Elijah A Elliott

I'm a student

bushido_man96 - I do slightly alter my training, we do more sparring and change it to harder sparring and full contact sparring rather than semi contact or point sparring. We also do a lot more pad work, this is all done within my normal karate lessons and the others in my class are happy to help. A large percentage of the stuff we practice in sparring and on the pads are modified karate techniques, for example I throw my roundhouse kick without turning my supporting foot the same way, I suppose this is taking away the technique but the moves are karate based, if that makes sense.

In our academy we are taught to have the fist vertical when punching to the face, this helps to avoid bending the wrist awkwardly apparently. I find this the best way of punching to the face.

I have done karate for around 5 years and have recently started competing in MMA and I find that my karate training gives me some big advantages when i fight. A thing that I noticed straight away is that people from a karate background have quite a vast knowledge of kicks which a large majority of can be used very effectively in the cage. Another thing is that it seems that distancing yourself your opponent is much easier as well; these are two huge plus points in my opinion. The obvious downside is the lack of a ground game within karate; when I have fought I have found that my advantages in the standup game from my karate background are quite easily negated on the floor. In my opinion a fighter from a karate background can have a big advantage in MMA, look at Lyoto Machida for example; although from personal experience a karateka should get some level of ground fighting experience; being choked repeatedly while your opponent sits on top of you is pretty damn frustrating .