Karate in streets

[Oresti]

Hello Im doing shotokan karate and I want to know how useable it's on a street fight. I mean can i defend myself if someone attack me.

[OneKickWonder]

Hello Im doing shotokan karate and I want to know how useable it's on a street fight. I mean can i defend myself if someone attack me.

Would you use shotokan karate if attacked in the street? I hope not.

Would you use ANY system of martial arts if attacked in the street? Again I hope not.

Would you fight to defend yourself if attacked in the street? Hopefully yes. And if that happened, hopefully any training you've had in any style will augment your inate natural ability. You don't need martial arts to kick or punch. Those actions are instinctive. But through training, we become better at kicking and punching. We don't need martial arts to keep our balance or judge distance or react to threats, but martial arts training gives us better ability in those areas.

But still, will you be able to defend yourself? That depends on so many factors it's impossible to say. Defend yourself against one or many? Are your attackers armed? Are they or you under the influence of drugs or alcohol? Are you tired or injured or wearing very restrictive clothing? Have they got more practical fighting experience than you? Did you even realise they were going to attack before the first punch landed? These and many more things have an influence on the outcome.

[wildbourgman]

One kick wonder, I'm confused at your reply it seems as though your saying you should not use karate in self defense, but you instinctively will use karate in self defense. Can you expand on that?

[OneKickWonder]

One kick wonder, I'm confused at your reply it seems as though your saying you should not use karate in self defense, but you instinctively will use karate in self defense. Can you expand on that?

Karate is a method of training body and mind.

If you have to 'do karate', you're in trouble. You'll just get beat up by the guy who is not restricting himself to a particular style, while you're busy thinking about your posture and what the other guy would do if he was also doing karate.

Now if you just fight, and it so happens you fight a lot better because you've trained your body and mind, then you've got a much better chance of doing OK.

Or look at it another way. The question is, can you use shotokan karate on the street? Well yes. Of course you can. You could do a kata in the street if you wanted to. Maybe with a willing partner, and spot of kumite. But can you use shotokan in self defence? If you're shotokan school focuses on kata more than anything else, then you'll have fitness and balance etc but the only fighting skills you have will be your built in instinctive ones. If on the other hand your shotokan school does loads of sparring, then you'll have a good chance of defeating an attacker that knows and complies with your sparring rules but doesn't train (ie pretty much no attacker). Now if you ignore the shotokan, but take advantage of the fitness and flexibility and balance and judgement you've developed, and add those attributes to your instinctive ability, then you've got a fair chance.

[bushido_man96]

I think OneKickWonder makes some good points. Human beings have been fighting since day one, and since that day, human beings have been working on becoming better at fighting. Whether that be with weapons to increase damage output, making items like armor and shields to protect ourselves better, etc. As a race, we've been at this for a very long time.

With all that said, systems like Karate, TKD, BJJ, Wrestling, etc, are all focused efforts at improving our ability to attack and defend ourselves physically with our natural weapons. They are systems created in an effort to help us kick, punch, block, counter, etc, all in a more efficient and effective manner.

So, in a sense, OneKickWonder is right on the money in his approach. We study these styles in order to make us better at some of the things we already naturally do. These systems also help us to refine what we do physically, and the focus of some systems can take us beyond the physical and into a more mental and spiritual aspect of our training.

But, it all starts with the physical aspects.

Now, with all that aside, and to provide a more direct answer to Oresti's question, yes, Shotokan Karate can be very useful in a self-defense situation. It all depends on how you train. If you train at a school that spends a decent amount of time on the self-defense aspects of the style, it can become a very useful and effective system of self-defense. If there is a healthy amount of partner work with some realist attacks and defenses practiced, or forms work with applications that are reasonable and efficient to perform, then any style can be very beneficial in self-defense (I assume that is what you mean when you mention a street-fight). The reverse can also be true. If the school isn't run well, and the curriculum isn't taught well, and no self-defense is ever worked on, then it could be tough to make it all translate.

In the end, a lot depends on how the teacher approaches the training, and what kinds of things are focused on in class. Speak with your instructor to find out what kind of focuses he or she has in training.

