you want to do and your vision could be somewhat unique, so develop a program.

 

[O'Malley]

You're trying to go beyond what you have been taught and know: you're bound to make mistakes.

Set your objectives, make a plan to reach them based on what you know + your hypotheses, then test. Adjust, rinse and repeat. People can give you info on their practice but they can't go through the process for you, especially over the internet.

Bonne chance!

 

[Buka]

Hello. I am a 1st degree black belt in Shotokan Karate with four years of Taekwondo experience, two years of casual boxing experience, and a few months of BJJ.

I have made a few threads across various sites about this topic, including this site. To paraphrase, I intend on teaching Shotokan Karate in the near future, either in my own dojo or in a fitness club. On one hand, I do not want to teach the strip-mall touch-sparring Karate you see in America so much. On the other hand, I do not want to teach a brutal, injurious form of fighting that would turn off the casual enthusiast in the way Kyokushin or Ashihara Karate would. Instead, I want to teach a simplified form of Karate that focuses on mastery of basic techniques, full-contact sparring, and strength training. In other words, I want to teach Karate not as a "self defense" art nor a "fighting" art, but rather as a way to strengthen the average person and instill a level of controlled aggression that they can use to either protect themselves or compete in tournaments, whether they're a casual or competitive enthusiast, respectively.

The way I plan on doing all of this is to teach students the "practical" techniques of Shotokan (i.e. the jab, cross, hook, uppercut, elbow, knee, roundhouse kick, and front kick), focus on perfecting those few techniques, disregarding the impractical stuff like complex joint locks and finger strikes and acrobatic kicks and such, focusing on strength training to make the students more durable, applying everything with full-contact sparring, and doing limited kata training to keep the traditional aspect of the art alive (and of course to let students compete in kata if they desire). Bag work and partner drills will also be a heavy part of training.

I have taken advice from previous threads on this topic and there are a few problems I would like to solve:
-In regard to sparring, I think making it full-contact is essential, but I want it to remain accessible. In other words, I want to prohibit any face contact and perhaps any leg contact, keeping the sparring "body only." My thought is that this will not only make students more resistant to being hit and more comfortable with hitting an opponent (which strength training will help with), but will also remove any apprehension of being hit in the face or legs, as well as eliminate any risk of injury to those areas. I predict that most of my students will be casual enthusiasts who do not want to risk such injuries, but I still want them to experience some level of pressure during sparring. Is this realistic? Can this ruleset be modified in any way?
-I do not want my dojo to be a glorified kickboxing studio. I intend to keep it "Karate." Are there any ways to keep the training more traditional while still adhering to the practical mindset as described above?
-What sparring equipment would suit this training style best? No gear, light gloves, heavy boxing gloves, chest protectors, etc?
-How would I work kata into this? I don't want to teach the basic Taikyoku and Heian katas because I find them silly. Tekki seems appealing as a beginner kata. A few of the "black belt" kata seem simple enough to teach to a beginner (Hangetsu for example). Any thoughts?
-Are there any downsides to not requiring students to wear a gi? I find the Karate gi to be troublesome and annoying. Most Karateka I know actually prefer to wear shirts instead of gi tops whenever possible. Can I just ditch the gi altogether and still have it be "Karate"?
-Is this plan economically viable, and if not, how could it be modified as such?

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

Bonk, what does your two years of casual boxing experience consist of?
It will help me help you if I understand more about that.

 

[Gyakuto]

What is ‘silly’ about the Heian kata? The Pinan/Heian/Kushanku kata have some profound aspects to them.

 

[isshinryuronin]

Bonk is very confused with several contradictory ideas.

 

[GroovyKarateka]

Tbh using stuff like hooks or uppercuts is not far from the traditional stuff, just google mawashi tsuki and ura tsuki, those punches do exist in karate.

In terms of kata I would teach all of them and encourage students to create or research the bunkai or maybe research bunkai urself and use the one that fits ur needs.

Also, I would create katas based on the useful moves u wanna add, afterall, that is what they are meant to do.

 

[Cri70]

Hello. I am a 1st degree black belt in Shotokan Karate with four years of Taekwondo experience, two years of casual boxing experience, and a few months of BJJ.

I have made a few threads across various sites about this topic, including this site. To paraphrase, I intend on teaching Shotokan Karate in the near future, either in my own dojo or in a fitness club. On one hand, I do not want to teach the strip-mall touch-sparring Karate you see in America so much. On the other hand, I do not want to teach a brutal, injurious form of fighting that would turn off the casual enthusiast in the way Kyokushin or Ashihara Karate would.

