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Hello, I trained shotokan karate for 5 years when I was younger. I moved to a new location and began training with the JKA for a year and a half now. Things are ok with the JKA, and I love our kata training. However, I am 22 years old and we almost never do sparring. Even if we did most of my classmates are older than I am and all though they have great technique I am starting to feel like I need to switch to somewhere I can spar more intensely/frequently. I love shotokan, however what I am finding is that in my area I can locate a dojo that fulfills my kihon and kata needs, but not my kumite. Thus, I decided it is time to switch and possibly leave shotokan because I am sure there are quite a few styles in my area (I live in San Francisco) that would be better suited for me. Mostly i miss the cardio of sparring and competitiveness of sparring. Anyhow, I was wondering what people on the board might suggest. I do enjoy kata and I thought about the Muai Thai or kickboxing route, but then I would not do kata. Kyokushin seems like a real possibility, but I am in college and am wondering how getting knocked down every night might effect my grades especially if I have to go to class the next morning. The ideal would be a shotokan dojo that had more sparring, but I have yet to find one in my area. Also, I have considered the mma/bjj scene because I would imagine that there would be ample opportunities to spar with more intensity and I could learn some grappling that I have always wanted to learn. However, I don't really know what the training is like and I am not really looking to get subpar strking skills so I can learn grappling. A lot of the mma I see is grappling, but I am by no means an expert on it. Boxing is a no-no because I like to kick, and I haven't really investigated kung fu because I on the surface level I have never been as interested as I have other martial arts. I would love to learn sambo, but there isn't a place that teaches it close to my house I would have to go to Oakland. I am going to go to many dojos in about a month or so and look around to see what I like, but I wanted to get other's opinions to see if anyone has had a similar experience. Thanks

Here is my opinion: Trust your teacher. In my experience when I was younger I disagreed with some of the traditions being taught in my dojo. However, out of respect I continued to practice even if I didn't think there was much merit or purpose. Later on though I got better and the reasons for the traditions became more apparent. Some traditions like bowing or saying Oss are just cultural traditions that don't make much of a difference in your karate technique. (arguably it trains the spirit) An example would be kata and kumite. When I was younger (10-15 yrs old) I was all about wanting to do kumite all day. All my teachers told me to practice kata as it was more important to mastering techniques. Now after training in kata and kumite (22 yrs old), i see kata more valuable as a training resource for getting better than continuous sparring. However, when I first started I didn't get the same value out of kata training as I do now, so how was I to know that kata could be better? I am guessing that the few remaining traditions that I blindly follow will make more sense the more I train. Maybe some things we practice now will help us continue karate in old age when our bodies are weaker and need to have correct posture? Only a master who has practiced and is in old age would know the value in a tradition that helped you train during old age. My point being is that if I challenged everything that was presented to me on day one and If I never did it because of that, then I would possibly never know what it was all about once its perfected.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think you are right ps1, I will have to practice in front of a mirror and experiment with it. I didn't study Kyokushin, I studied a style called Gosoku-Ryu, which is very much like Shotokan. The founder of Gosoku-Ryu and Mas Oyama used to train together and were good friends, so I would imagine they could have shared ideas when forming both of their styles.

Hello I have a question I am wondering if anyone can answer. I took a style of Karate when I was younger that was very much like shotokan, but not shotokan. They taught me how to do the roundhouse while using my shin. Fast-forward to now and my current dojo which is traditional shotokan does roundhouse kicks with the ball of the foot. However, my leg doesnt seem to want to cooperate. I can kick fine with my shin, but trying to kick with my foot seems to throw my balance entirely off. I wonder if my foot is not flexible enough when my leg is up or something. I think the problem might be when I chamber the leg and tighten unnecessary muscles in my foot. I have been stretching and practicing, but it has been a little over a year and many other things have improved, but I still can't get the roundhouse right with the foot. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions that might help?

