A Rethink on Karate

IHi Nick,

I have to say that after reading your articles on Karate, especially in the Sparring thread, and the answers to Richard Grannon on Trad arts, I have changed my ideas on Karate/Trad arts.

In the past, I have often argued against Karate whilst you have defended it and Trad arts in general. I think that we have been at cross purposes during these discussion as I was talking about a different thing to you.

When I did Karate, no one talked about the kinds of things you have mentioned in your articles (too tired to go into detail now), that leads me to believe that I wasn't being taught real Karate and that what you were doing was the real stuff. I just hadn't been exposed to it.

MMA/self protection is my base now, but I feel that any art done properly can be good self protection if trained correctly. It's down to how it's trained. Not what it's called.

Cheers,

BN

Yes mate,

Your post is one of the reasons I used to try and differentiate between what karate is and what most people see by labelling the latter McDojo karate.

The problem with the martial arts is that they became popular. Back, before Bruce Lee, martial arts had a fearsome reputation simply because they worked as advertised.

After Lee's meteoric rise to stardom and the world wide boom of all eastern combat systems the charlatans jumped into the mix and it all went to ratshite.

A saying I saw once summed it up nicely which was "whenever Art meets money, art loses."

Nick

Or when MMA meets fashion

That's an interesting comment Rob, would you go into more detail?

Well I think MMA is becoming in many cases more about the clothes/tattoos/haircuts than the fighting. Basically it's become all about the money too.