I get what you mean and I very much appreciate the passion behind the idea. But there's a bit of contradiction here. The original karate (not "traditional" in the sense of early 1900s Japan) is a brutal, injurious form of fighting.

Sports karate exists exactly to provide a way to use some techniques in a way that doesn't leave the participants seriously injured every time. That's why it changes the combat distance, it changes the meaning of the techniques and of course tries to avoid everything that can result in bones breaking, joint dislocation, heavy concussion, while keeping the aspects of precision, stability, body control, speed and so on. Even Kyokushin ultimately is set up so that people don't end up maimed or permanently injured after a fight - maybe a little more beaten up than with other variants, sure, but only so much. It's a bit like paintball to a gunfight - you do our thing, it's great fun, it may hurt a tiny bit but not much, it's great physical movement, it's competitive (and you can get really good at it and win prizes) but the expectation is that nobody ends up maimed or dead.

Karate as a combat form is mostly about bones breaking, joint dislocation, heavy concussion and the likes. Heavy stuff, to be used in life-or-death situations. There's also an amount of opponent-control stuff, sure, but the aim of that control is usually as a precursor to the former.

How to use techniques and ideas designed explicitly to do definitive harm without watering them down so much that they become pointless or even ridiculous is a conundrum that exists since the early 1900s, when some masters began to propose karate as a general physical activity for young people and even children, first in Okinawa then in Japan. It's why, for example, many katas are practiced with fists instead of open hands, why Funakoshi invented the whole -do thing, and why he did not want kumite as a competition, and why sports karate is what it is today - an incredibly athletic tag game and showoff kata execution, with practitioners just as amazing as 100m sprinters.

Is there a middle way? Perhaps. What people of the "practical karate" movement has found is that you can create drills that allow you to practice and therefore understand the intention (or at least an intention) behind the forms, and get you as near as possible to be able to execute them should the need arise and justify them (which hopefully in our world is never the case). It's much nearer to the original form than the sport, even if sometimes it may still missing the speed and tension of a real fight... which are two absolutely key ingredients: a "real" fight is absolutely terrifying to most regular people, even them used to sparring.. it's criminals and bad people who have the practice here, and thus the edge); and the execution speed required by the technique is often light years away from the leisurely way they are drilled in the dojo. However, it's a very good start for what I think you have in mind, and in the last 20 years has got more and more followers.

Instead, I want to teach a simplified form of Karate that focuses on mastery of basic techniques, full-contact sparring, and strength training. In other words, I want to teach Karate not as a "self defense" art nor a "fighting" art, but rather as a way to strengthen the average person and instill a level of controlled aggression that they can use to either protect themselves or compete in tournaments, whether they're a casual or competitive enthusiast, respectively.

As of above, there's a kind of basic contradiction between protecting oneself and competing in tournaments. They just aint the same thing. The common ground is of course a degree of physical fitness (but way higher in competition!) and body control achieved thru practice.

The way I plan on doing all of this is to teach students the "practical" techniques of Shotokan (i.e. the jab, cross, hook, uppercut, elbow, knee, roundhouse kick, and front kick), focus on perfecting those few techniques, disregarding the impractical stuff like complex joint locks and finger strikes and acrobatic kicks and such, focusing on strength training to make the students more durable, applying everything with full-contact sparring, and doing limited kata training to keep the traditional aspect of the art alive (and of course to let students compete in kata if they desire). Bag work and partner drills will also be a heavy part of training.

There's another fundamental misunderstanding here. Shotokan focuses on striking due to historical accident, and the katas are the practical essence of karate. Certainly not stuff like roundhouse kicks and other fancy kicks (which were grafted on from Savate).

Katas are not practiced to "keep the traditional aspects alive", like an ornament.. they are the fighting system(s).

They include the grabbing, wrestling, locks, throws (there are no finger strikes, mostly.. it's kinda silly to strike someone with fingers when you have open hands, hands side and even fists.. the nukite is emphatically not a finger strike), shifting of posture - all stuff that allows you to overcome and disable an opponent (often rather permanently) which is close and personal, as in "you can feel his breath and smell his hygienic habits - or lack thereof". For example, Kata's jumps are a way to illustrate throws putting the emphasis or where, how and when momentum is applied. And so on.

Katas are not practiced like that in Shotokan (or certain parts like throws, practiced at all) for very specific historical context reasons, which are too long to recount here. But that doesn't mean they aren't what they are.

On the other hand, you're spot on that bags and hitting somethings. Makiwaras are better and dummies even more so. Human partners are the best but you can't go full force. The need of some sort of physical object to which to apply the moves is essential.

