Is Karate making a comeback!?

[crash]

to make a comeback this is exactly what karate needs to do. get back to its roots of whatever the style may be and focus on just that. and then self promote through an active tournament scene and demo's. somewhere along the way in the early 90's the tournament scene dropped substantially with different organizations and groups starting intra-school only type tournaments and activities. this took karate and the martial arts in general, out of the spotlight of the general public to a large degree. one of those " if youre not already involved you wont know or see it" type situations. sure, tournaments and demonstrations arent for everyone, but those were a major source of advertising and exposure for the martial arts. until some form of publicity is reached on a higher level karate will remain stagnant

I don't think the multitude or organisations and splintering that has occurred helps either, is like a more extreme version of the crazy amount of alphabet belts in professional boxing.

In the bjj world everyone just focuses on their instructor lineage and doesn't really bother about their governing body (unless entering IBJFF competitions). You are a X Belt under Professor Y who got their Black belt from Professor Z etc

Maybe a solution would be to adopt a similar model for karate. Individual instructors could then monitor the standard of their lineage - it would become well known that the Instructor McDojo tree was made up of Mcdojo's and people could easily avoid it.

The disparate bodies could then arrange tournaments/competitions that align with their institutional viewpoints. So a JKA tournament, a WKF tournament etc.

Would be quite a shift in emphasis but it might help

a lot of the fall from popularity started in the 90's with the entrance of certain groups. ( i wont name groups, i dont like the term "mcdojo" and dont want to get into that debate / conversation. karate reached a point where the next step in evolution was to go "mainstream". to reach as wide an audiance as possible. so you had the corporate type groups set up in every strip mall. in the process it became watered down and more exercise type activity than "karate". then with the popularity of mma, that was added in for advertising..the tournament scene dropped substantially as more and more of these groups went the way of intra-school only competitions and seminars.) the open tournament set up was the best option to display your style to a greater number of paricipants and guests. point fighting is fun but the best thing about the open tournaments was the forms competitions as far as seeing new and amazing styles. karate just needs to get back to its roots, build back up in the media, and learn from the past so that the same mistakes can be avoided for future growth.

[DarthPenguin]

a lot of the fall from popularity started in the 90's with the entrance of certain groups. ( i wont name groups, i dont like the term "mcdojo" and dont want to get into that debate / conversation. karate reached a point where the next step in evolution was to go "mainstream". to reach as wide an audiance as possible. so you had the corporate type groups set up in every strip mall. in the process it became watered down and more exercise type activity than "karate". then with the popularity of mma, that was added in for advertising..the tournament scene dropped substantially as more and more of these groups went the way of intra-school only competitions and seminars.) the open tournament set up was the best option to display your style to a greater number of paricipants and guests. point fighting is fun but the best thing about the open tournaments was the forms competitions as far as seeing new and amazing styles. karate just needs to get back to its roots, build back up in the media, and learn from the past so that the same mistakes can be avoided for future growth.

Seems sensible. It also reminded me how different things are in the USA compared to over here - we now see the occasional 'high street' location for a martial arts club, but it is unusual - strip mall style classes were never a thing over here.

Usually most styles seem to be taught in the evenings, a few times a week, by an instructor/s in a rented space for the session - could be a sports centre, a church hall etc.

Full time academies have started to spring up a little more now but they seem to be mainly BJJ or MMA schools (though there are both a Taekwondo and Hapkido one near where i live - but it is very much an exception)

Over here the issue seemed to be that the 'better athletically talented' individuals moved towards styles like BJJ, Muay Thai and MMA (if it can be called a style) with many fewer people taking up a more traditional style, so they seemed to start trying to remove barriers (making it easier to progress; gentler training etc.). Some styles just make it hard for adults to train it - as a personal example i decided i wanted to try Judo and started looking into classes. There are judo clubs all over the city but almost all of them refuse to take adults (certainly beginners). Only a very small number allow adult beginners to come along which then also reduces numbers. Thankfully for me, the class that my son attends was one of the few that would permit an adult - though at another of their locations!

[aurik]

I don't think the multitude or organisations and splintering that has occurred helps either, is like a more extreme version of the crazy amount of alphabet belts in professional boxing.

In the bjj world everyone just focuses on their instructor lineage and doesn't really bother about their governing body (unless entering IBJFF competitions). You are a X Belt under Professor Y who got their Black belt from Professor Z etc

Maybe a solution would be to adopt a similar model for karate. Individual instructors could then monitor the standard of their lineage - it would become well known that the Instructor McDojo tree was made up of Mcdojo's and people could easily avoid it.

The disparate bodies could then arrange tournaments/competitions that align with their institutional viewpoints. So a JKA tournament, a WKF tournament etc.

Would be quite a shift in emphasis but it might help

I don't think Uechi-Ryu has this problem as much as many other styles, or I am very fortunate that my CI and his father are very well-connected with the heads of the different Uechi Ryu organizations. While Uechi Ryu has split off quite a few different governing bodies, most heads of the governing bodies received most of their dan gradings directly from Kanei Uechi (Kanbun Uechi's son). For example, the head of my organization received his 1st-6th dan gradings from Kanei Uechi (before he passed).

This isn't to say that there aren't differences in how different organizations teach different techniques, and different organizations teach the same techniques differently. However, there is a great deal of communication between the organizations, especially the ones based in Japan and Okinawa. For example, if a student under another instructor comes into my CI's school, he can usually figure out which organization he trained in, based upon how he performs different techniques. They're not always "wrong" or "inferior" per se, just different.

