Is Karate Effective for Self Defense?
In my experience, Karate can be a very effective form of self-protection if it’s taught and trained correctly. As you probably know, Karate was not designed for sport fighting, it was designed for self-defense and personal protection.
In this article, I will cover the following:
- Why do people doubt Karate's effectiveness?
- Karate is not a singular entity
- What do you mean by "effective"?
- Understanding Real Karate
- How to make sure your Karate will be effective in self-defense?
- Choosing a good Karate school
- Conclusion
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Karate is one of the most popular and globally practiced martial arts on the planet. Over the years people have come along and criticized classical Karate as being outdated and ineffective compared to modern day self-defense methods. I don't agree, that's why I've decided to write this post. I'll explain to you why Karate is very effective and practical regarding self-protection.
Why do people doubt Karate's effectiveness?
Karate is now more popular than it was in the '70s or the ’80s, but unfortunately, there are numerous criticisms surrounding Karate such as that it is an unrealistic and ineffective martial art.
"Karate is stupid, it's a waste of time, it's a joke." We heard it all, right? Let's examine why people have such wrong perceptions of Karate.
1. MMA gave the public the false impression that Karate is ineffective in self-defense
With the appearance and rise of MMA (mixed martial arts) or free fight, Karate became the target of a witch hunt.
After seeing many victories of BJJ (Brazilian jiu-jitsu) practitioners and grapplers, people mistakenly believed that traditional martial arts, particularly Karate, were downright ineffective, and had no place in the world of "real fighting".
Early MMA's poor performances of Karate practitioners have almost discredited Karate and traditional martial arts in general, a trend that has been growing in the martial arts world for the past couple of decades.
One practitioner is not the art
One practitioner's failure or success is not representative of the art, whether it's Karate or any other practice.
If you see a hockey player miss a goal, would you put every single player in the same basket by concluding that hockey players are not good at scoring? Of course not, that would be foolish reasoning, right? Could you then conclude that THIS particular player is not good at scoring? No, you couldn't conclude that either.
The only conclusion that you could reach is that THIS hockey player missed THAT shot. Even Wayne Gretzky missed some shots, even Georges St-Pierre lost some matches. That's called 'life', not 'failure', not ineffectiveness.
There's a big difference between a Karate fighter and a BAD Karate fighter. Your Karate is only as good as you make it.
A few years later, Karate made a comeback to MMA
Traditional Japanese martial arts such as Karate and judo have made a comeback in the sport of MMA in recent years.
Think about it, back in the days of MMA, Karate was regarded as ineffective and useless in the cage or the octagon. Not so much anymore. The long-standing perception that Karate is impractical for MMA started to turn when Karate practitioner Lyoto Machida rose to prominence.
Indeed, many past champions in recent years boast deep Karate backgrounds that served as the foundation for their striking, footwork and agility.
Lyoto Machida
Lyoto Machida is with any doubt the most famous Karate practitioner in MMA history. He started training under his father (a 7th-degree black belt and JKA chief instructor) at the age of 2 years old, and currently holds a 3rd-degree black belt in Shotokan Karate.
Bas Rutten
MMA Legend Bas Rutten (El Guapo!) started practicing martial arts with Tae Kwon Do, but quickly changed to Kyokushin Karate, a full contact oriented form of Karate. He currently has a 5th-degree black belt in this style. Rutten began his MMA career as a pure Karate striker but with time grew up to be a skilled and fierce submission wrestler. Rutten was a three-time "King of Pancrase" and UFC Heavyweight Champion.
Chuck Liddell
Hall of Famer and former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell began studying Kempo Karate at the age of 12. Looking at Liddell MMA fighting style, it is clear that he successfully relied on his Karate background throughout his entire astonishing career.
Georges St-Pierre
Arguably considered the greatest MMA fighter of all time, GSP started training in Kyokushin Karate as a kid. You can see that Georges is proud of his Kyokushin roots as he often wears a headband and a Karate uniform before entering the UFC cage. St-Pierre said in numerous interview that Karate had an enormous, positive impact on his life both as a mixed martial artist as well as a person.
Stephen Thompson
Stephen Thompson is considered as one of the best strikers in the UFC, thanks to his Karate background. Thompson started training at the young age of three, under his father's guidance. He began competing in kickboxing and Karate at the age of 15. His exceptional striking skills are a rare sight in the Octagon.
