Karate Useless?

[Tai Chi Fighter]

[QUOTE=white devil]sparring for three hours,either youre taking lots of breaks here and there..or either you have radio-active stamina.[QUOTE=white devil]


When it is something you love to do then you get lost in it, and time just flies by.

[darrianation]

It means we have to prepare ourselves mentally and psychologically also? How would you go about doing this?

Yes, this is true. The mental skills are very important i.e. the will and determination to go all out with purpose and doing what ever it takes to win, including cheating, etc, is vitally important. I think training with the full commitment to the emotional state and internal state management is what is important here.

But there are yet other skills. Such skills maybe how to scan the environment and what is or isn't important when it come to threat recognition (and "potential" threat recognition), decision making and logic. These are cognitive skills that can be refined and honed through appropriately designed scenarios and simulations.

I think a list of skills and their priority maybe in order. Such a list may look like this in order of importance.

1. Cognitive skills (analysis and tactical decision making).
2. Psychological skills (the will to gut the other guy if he doesn't back up).
3. Tactical skills (movement, etc).
5. Fitness (strength and conditioning).
6. Weapons skills (firearm, knife, etc).
7. Physical technique (jab, cross, front kick, double leg takedown, etc).

The idea behind the cognitive skills are to get you to "act" sooner whereas the psychological skills are to get you to act "aggressively".

Our goal here is to dominate our opponent from the outset. We want to be in control from the beginning. This takes thinking skills, emotional skills, and physical skills. But all the best tools i.e. weapons and strikes do not increas your advantage unless you have the knowledge, the mindset, and tactics to use them.

Maybe our training would be affected by spending more time on the preflight, maybe as much time on the preflight as on the fight itself. Maybe we should be spending more time looking at the parameters in context of the criminal assault, how criminals actually assault their victims in the real world including picking their environments and victim selection. Then work on preflight management strategies, such as tactics for recognizing approach and pre-assault patterns, challenging and preempting the potential assailant, etc.

[>:)]

Well said.

The psychology to do whatever it takes to save your life would be a tough one to strengthen. I can't really think of a better way then to have to experience your life actually being threatened. I've never had this displeasure. But on the plus side must create one hell of a drive in people to train their asses off and prepare. The rest on the list can be attained through good hard training.

karate is not useless for self defense. that should be common sense as it is one of the few artial arts the average personhas heard about.

Everyone has heard of McDonalds, that don't make it great.

[darrianation]

psychology to do whatever it takes to save your life would be a tough one to strengthen. I can't really think of a better way then to have to experience your life actually being threatened. I've never had this displeasure. But on the plus side must create one hell of a drive in people to train their asses off and prepare. The rest on the list can be attained through good hard training.

Not everyone will have this type of experiences in their lives. We can train our whole lives for the all or nothing event that never happens but even if your odds a million to one that means there is still a chance.

I think emotional skills and the killer instinct can be improved. A couple of things you can do are to train under the conditions of uncertainty and with full commitment to the emotional state i.e. put some life and death urgency into the fight rather it’s striking pads, heavy bag, or a padded assailant (if your safety gear can support this level of force), and commit yourself to bad intentions. Mental imagery and reframing exercises can also help to get you into the right frame of mind, such as imagining coming home to find your daughter tied up on the kitchen table with a man taking down his pants…feel the rage let it build up and attack the pads, etc.

Stick wrestling is another good way of building aggression and competitiveness. Have two guys take a firm grip on a stick (can be an arnis stick) and on a signal try to rip it away from the other guy (everything goes within reason) to get the stick away, such as (for instance), shoulder checks, hip checks, throws, trips, twisting, pulling, pushing, etc.

Another thing you can do is to have consequences for loosing (pushups, chain takedowns by the whole class, etc), and of course increasing the disadvantages of the participants in the drills.

These are just a few simple ways of ramping up emotionally (there are other ways too). The idea is to hit stuff while in an emotionally charged state every time you train. So, when the real thing comes a long it triggers this rage inside you. Of course some folks naturally can do this but we want to be able to train the average folks not just the elite to be able to defend themselves.

What fist you use to hit him with is less important than the fact that you decide to hit him. I can pretty much grantee the one who has his hand on his gun while saying to himself “If that mother fucker doesn’t back the **** up I am going to draw and shoot him to the ground” is going to win. So what we have is a system that is built upon preemption, aggressive tactics, tenacity, and treachery.

[darrianation]

I think we all can agree that “mindset” is the most important factor to the survival equation (overall, during the fight), but what are some of the other attribute components that are important?

