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Is that how JKA generally operate? I train at a JKA dojo in Sweden. I'm 9th kyu and have sparringclasses 3 times per week with one instructor. Continous pointsparring with medium contact. The chief instructor is more kihon-oriented but usually throws in some light contact jiyu kumite without protective gear at the end of his classes. They even do kumite with slaps instead och kicks and punches in the beginnerclass. I thought JKA was the same all over the globe? Reply: At training the sparring we do are quite minimum, mainly Kihon going up and down 5 times on on each technics. The sparring we do are categorise into belt level White/Yellow/Orange - Kihon go hon Kumite (fixed 5 steps sparring), Green/Blue - Kihon Ippon Kumite (fixed one step Kumite), Purple - Jiyu Ippon Kumite (freestyle one step sparring), Brown/Black - Jiyu Kumite (freestyle sparring). We emphasis one attack for maximum affective damage to the target.

I am on Blue Belt and my style is Shotokan. My grading will be this month.

SKIF emphasises more on Kumite training whereas JKA empasises more on Kihon and Kata. At SKIF they let you do jiyu kumite (free sparring) even you are only on your white belt whereas JKA you need to wait until you are brown belt at least for that. That's why when you train with SKIF you tend to suffer much more injury compare to when you train with JKA. In JKA you tend to do the same basic kihon technics over and over again until you are perfect on each one of them whereas SKIF they just jump through everything and that's the same with Kata as well.