Contact in Karate

Last weekend (when this was written, though the time of posting is a couple of weeks after that) we were fortunate to have a 6th Dan from our network fly in from interstate and conduct as a grading for the Adelaide Dojos and do a seminar on Kumite (sparring). At the end of the seminar there was naturally some Kumite matches, and in one of them someone's Mae Geri (front kick) got blocked too hard and they asked for the match to be stopped. Actually the kick was not blocked that hard, but there was a pre-existing injury on the leg and the block aggravated it.

Anyway Shihan said that even if you get injured in Kumite you should not show it or stop the match, unless the injury will require hospitalisation or some such. Even then you should try to remain as composed as possible. The reasoning for this had a street application: if you are attacked and you show that you are injured then the attacker will be encouraged to attack you further because they can see that you are being beaten and are weaker than them.

Showing strength and determination even when in pain is also related to Zen because of the drive and focus to achieve the end goal. Just as a punch requires full commitment to be effective, so to does all aspects of Karate, including training with commitment to the Kumite match.

Shihan mentioned that in the past Dojos he has trained in bouts were not stopped even when teeth flew onto the floor! I can think of several examples told to me by people I have trained with of a similar acceptance of punishment while still sparring, but most stories occurred in or before the 1980's - well before my time. Comparing these stories (which, because I have heard them from such a variety of sources I assume to be a true contrast to today) with Kumite today it seems that there are many more people who train with much less contact.

The interesting discussion is how much contact is the right amount of contact in Karate?

Firstly I would like to say that I think that "Non-Contact Karate" is really not appropriate. While it goes without saying that Kids training should be non-contact, and there is no harm in not contacting a beginner, if black belts are not familiar with contact (of any kind) and able to accept it I think that Karate would actually be making their life more dangerous for them (and possibly others) from a self defence point of view. If someone thinks that waving their fists and feet around doesnt cause pain they are going to be in for a rude shock if they are ever called to use their skills. If someone has gained confidence from Karate to face an attacker but does not realize how much it hurts to get hit then their confidence is going to take a massive shock, and so not only would they being more confident than they should be, they are also doubly scared and demoralized. They would have been better off being sure that they knew nothing.

At the other end of the scale I think that the core demographic of Karate students are not interested in "full contact", at least not initially. Naturally I am excepting Kyokushin from the definition of Karate that I am using, not because it is not Karate, but merely because it attracts a different demographic. I think that in the western world the core demographic for Karate are middle class suburbanites. Ignoring kids the people that make up Karate classes are teens, Uni students and people over 35 who approach training with a more mature mindset. For differing reasons each of the groups do not want to turn up to work/study the next day with a broken nose or barely able to walk. Therefore training with full contact is not appropriate.

I would like to seque here and note that even in full contact Karate (Kyokushin) they do not have 'full contact' matches every class. They usually spend most of the class doing bagwork, sparring drills, conditioning drills, basics (kihon) etc. Similarly other full contact styles (eg Muay Thai) do not pound each other 'full contact' every class. One quite simple reason for this is that even a strongly contitioned human body can only take so much damage. It is usual to have months between full contact matches to have time to re-cuperate and train for the next match.

An interesting proposition that arises from the fact that full contact training does not involve full contact each class is that by definition a student must be able to train (to a certain extent at least) like a full contact fighter without being subjected to the rigerous bodily punishment of a full contact match. Obviously there is a huge amount of experience to be gained from the actual matches that would be missed, but I wonder how much the correlation would be from training. Would someone who trained at a Kyokushin dojo but never entered any full contact matches be 90% as good as someone who has trained for the same length of time but who enters full contact matches? Put another way, what proportion of the skill of a 'full contact fighter' is attributable to experience in full contact matches, and what percentage is attributable to training methods that are less than full contact? I might hazard a range of 10%-30% of skill being attributable to the full contact matches. I really dont know for sure. Moreover it would be difficult to measure.

But unless the actual 'full contact fighting matches' accounted for the majority of the skill in full contact fighting a student can still get most of the way there, without actually 'stepping into the ring'. This is a reasonable proposition because of the amount of time full contact fighters spend doing 'non-full contact' training.

On the other hand it cannot be said that martial arts would be the same if no-one did full contact fighting, because how would it be known which drills and training prepare people to deliver and receive that type of impact? It could be guessed, but never known for sure. Also, the challenge of competition encouraages the development of new fighting training methods.

Therefore a club that has exposure to full-contact fighting via a couple of its students (but not all) could train the rest of the students most of the way to the skills of full contact fighting, without the other students having to compete in full contact fights.

Sequeing back to the topic I like the level of contact that it seems that our network has - low/none for beginners and increasing to a quite strong contact (expecially to the body) for more senior ranks. While this not necessarily the only "happy medium" level of contact, it seems to me to address all of the points that I raised above, namely:

-Dont have useless/deluded black belts

-Dont damage people who need to take a 'pretty face' to work/study the next day

-Practicing committment/follow through with techniques

-Having people with the knowledge of the drills necessary for more contact orientated fighting and their effectiveness who can disseminate the training methods to the 'non full contact' students. (Including having people who have experience in the full contact arena, although I will continue to decline to name people in this blog)

What do you think?