[wildbourgman]

Ok I see what you are saying One Kick Wonder and I don't disagree. I'm not sure that you answered the question he was asking directly, but you certainly got around to it along with Bushido man.

As I child and new karate-ka in Shotokan karate I tried to use my karate in a fight in the way One Kick Wonder explains, it's didn't go well for me.

I think using martial arts as self defense actually takes on many forms. Most of those forms come by giving you self awareness, humility, and the ability to confidently not have to ever lay your hands on anyone in order to stay safe.

[bushido_man96]

Self-defense starts with self-awareness.

[Nidan Melbourne]

Hopefully you never have to use any physical technique in self defence.

For me using a karate technique means that I have no other option but to use it.

And to answer the question in the OP; clearly it is useable if it has lasted this long. And also how you respond to the threat! If you deliver a powerful front kick like I know Shotokan has, then yes. If you deliver a weak front kick then who has really failed you or shotokan?

[TJ-Jitsu]

Hello Im doing shotokan karate and I want to know how useable it's on a street fight. I mean can i defend myself if someone attack me.

Im going to give it to you straight- this isn't a "yes" or "no" answer...

The greater the resistance you get while training the better the fighter you'll be. Yes self defense is fighting, no you don't need to be a professional to be able to defend yourself.

But THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT CRITERIA that exists to be proficient in a real life situation is the consistency with which you train against fully resisting opponents.

Nevermind what you want to call your system your training in- karate, tkd, muay thai, bjj, etc etc.... are you occasionally training with a fully resisting opponent? Are you at times sparring with someone who is using their full capabilities to either knock you out or out wrestle you?

That said, does the school you're training out of have full contact sparring sessions? Full contact requiers 16 oz boxing gloves to protect your fists (the extra 4 oz of padding is for your partners face...).

The greater the level of resistence the greater the likelyhood of you being able to use it in an actual situaiton. If that criterai is met we can further the discussion. If its not, it stops the discussion- regardless of whatever style you may be speaking of.

[OneKickWonder]

. If that criterai is met we can further the discussion. If its not, it stops the discussion- regardless of whatever style you may be speaking of.

With respect, I've heard this claim a lot, especially from BJJ fans (not only, also heard it from others including some karate fans). But I've not seen any objective evidence to back it up.

I get that it seems to be common sense, but that doesn't make it true. A few hundred years ago it was common sense that the earth was flat. I think it's hard to make a fair assessment of anything in the absence of objective evidence. Within such evidence, an idea is nothing more than opinion or theory.

The most common form of 'evidence' that training against resistance works is that it works in the gym or it works in competition. If we take a similar example but outside of the field of combat, the flaws in that logic become self evident. Take the jet pack or the flying car. Both have been proven viable and effective several times, within the constraints of the test environment in specific conditions. Yet looking out the window now, I'm not seeing any. Combat is perhaps the most extreme test of anything. We know from larger scale conflict (wars) that even the most highly trained soldiers meet their demise in the battlefield because something was not as they'd trained for. Such appears many times throughout history.

Whether or not it is necessary to practice regularly against full resistance depends largely on the techniques you hope to use. My understanding of BJJ is nearly nil. It is limited to what I've seen in a few videos. But it looks complicated. And it looks very easy to get wring. And the consequences of getting it wrong look dire. They look like the kind of techniques that you really must practice against full resistance regularly if ever you hope to make them work in the dynamic and unpredictable heat of battle. But to punch or kick then extract yourself, this is built in human nature. Untrained people do it when they have to. They push and shove and call in knees and elbows if they have to. There's lots of evidence for this. And it is easily observed live if you know which nightclubs to stand outside of. Most punches and kicks miss completely, or miss their intended target and hit something that isn't really an effective point, like a shoulder or a glancing blow across the torso. Yet these people often manage to escape from the fifth unharmed. The very definition of self defense. If through training, you can refine this inherent built in ability to increase your accuracy and power, and at the same time become more stable on your feet and better at judging distance, then there's no way it's fair to dismiss that training, even if it's not against full resistance.