Gunnar Nelson
Despite his reputation as an excellent grappler, Gunnar Nelson, an Okinawan Goju-Ryu practitioner, is one of the greatest examples showing that it is entirely possible to use Karate effectively and intelligently in today's high level mixed martial art tournaments. These are only a handful of Karate guys that are making a significant presence in MMA. I expect more to arrive in the near future.
Does it mean MMA is more effective than Karate?
Needless to say, mixed martial arts practitioners are formidable fighters. As you know for sure, these guys are experts in various standing and ground martial arts, making them complete fighters. Does this mean that MMA is the ultimate martial art of self-defense? Not necessarily. Practicing MMA is not a guarantee of success during a real-life confrontation. Self-defense is not so much about the kind or the amount of technique that you know but more about how well you remain in control mentally during an aggression.
2. McDojos gave Karate a bad reputation
Around the mid-eighties, people started to realize just how much of a cash cow Karate could be. Many “experts” of questionable skills and motivations established Karate schools. The fact that someone owned a Karate dojo was a great source of money. That was the beginning of the martial arts "gold rush".
Hollywood movies being most people's only reference point, they started to buy into these crappy, watered-down, Americanized Karate schools. Soon enough, unqualified, unskilled and inexperienced "black belts" became almost the standard.
Everybody knows the Karate Kid movies, and the iconic characters of young Daniel Larusso and is Karate sensei Mister Miyagi. That movie certainly contributed as well to Karate's popularity. As Karate grew even more popular, more people wanted a piece of the pie. McDojos were born.
As time passed numerous McDojo’s were popping up all around us and it started to be extremely difficult to find a good school as well as an excellent instructor. Slowly and gradually, as time passes, the art of Karate was being watered down by a lot of these terrible schools making us traditional Karateka look unrealistic and ineffective.
What is a McDojo?
A McDojo is a martial art school - most often than not, a Karate school - that teaches it's students a watered-down, unrealistic, unusable form of martial art, in the name of earning money.
These kinds of schools care more about financial profit than teaching anything realistic or credible in terms of self-defense. Unfortunately, they propel ill-equipped and usually overconfident students into the world believing they will be able to defend themselves adequately when in reality they possess little or no self-defense skills and knowledge.
A huge percentage of McDojos teach a lot of bullshido, a sarcastic and derogatory word used to describe fraud, trickery and lies in terms related to martial arts. McDojos don't teach practical self-defense in the first place, and give virtually no preparation or knowledge about real physical violence or even how to prevent it.
A vast number of those schools make use of training methods that just do not and cannot lead to real abilities. As a result of impractical training methods, most of the so-called "Karate" techniques that these students will learn simply won't work against a fully resisting, uncooperative or violent assailant.
You can read this interesting article by Jesse Enkamp (the Karate Nerd) about the 93 signs your Karate school is a McDojo .
McDojos, the Realm of Impractical techniques
People really need to keep in mind that the majority of Karate McDojos has been watered down to the point of stupidity and near inefficiency, making it's Karate worthless against much of anything, ultimately putting the safety of their students in jeopardy.
Additionally, many McDojos will not allow their students to spar. Sparring in Karate is essential because it enables pupils to practice their techniques against a live moving target.
It's sad to say, but 40 years ago Karate dojos used to be sort of a scary place (in a good way) filled with tough, dangerous and real fighters.
Not anymore.
3. The growth of sports Karate displayed an unrealistic vision of Karate
Some individuals choose to practice Karate as a sport. For them, participating in tournaments, performing kata in front of judges, and winning medals is their motivations for training. Personally, I never cared for point, or “sport” Karate.
In sports Karate, there are actually weight classes, a ring, protective equipment, rules, governing bodies and referees. Competitors know several months beforehand that they will be fighting. Sometimes, they know who they will be competing against, and they train for months to get ready for the fight.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but most sport Karate practitioners suck in self-defense. No offense. The state of mind during a sports match is different from that required during a confrontation in a situation of self-defense or personal protection. By training in sports Karate, you develop bad habits for self-defense.
Sports Karate develops harmful attitudes in terms of real-life self-defense
Originally, Karate was developed for something very different than tournaments, it is a method of self-defense. Karate was (and still is in traditional schools) a method to develop both your body and spirit, while gaining tools and skills enabling you to defend yourself, without having to use any weapons. Unfortunately, Karate has evolved into a sport where the fastest and easiest technique wins in combat. As a result, sports Karate practitioners develop attitudes, habits and reflexes that are dangerous to use in a personal defense scenario.
Here are a few examples.