For example, I practice some nunchucks, and I've tried to make nunchuck katas to show others what to do - but I found that minimal differences in hand positions for example make a huge practical difference and that these cannot be learnt without handling the actual weapons. You can make something that resembles the movement on the surface, but just doing the movement doesn't impart the feel for it and people ends up hitting themselves if they try it at applicative speed. So even having practiced the "kata", they need to start practicing slow - but they learn the application with an opponent much faster because the basic gross movements are, so to say, already in place.

That's exactly the reason for which katas are first learnt and then, with a partner or a dummy or something, practiced slow initially - to get the feel for the application. Karate katas are more forgiving than nunchuks' simply because the body is much bigger than a couple of small wooden sticks, so tolerances are bigger, but we still need to go thru the process, that's how any body movements are learned. The "kata drills" I mentioned above aim to do just that second part.

I have taken advice from previous threads on this topic and there are a few problems I would like to solve:
-In regard to sparring, I think making it full-contact is essential, but I want it to remain accessible. In other words, I want to prohibit any face contact and perhaps any leg contact, keeping the sparring "body only." My thought is that this will not only make students more resistant to being hit and more comfortable with hitting an opponent (which strength training will help with), but will also remove any apprehension of being hit in the face or legs, as well as eliminate any risk of injury to those areas. I predict that most of my students will be casual enthusiasts who do not want to risk such injuries, but I still want them to experience some level of pressure during sparring. Is this realistic? Can this ruleset be modified in any way?

Sparring is good. What is usually missing are - as above - speed and sufficient fear/tension.

That's where the Japanese are very good, they can shift in a second from being your best buddies to to an extremely serious and "unfriendly" attitude and the practice often full speed and very aggressively (still fake, but a damn good fake!). This latter is very hard to do and requires loads of control (I certainly don't dare myself). The aim is to immerse themselves and the adversary so much that the primal brain forgets it's not for real. It can be rather overwhelming the first time you experience it, but it's good training. Not recommended for small children toh

-I do not want my dojo to be a glorified kickboxing studio. I intend to keep it "Karate." Are there any ways to keep the training more traditional while still adhering to the practical mindset as described above?

Look up practical karate. You will find a world of discovery which will put your convictions upside down. Lots of work has been done in the last decades to loose away from the Japanese "sanitized" version to something similar to what you aim.

-What sparring equipment would suit this training style best? No gear, light gloves, heavy boxing gloves, chest protectors, etc?
-How would I work kata into this? I don't want to teach the basic Taikyoku and Heian katas because I find them silly. Tekki seems appealing as a beginner kata. A few of the "black belt" kata seem simple enough to teach to a beginner (Hangetsu for example). Any thoughts?

As above. No kata, it's not karate. The Heian katas are a prime example of what I mentioned above, and far from being silly, they are deadly systems when understood and applied properly.

You simply need to realize that the way you've learned and seen them so far has been very incomplete and based on wrong assumptions. Even your kihon may suffer from the same issue (from what you state) - simply because you've been taught a distorted understanding of what it is.

The exception are the Taykoku (which are simplified versions of Shoto's Heian Shodan, replacing some techniques every time, so show the same combat applications), whose aim is (my opinion) to include very few techniques so that you can quickly focus on posture, weight shift, correct movement and so for.

-Are there any downsides to not requiring students to wear a gi? I find the Karate gi to be troublesome and annoying. Most Karateka I know actually prefer to wear shirts instead of gi tops whenever possible. Can I just ditch the gi altogether and still have it be "Karate"?

None at all, on the contrary. All you need is clothes loose enough that allows you to move without excessive restrictions.

Karate can - and imho should - be practiced in regular everyday clothes. Perhaps avoiding (in the everyday) very tight pants that can work against your low kicking.

Do-gis were not so far from everyday clothes where and when the art originated, a bit like we use gym shoes and gym pants even when we're not at the gym. That everybody - even in Okinawa - uses do-gis nowadays, a century of fashion after, is simply due to the incredible worldwide success of Shotokan, which uses them.. and again it does it for historical accident, which has been preserved due to a kinda naive approach to "tradition" . more rooted in superficial aspects than in understanding.

-Is this plan economically viable, and if not, how could it be modified as such?

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

Let me put it bluntly: everything that sells, allows you to make a living and is legal is economically viable.

That's the very reason for which Shotokan exists: Funakoshi desire to spread the art he loved, and his willingness to change it heavily to make it marketable and acceptable to early 1900s Japan, which was his market - and the possibility he saw to live of that instead of being a school teacher.

