12 Immutable Reasons Why Karate Is Not Effective For Self-Defense

 

Traditional karate is all too often misrepresented to the public as a viable and effective fighting system for the street – it’s not; and this perception has put many people in harm’s way. I have no problem with people studying traditional karate for the sake of art, but at least supplement it with a reality-based method. This newsletter is an excerpt from a more comprehensive article titled “Why Karate is Not Effective for Self-Defense.” The entire article will be featured in the next issue of Realfighting.

 

The One-Strike Kill

The biggest cliché of karate is the one-strike kill. This of course does not exist, but has fooled many for years. Shigeru Egami (one of Funakoshi’s top students) freely admitted there was no such thing. At one point in his career, Egami admits going into a deep depression after concluding a personal study about which martial style had the most powerful tsuki (punches). He found that karate had the least powerful tsuki, and boxing the strongest.

 

Waiting for The Attack

Karate philosophy states, “wait for the attack.” Remember Funakoshi’s maxim, “Never attack first?” That’s not only ridiculous but suicidal. In real situations, the first person to strike usually walks away. The untrained public, (influenced by Hollywood and martial arts mythology) erroneously thinks you have to eat the first punch, but you have to be a complete moron to let anyone strike you first. Criminals take advantage of this attitude. If you feel that violence is about to break out, slam the guy.  

 

On Stances

Karate, (along with several hard Chinese styles) employs some of the most useless stances in martial arts. Deep karate stances make you immobile; they plant you in one spot, making quick movements extremely difficult. You may as well hang a sign around your neck saying “strike me at will, I can’t move.” If you recall early kickboxing, the first thing they got rid of were those limiting stances. 

 

Karate as a Way Of Life

Years ago while in Japan, Gogen (Yamaguchi) once came up to me and asked, “I never see you practice kata, why?” I replied that I thought it was an exercise in futility, having no functional value. He grew upset and chastised me by saying, without kata, we’re just animals, like boxers or wrestlers, I replied, “that’s OK, I just want the skills.”  More than anything else, karate people have a fear about being labeled “killers.” Their reply is always, “I follow the path, karate is a way of life.” I guess they feel absolved from their inner conflicts or sociological guilt when they say that, sort of like what confession does for a catholic. 

 

Spirituality and Meditation

For many Japanese karateka, religion and martial arts are inseparably linked.  Japanese spirituality and meditation are not a function of karate; they’re emblematic of the culture that developed it. Westerners really buy into this big time. It’s actually a direct affront to your personal beliefs. What if a Japanese boxer wanted to train in the U.S. with a black coach, would he have to join a Baptist church, sing out loud, clap his hands, dance and get down? Changing your spiritual identity in order to learn self-defense is ludicrous! Mas Oyama once asked me how much time I meditate per day. I told him -- I don’t, I have my own religion; I don’t need to replace it with another.     

 

Breaking Objects can Break You!

Karate, more than any other martial art is renowned for its breaking demonstrations; but anyone can break inanimate objects, it’s easy and you don’t have to study karate to do so. Do breaking boards and bricks translate into fighting ability? Again Egami comments that breaking objects is very different than striking a human body, humans are resilient. He goes farther, saying that even “makiwara” training is harmful to the body, and stopped doing it already in the late ‘50’s. Robert Smith, in his book “Martial Musings” notes that Mas Oyama damaged his hands so much he couldn’t even place a blanket on top of them when he went to sleep. Continued breaking over a period of years brings with it such delights as arthritis and other degenerative diseases.    

    

The Kata Crutch

A major part of karate practice focuses on kata. I’ve never understood why so many people defend it so vehemently. There’s almost a cult-like obsession with doing it. Perhaps karateka feel it grants them a kind of spiritual dispensation allowing them to indulge in the study of fighting. Kata however is nothing more than several techniques strung together; a tool to help beginners understand how techniques flow. For advanced practitioners, it constrains your progress and adds no real functional value to your fighting skills. Jon Bluming said it best, something to the effect of, “it takes up time, and the money rolls in.”

 

Karate Doesn’t Prepare You for the Street

Like most traditional martial arts, karate is only concerned with the attack stage of the fight, and no mention is ever made about the pre and post-attack stages. Are you aware of your situation, your environment? Are you watching your attackers hands for a knife? Are you aware of his friends coming up behind you? Even if you are successful, and manage to prevail, do you run away, or do you stay, what do you say to the police, to the prosecutor? Street fights don’t start at sparring distance; many times they suddenly erupt chest-to-chest, many times from behind without warning. There are no rules, no referees to save your ass. If you’ve been in fights, you know that after a few seconds of wild striking, many people start grabbing each other and quite often fall to the ground. How is your ground game? Do you know how to fight in a parking lot at midnight, on sand, gravel, on ice on a winter’s day? Training barefoot in a dojo doesn’t prepare you for any of these scenarios.

 

Karate Makes you Stiff and Rigid

For years people have avoided weight training for fear that they would become stiff. If they only knew the truth -- weight training actually makes you flexible and supple; it’s karate that makes you stiff! If I had a dollar for every stiff and uncoordinated karate person I’ve met I could retire. I’ve spoken to boxing, kali, BJJ and muaythai instructors and they all agree, karate produces a tenseness and rigidity that seems almost irreversible. I believe it’s all those hard air punches and kicks, tense kata and deep immovable stances contributing to this condition. You see this state most pronounced when karate students take up kali and knife defenses.

 

Karate is Useless Against Modern Weapons

The term Empty-Hand says it all; the main focus of karate is on unarmed combat. They do practice traditional weapons however, but what use is sai, tonfa, sickle, and bo practice when you can’t carry them. This is unrealistic in 2003, where attacks are mainly carried out with guns and knives. When you typically hear of karateka being hurt in an attack, it usually involves a knife or gun. Whenever we do seminars employing weapons scenarios, it’s usually the most advanced karateka that get killed the quickest.  

 

Karate Takes Too Long to Learn, and You Still Can’t Fight!

In terms of effort spent, in proportion to effectiveness gained, traditional karate is one of the least efficient systems of any fighting style. For example I have personally witnessed the following: a 7-day student of combatives completely devastating a 1-year student of karate. A boxing student with six months experience casually knocked out a 2-year karate practitioner. A muaythai student with 2-years experience took out a 5-year karate veteran, in 1-minute. A BJJ practitioner with 5-years experience humiliated a traditional karateka who has been practicing for 20 years. These are not the exceptions, rather, the rule. Why would anyone want to learn a fighting system that takes so long to learn and doesn’t provide effective results?  

 

The Apotheosis of the Master

I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the semi-deification of the so-called martial arts master. It just goes against the grain of my western upbringing. My goal in learning fighting was not to become a supplicant of an old man with a tough reputation. I believe that’s another reason why mixed martial arts (i.e., BJJ, muaythai, boxing, and Filipino martial arts) have become so popular. There’s no groveling involved just mutual respect. In the west, a coach doesn’t demand a special status, over and beyond his normal duties.  A coach guides athletes in their respective sports. His goal is to encourage, goad and train his charges to success. He is the father, the friend and the teacher; athletes trust him and his judgment.

 

WR, President, Realfighting