1. Bouncing and showing your back is a dangerous combination
This "fighting attitude" is obviously the status quo in today's tournament, but it doesn't work in real life. The habit of bouncing impairs your balance and stability, telegraph a move to your opponent, makes your strikes weak, and your expending a lot of energy unnecessarily and creates predictability. Also, having a "sideways" fighting position is very dangerous as it exposes your back to your opponent. You don't want that in a real confrontation.
2. False sense of distance
During sports Karate kumite or combat, the range at which you spar is much greater compared to the distance of a real altercation. In real life, most confrontation quickly becomes close-quarters, in your face, self-defense situations. At this range, it's much harder to parry and defend.
3. Control vs. penetration
In most sports Karate combat (i.e., point fighting), the strikes are delivered, inches from to the target. For obvious safety reasons, the emphasis is on control and not on penetration. Defending yourself against an attack intended to touch the skin is substantially different than defending the very same attack delivered with the intention to knock you out or to hurt you. It's okay to train to control your strike, but it's necessary to fight with contact as well.
4. Unrealistic self-defense based attack
In point tournament, you generally use techniques that you would not use in a self-defense situation. Sorry to disappoint you but mawashi-geri (roundhouse kick), ura-mawashi-geri (hook kick) and jumping uraken (jumping backfist) should be avoided on the street.
5. No common 'street' attack
During a sporting match, you defend yourself against attacks that can be used strictly in a sportive context. On the street, no one will attack you with a head height hook kick or an axe kick. These techniques are very much standard in point fighting competition, but none of them belong in the list of the most common street attacks.
6. False sense of effectiveness
As you probably know, in point based fighting, once a point is scored, both fighters stop fighting. This creates a false sense of efficiency. Stopping the fight like this prevents you to capitalize from a favorable opportunity or recover from an unfavorable situation.
7. You don't learn to manage pain
In point fighting combat, as soon as one fighter scores, is hurt or stunned, the match is stopped and only resume once the fighter has recovered. You don't learn to "weather the storm", you don't learn to fight through the pain. On the street, if you get sucker-punched, your opponent won't stop until you recover to try to finish you off.
8. Barely no grabbing
During a sports Karate match, a tiny amount of stand up grappling is permitted, only a few seconds are granted for a foot sweep or throw for example. Seizing the opponent's limbs or apparel is unauthorized. That being said, it is an integral part or original Karate, it's called Torite or "grabbing hand" in Japanese. Yes, traditional Karate is much more than a striking art. The sad thing is, not many people know about this.
9. Not every strikes are equals
The problem with point system fighting is that it treats all strikes as equal. Almost any hit scores as a point, so whether you aim at the nose, the jaw or the forehead, it counts as a point. In real life, it's entirely possible that you hit your opponent, and he doesn't go down. I am in no way judging sports Karate practitioners, but personally, I find it unfortunate that Karate has turned into a game of tag and has lost its sense of realism and efficiency concerning personal defense. Old Karate masters are probably turning in their grave.
Karate is not a singular entity
Karate comes from China but mainly developed in three Okinawan villages (Naha, Shuri, and Tomari) and each of which developed its specific style of Karate: Naha-te, Shuri-te, or Tomari-te.
Today, Goju-Ryu, Shito-Ryu, Shotokan, and Wado-Ryu are recognized as the four main styles, but there are dozens of styles of Karate out there, each with its own specific techniques, positions, groundwork, weapons, locks, throws, internal energy.
That being said, the real issue when people refer to Karate, is that they refer to it as a singular entity, when in fact there are actually many variations and countless interpretations of each in individual schools.
Even though they share the same foundation, these styles vary in the way they apply techniques. Some have circular movements, others have straight movements, some are soft and others are hard. Some have point sparring and others do full contact knockdown training, and the differences continue.
Consequently, its illogical and absurd to claim that Karate is impractical, as Karate as a whole doesn't even exist.
But, what do you mean by "effective"?
Before we can answer if Karate is effective or not, it is of a crucial importance to define what is effectiveness.
Effective in doing what exactly? From a Karate perspective, effectiveness is being able to survive an aggression - lethal or not - perpetrated in real life, not in a ring. In other words, Karate doesn't teach you how to fight, it teaches you how to defend yourself. That's a big difference. Let me demonstrate to you a few practical Karate moves that I teach in my self-defense seminars, and see for youself.
During an aggression, a Karate practitioner has no intention of "winning" the aggression - all that he or she cares about is, avoiding getting hurt and surviving the threat.
Please remember that traditional Karate does not promote consensual fight with skilled opponents. That's what we call self-defense and that's precisely what original Okinawan Karate is about (and what every type of Karate should be).
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