Shotokan and Kyokushin

[RW]

Oyama, the creator of Kyokushin was a student of Shotokan creator - Gichin Funakoshi. Yet their styles are not the same. Why?

Oyama had a vision, where he crated his own style and where people were training sparring. There is not much kumite in Shotokan clubs. Of course very much depends on the teacher.

There are Shotokan clubs where people train kumite, with that little skin-touch which is somehow useless on the street (are you going to use skin-touch strikes when someone attacks you?). I trained before in such club, but I switched to another Shotokan club. There, people are not training kumite but they focus on bunkai, breating, deeper stances and their style is not a sport. They call it budo (the way of the warrior). This means they are training something that you cannot use too much on sport events. You train to really damage your opponent.

As you see, two shotokan clubs but different types of training. This is because one sensei thinks one thing is better, another sensei things something else is better.

Oyama wanted a style where you could train sparring but still hit hard and be tough. And he did it. I do not know much differences there are between kyokushin clubs but I would gladly try out kyokushin some day.

When you will be a black belt you will be able to create your own style as well.

I got to admit that I have never trained Kyokushin, I have only seen it in videos. It looks to me like oponents rely too much on punches to the torso? I read that hand attacks to the face are not allowed, and it doesn't look like they like to back off and then kick, shotokan style, it seems more like they stay close to each other and exchange body blows.

If what I just said is right (especially the lack of head attacks with the hands), I don't think it is necessarily that much better than shotokan... shotokan taught me to cover my face and kick a lot, which I did find valuable in a couple schoolyard fights... just my 2 cents

[Soheir]

RW : I admit, it is kind of stupid that in kyokushin, there's no head punches, it makes it easier to keep your hands too low.

You don't always remember that the opponent might kick you any time.

But, usually when you train fo a while, all your opponents probaply are waiting the right moment to do the kick.

So it still depends of the individual...

Anyway, missing head punches aren't the only difference between kyokushin and shotokan, nor their sparring style. I don't know if they even have the same rules???

Ps. They kick a lot in Kyokushin.

[Kuma]

A lot of Kyokushin organizations are bringing back head strikes with light gloves. The original problem Oyama faced was he wanted no protective gear at all worn, but many countries had rules against illegal prize fighting and dictated that gloves would have to be worn. Since Oyama didn't want that, he just eliminated hand strikes to the face during knockdown tournaments to protect his fighters and to obey the laws.