The masters of old were not professional teachers - they were either bushi (professional fighters/soldiers in the war or protection sense, which occasionally taught to bring up a other fighters) or had another job. It's only when karate was approved to being taught in universities in Japan that it started to become a business, and you had the professional sensei.

Economic viability is not about what you do, but if what you do excites enough people so that they buy your services. So yes, it definitely can.

 

[Badhabits]

I trained at a school that actually sounds very similar to what the OP is describing. Even allowed sparring in street shoes. It was fun, and people developed some usable fighting skill very quickly. The school had a good many students as well. A term I heard thrown around a bit was " taking the fluff out of karate ". However, I feel like the very close range self defense stuff was lacking due to lack of kata influence, which was a huge turn off for me.
I like the Pinans, there's very valuable stuff in there. They may be considered basic, but silly they are not.

 

[geezer]

...but silly they are not.

Wise you are.

 

[MuayJitsu]

You want full contact sparring….but not to the head or legs….well then that’s not full contact and honestly a waste of time….yes there’s a place for body only sparring but if your teaching for self defence and you don’t teach how to defend your head then what are you going to do when someone tries to punch you in the head.

you say you don’t want to make it kickboxing….but you do realise kick-boxing came from karate? Also frankly karate sparring always ends up looking like kickboxing anyway go watch karate combat it’s basically kickboxing with some basic ground work

 

[Buka]

I’m glad I’m wearing boots today.

This thread is getting deep.

 

[elder999]

Hello. I am a 1st degree black belt in Shotokan Karate with four years of Taekwondo experience, two years of casual boxing experience, and a few months of BJJ.

I have made a few threads across various sites about this topic, including this site. To paraphrase, I intend on teaching Shotokan Karate in the near future, either in my own dojo or in a fitness club. On one hand, I do not want to teach the strip-mall touch-sparring Karate you see in America so much. On the other hand, I do not want to teach a brutal, injurious form of fighting that would turn off the casual enthusiast in the way Kyokushin or Ashihara Karate would. Instead, I want to teach a simplified form of Karate that focuses on mastery of basic techniques, full-contact sparring, and strength training. In other words, I want to teach Karate not as a "self defense" art nor a "fighting" art, but rather as a way to strengthen the average person and instill a level of controlled aggression that they can use to either protect themselves or compete in tournaments, whether they're a casual or competitive enthusiast, respectively.

The way I plan on doing all of this is to teach students the "practical" techniques of Shotokan (i.e. the jab, cross, hook, uppercut, elbow, knee, roundhouse kick, and front kick), focus on perfecting those few techniques, disregarding the impractical stuff like complex joint locks and finger strikes and acrobatic kicks and such, focusing on strength training to make the students more durable, applying everything with full-contact sparring, and doing limited kata training to keep the traditional aspect of the art alive (and of course to let students compete in kata if they desire). Bag work and partner drills will also be a heavy part of training.

I have taken advice from previous threads on this topic and there are a few problems I would like to solve:
-In regard to sparring, I think making it full-contact is essential, but I want it to remain accessible. In other words, I want to prohibit any face contact and perhaps any leg contact, keeping the sparring "body only." My thought is that this will not only make students more resistant to being hit and more comfortable with hitting an opponent (which strength training will help with), but will also remove any apprehension of being hit in the face or legs, as well as eliminate any risk of injury to those areas. I predict that most of my students will be casual enthusiasts who do not want to risk such injuries, but I still want them to experience some level of pressure during sparring. Is this realistic? Can this ruleset be modified in any way?
-I do not want my dojo to be a glorified kickboxing studio. I intend to keep it "Karate." Are there any ways to keep the training more traditional while still adhering to the practical mindset as described above?
-What sparring equipment would suit this training style best? No gear, light gloves, heavy boxing gloves, chest protectors, etc?
-How would I work kata into this? I don't want to teach the basic Taikyoku and Heian katas because I find them silly. Tekki seems appealing as a beginner kata. A few of the "black belt" kata seem simple enough to teach to a beginner (Hangetsu for example). Any thoughts?
-Are there any downsides to not requiring students to wear a gi? I find the Karate gi to be troublesome and annoying. Most Karateka I know actually prefer to wear shirts instead of gi tops whenever possible. Can I just ditch the gi altogether and still have it be "Karate"?
-Is this plan economically viable, and if not, how could it be modified as such?

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

I'm going to ask an important question that hasn't been asked.

How old are you? (The reason that I ask is that 47 years ago I was a 16 year old shodan in kyokushin and oho dan in tae kwon do.)

I'm going to ask another. Do you know what "shodan" means, especially in shotokan?

I'm going to ask a last one: Have you tried sparring under kyokushin or ashihara or any full contact rules?