The Street Fighter Excuse

juey palancu · Orange Belt

Skeptic's article is nice and I can see the points there, but yet another person makes Shotokan come across as an art not developed for fighting. I am a Shotokanist from a traditional dojo (small group of people traning together for years and years with a lot of spirit) and I can tell you that Shotokan, the real thing, is a superb, SUPERB fighting art (this coming from a former amateur boxer). I have gone to full-contact competitions (kyokushin/open and semi-MMA with some grappling) and done VERY WELL. I only lost once, to a fellow shotokanist by the way! The finishing blow concept of traditional shotokan has served me very well against karatekas form other styles who believe in staying in the pocket trading punches, because by the time they put their combinations together, I have them on the floor gasping for air. I dont do full-contact anymore, but I feel VERY confident in my Shotokan.

I have also fended off multiple attackers in a life or death situation, seriously injuring one of them (who had a baseball bat as a weapon).

Ok, I just wanted to 'defend the honor' of my style. I'm done now.

Ossu

juey palancu · Orange Belt

I apologize for the misquotation (WapCaplet and not Skeptic was the author of the article) and also for the misdirected annoyance (the article itself was great, my annoyance really was coming from the Shotkan-haters who don't know enough about it but make claims about the comparative affectiveness of their 'eclectic' systems....

humble apologies

Juey

GrrrArg · Black Belt

Nice article, I happen to dis-agree with a fair bit of it, but it was well written and well constructed and a valid point of view.

I used to train in a sports karate club, now I train in a realistic method of self defense which is very different to what I used to do.

Is it still karate? Yes.
Is the focus different? Yes.
Does this mean that the other benefits have disappeared? No.

Why do we care what other people are doing? To each there own I say, I personally feel that self-defense is needed just as much today as it ever was, but its not my place to demean others or what they choose to do.

Sports karate gives you lots of benefits, they just happen to be different to some of the benefits of a more realistic form of Karate.

Sports/Realistic karate can be substituted for style X vs Style Y and it is also worth bearing in mind that although two people may do the same style, the end result may be very different. I know some Shotokan clubs (using this as an example as it is mentioned above) that has students who couldn't fight there way out of a paper bag, but could score a few million points in a second. I also know one very small Shotokan Sandan who scares the living hell out of me even we are of similar grade and im twice his size..

Horses for courses.

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