I propose that behavioral attributes are just as important. While the emotional state ramps you up, the behavioral component helps you to access your training during the initial moments of the startle effect (getting out of the short circuit faster) helping you to pick the right options and act sooner than your opponent.

What say you?

[tkd_wrestler]

any style can be effective if you know how to use it.

[Zentenk]

[QUOTE=Tai Chi Fighter][QUOTE=white devil]sparring for three hours,either youre taking lots of breaks here and there..or either you have radio-active stamina.

When it is something you love to do then you get lost in it, and time just flies by.

So you are in the ring, non-stop for 3 hours constantly hitting/getting hit by your opponent full contact? No breaks, no bathroom breaks, no water breaks. I bet you watch others fight then its your turn for 10 minutes. VIDEO

Karate is useless if not used effectively.

[darrianation]

I guess what I am saying is the samething everyone else is saying. "Karate can be evffective"! For the most part it is easy to learn (although, some styles are more complex than others), easy to retain even after years of not practicing (except the kata). It has some very basic and robust movements and techniques (for example the reverse punch, front thrust kick, ax hand (shuto), elbow stikes, knee strike, etc).

However, it is not the complete package. For the most part it is taught using the sport model not the combative model (which looks at the psychological attributes and tactics as as being more important than techniques). Also what it leaves out is how modern crimial attacks develop and the ranges of combat (other than striking i.e. punching and kicking) such as stand off range and grappling, etc.

So, in essence karate is good for a specific range of combat, but unfortunately, combat happens in different ranges, with different weapons, and we may not always get to choose or be able to control which range (or weapons) combat happens in.

[darrianation]

For me the crux of the matter is karate is useful only as a single component to the over all fighting method (which is a matrix of sorts), unfortunately karate is taught as a stand alone system that does not account for all the possibilities (solvable problems)that exist in combat (self-defense).

[kikr]

Yes, karate is effective. If your looking for a practical defensive art though stay away from the "Do" styles, Tae Kwon Do, Judo etc. Traditional arts are great but they take time and it's a matter of forming a way of life. I love Kempo and Jiu Jitsu for the practicle aspects of the training. Find a Dojo that teaches traditional arts that covers all the ranges and isn't afraid to address the uglier side of life. Good luck.

[jubaji]

Yes, karate is effective. If your looking for a practical defensive art though stay away from the "Do" styles, Tae Kwon Do, Judo etc. Traditional arts are great but they take time and it's a matter of forming a way of life. I love Kempo and Jiu Jitsu for the practicle aspects of the training. Find a Dojo that teaches traditional arts that covers all the ranges and isn't afraid to address the uglier side of life. Good luck.

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[blitz]

Yes, karate is effective. If your looking for a practical defensive art though stay away from the "Do" styles, Tae Kwon Do, Judo etc. Traditional arts are great but they take time and it's a matter of forming a way of life. I love Kempo and Jiu Jitsu for the practicle aspects of the training. Find a Dojo that teaches traditional arts that covers all the ranges and isn't afraid to address the uglier side of life. Good luck.

Good advice there.

[white devil]

[QUOTE][QUOTE]

sparring for three hours,either youre taking lots of breaks here and there..or either you have radio-active stamina.
Quote:
Originally Posted by white devil


When it is something you love to do then you get lost in it, and time just flies by.

you quoted the wrong person,im not the one who wrote that...pay more attention dude and dont quote me for things i never said.

[sephiroth05]

I practice Karate. The Eugue Ryu Style of Karate. It is very battle oriented(atleast where I train)and we have full contact sparring every class. it is very fun. I know for a fact that Karate can be very effective.

It's not so much the style that may or may not be useless, because, like others have stated, all styles were developed for self-defense. It is my belief that it all comes down to A. the instructor, and B. the student. You only get out of (any style) that which you put into it, and you must have an instructor who is competant. I teach Japanese Goju-Ryu and while it isn't as popular as a lot of styles it still serves the same purpose, that is self-defense. Basically it all amounts to how hard you are willing to work at whatever style it happens to be that you choose, and how much time you are willing to invest. I know a guy who takes TKD, while I have never been a big fan of that style, because of the outdated kicks they use, I have seen this guy fight and there was nothing useless about any of the moves he used.

[aku aku]

I can't figure out why so many people are against it for defense. Can anyone explain this to me?

Karate, like anything else, works fine if it's trained correctly. The problem is that it's hard to find a school that does that. Most of the classes I've seen weren't exactly turning out a bunch of fighters and it wasn't any fault of the styles that were practiced.