Maybe I'm just fortunate that my CI goes to Okinawa every year or two and trains directly with the heads of some of these other organizations.

[crash]

a lot of the fall from popularity started in the 90's with the entrance of certain groups. ( i wont name groups, i dont like the term "mcdojo" and dont want to get into that debate / conversation. karate reached a point where the next step in evolution was to go "mainstream". to reach as wide an audiance as possible. so you had the corporate type groups set up in every strip mall. in the process it became watered down and more exercise type activity than "karate". then with the popularity of mma, that was added in for advertising..the tournament scene dropped substantially as more and more of these groups went the way of intra-school only competitions and seminars.) the open tournament set up was the best option to display your style to a greater number of paricipants and guests. point fighting is fun but the best thing about the open tournaments was the forms competitions as far as seeing new and amazing styles. karate just needs to get back to its roots, build back up in the media, and learn from the past so that the same mistakes can be avoided for future growth.

Seems sensible. It also reminded me how different things are in the USA compared to over here - we now see the occasional 'high street' location for a martial arts club, but it is unusual - strip mall style classes were never a thing over here.

Usually most styles seem to be taught in the evenings, a few times a week, by an instructor/s in a rented space for the session - could be a sports centre, a church hall etc.

Full time academies have started to spring up a little more now but they seem to be mainly BJJ or MMA schools (though there are both a Taekwondo and Hapkido one near where i live - but it is very much an exception)

Over here the issue seemed to be that the 'better athletically talented' individuals moved towards styles like BJJ, Muay Thai and MMA (if it can be called a style) with many fewer people taking up a more traditional style, so they seemed to start trying to remove barriers (making it easier to progress; gentler training etc.). Some styles just make it hard for adults to train it - as a personal example i decided i wanted to try Judo and started looking into classes. There are judo clubs all over the city but almost all of them refuse to take adults (certainly beginners). Only a very small number allow adult beginners to come along which then also reduces numbers. Thankfully for me, the class that my son attends was one of the few that would permit an adult - though at another of their locations!

stand alone dojo's, whether in their own bldg or in a strip mall type area have always been the norm here since the 70's. whether a full traditional style or a sport oriented style, they both are effective for self defense or competition, ive seen traditional styles such as kung-fu and others with some amazing form work at tournaments. its the watering down of the arts that was the problem. and becoming more exercise based to compete against the gym scene and the "cardio kick boxing" crowd.

when i ran a dojo it was 5 days a week, starting at 6 in the evenings and going through 9, 14 years old and up. it worked out really well. i could hold the occasional 8 week class at the local college three times per year and gain new students as well as putting on demos at the local high schools for advertisement type purposes. now it seems most dojo's would have a hard time making it if it werent for the child enrollment, getting the teen and adult interest back is key to furthering the popularity of the arts once again. and to do that i think first getting back to the roots of "karate" is a must.

[Sailor Sindbad]

I'm 42 years old, and only started karate in late 2019.

I can't speak for everyone, but my take is this: when the UFC initially started in the early mid-1990's, there were more traditional martial artists, so I finally got to see it in real live action. Prior to that, the only "karate" I saw was the choreographed stuff in the movies. Were it not for MMA, I would still think that karate looked like the scenes from Van Damme movies.

But with MMA, I saw that practitioners of eastern martial arts are human, and that practitioners of western wrestling and boxing are capable of beating them. They're not invincible like Van Damme and Chuck Norris in the movies.

In my estimation, younger people didn't live through that; so they grew up with a more realistic view of karate. No disappointments, so I think that's where the interest comes from.

[LionsDen]

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t read all 4 pages so far just a few of the first page.

1. For karate to make a comeback it would have to have gone somewhere.

Maybe adults are becoming interested in karate again for various reasons, but karate has been making its money from kids classes for decades, at least the 80s.

2. MMA was never about ‘brawling’ this is a very ignorant point made by people who have never actually fought, especially never fought full contact.

3. I’d love a source that OG fighters are encouraging their students not to go into MMA, as for the martial arts center title of schools, it’s likely just a branding thing. Even dedicated MMA gyms make most of their money from casual hobbyists, and calling something an MMA school might alienate potential costumers, where as martial arts center sounds less intimidating to hobbyists.

4. Karate has had a big footprint in MMA for a very long time, stars like Bas Rutten and chuck Liddell being early UFC stars, if you look into the backgrounds of UFC champions karate is the 4th or 5th base style with something like 17 champions having a karate base.(some are listed as kickboxing in list articles but if you actually dig into their background they began competing kickboxing after years of karate, sort of like Gabriel Varga.)

I wouldn’t say karate is making a comeback so much as experiencing a renaissance.

Part of that is the very high profile karate fighters in MMA, Cobra Kai, and Karate Combat.

[DarthPenguin]

... They're not invincible like Van Damme and Chuck Norris in the movies.

I'm sorry but i have to object to any hint of referring to Chuck Norris as not being invincible - in the movies sounds like he is not invincible out of them. Pretty sure this is classed as blasphemy!!! (sorry couldn't resist)

[Tyler]

Karate is alive and kicking!

[smuraix1]

It has its ups and downs on the main stage. Its Sad as the main practitioners in MMA have been on the losing side as of late. A 42 yr old Machida and Horiguchi (both Shotokan) have been KOed in there more recent fights. Wonderboy has also lost his last few but due to being out-grappled.

[bushido_man96]

42 is pretty old to be competing professionally. It's probably not a reflection on his style, but more so a reflection of dealing with younger competition.