I forgot to add the differences the posture creates. Boxer's are at a stance that is leaning more forward than the karate counterpart. This is partly because traditionally boxers don't have to worry about being grabbed and pulled forward in the ring because it is against the rules of boxing. Karate punches are usually delivered with the spine straight and almost leaning backwards with the shoulder staying inline with the hips. It is all about where your center of gravity is, if it is behind you it is much harder to grab and pull you forward. Boxer's use their gaurd position to block their head, while karate uses the natural distance the posture creates to keep your opponent's punch from hitting your face. Or at least that is the idea, it doesn't always happen that way =D. The more i write about this the more I realize that there is a lot more to the comparison of the two punches than I could write in one sitting. For instance, you could also take into consideration the different angles your opponent can attack while you are in the ready position and throughout the execution of the punch.

It stead of comparing the two punches at first. Understand how each one evolved. I write this to my understanding. The karate punch was developed for being used outside of the ring. The philosophy was to hit hard once and take your opponent down before he gets to you. So if you notice the karate punch is much more straight in execution. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line hence why the punch can be faster when you learn to relax the hips. Plus, it telegraphs a lot less and you can hit your opponent by surprise since there is no wind up. Also, properly executed using the hips and the back leg in a compression like motion you can really do the same if not more damage than a boxer's punch. The learning curve is a bit higher and relaxing the shoulders is important to allow for that burst of speed. Pulling the opposite arm back increases the speed and power of the punch further. The boxer's style of punching was designed for the ring. Although effective, your meant to hit your opponent quickly more times with moderate amounts of force. It is more designed for taking opponents down in the ring, because you hit hard and quickly with that "natural way" of delivering power. However, a boxer's stance is more to the front which relinquishes the power from the back leg being included. This style of fighting builds very good endurance. Boxing was a sport back in the ancient Greek days at the olympics. As a sport the emphasis of taking your opponent down in a short amount of time would be bad for business and not nearly as fun. This is one of the reasons why they are different. For example take a samurai vs. a karateka, the karate person would try to take down his opponent in the most direct instant knockout way as possible to avoid getting cut with the samurai's sword. Any extra time is time that can be used to cut. Boxer's don't have predator's like that in the ring and can afford to do combo's and stuff like that before the knockout. Unfortunately, the karate punch can be taught in an altered way as well. Overtime, the punch is changed to suit competitions. The days of samurai and thugs are pretty much over. At least for me I don't go around punching people in the face every day, so it makes sense that people are learning to punch more for sparring than that need to kill.

Tying a belt is part of martial arts, but it is hardly connected. You can do martial arts with or without a belt on right? I think you could theoretically learn a lot from the internet. However, you would be crippling yourself and making it far more difficult than it needs to be. Especially if you don't catch your mistakes early, like keeping your wrist bent during a reverse punch, you could spend hours practicing that technique. Then you would need to spend hours unpracticing that technique that you stored in your muscle memory after you break your wrist for the first time... Not to mention there are a lot of people on the internet who post incorrect posture/technique to begin with. It's like quoting wikipedia in a research paper, not always a credible resource.

When i was younger I used to be able to catch forks falling off the table before they hit the floor while other people would just sit there. I attributed it to my training. One time this girl even dropped hers and she was impressed when i grabbed it for her before it hit. Also, this other time i was in a crowded room and this "security" office accidently pushed me into a stone wall. If it wasn't for my upblock instinct i'm sure i would have lost my teeth because i positioned my forearm between my teeth and the wall.

My opinion is that it doesn't even matter very much. When i was younger i trained and received my brown belt in a shotokan type karate. I then took a 5 year break and now have been training for 9 months in traditional shotokan. I will cherish the black belt that i hope to earn one day, but its more of a symbol of the time i put in my training from day 1. It will mean something to me because i have earned it. I don't want it to mean anything else. However, its not like this belt will protect me in the street or even prove valuable in fight. Simply having a blackbelt will not ward off enemies if I don't learn how to use my punches and kicks in the first place. So if you train for 1 year or 12 to get that piece of cloth around your waste doesn't matter. What matters is the truth of your karate or martial art and that you really are skilled. Otherwise you can just buy the damn belt for $50 and save yourself the trouble.