Karate alone?

Question

everyone sais you neeed like 3 martial arts for all the aspects of fighting. but what if all you have is karate (no clue the detail of the type).

does this make it pointless?

and 2

can karate help grappling.

if a karate vs like some other athletic person (will say football) whent at it in a wrestling match, does the karate guy have and advantage for being flexible and knowing strikeds?

Answer 1

being a great and aggressive athlete is one of the most important determining factor in a fight.  if the karate guy was very skilled but not so aggressive or athletic the other athlete could overpower and beat the lesser.  Ive seen it happen lots of times. and vise versa.  Skill helps a huge deal, but in my opion a great aggressive athlete is the most dangerous. however trained.

Answer 2

as mentioned before me, having one form of self-defense/martial art is better than none. if u want to compete, u need to learn more than one martial art. ur 2nd question, concerning whether karate can help with grappling, only slightly. it will help with balance and critical thinking on the spot. but as far as the physical part of grappling, no. to be serious about competing (if that is ur goal), i suggest u learn the three basic arts that i've learned: stricking (i learned kickboxing, but ur karate will do fine), wrestling (to dictate whether the fine stays on ur feet or on the ground), and submission fighting (like ju-juitsu, just in case u get taken down).

Answer 3

I know of a UFC fighter.

He would argue that it's better to learn a variety

of the martial arts.

Answer 4

Look most of this three c**p is just an adaptation of Bruce Lee's Jeet kun do. He was the first one to say it, and he said it because he never finished his training.

Contradictory to what everyone else out there is saying, everything you need to defend yourself is in your style. If you look at your blocks you'll see self defense applications, if you look at your stances you'll find kicks, and if you look at your katas you'll see aspects that relate to grappling and weapon arts. just imagine how the movements you already know can be used in situations you have yet to face, then train them. One only needs one complete system, because a complete system is one that has been perfected on the battle fields of life.

Answer 5

The ignorance on this board astounds me still. Ignore the people who say that karate is just basic or that it does not have grappling. Karate is very complex and it takes many years of hard training under a very good instructor to scratch more then the surface, and to see the kata for what they truly are. If you look at most karate kata's, especially Okinawin karate, to the beginer it all looks like punches and kicks and blocks. At it's higher levels once you have a complete grasp of the basics you will find that these kata contain many Joint locks, chokes, throws, take downs/sweeps, as well as pain compliance techniques. Okinawin karate learns to fight in the clinch.

It is very hard to find an instructor that can teach you this, but they are out there. The people who tell you that karate is basic and does not have grappling have:

1) Never been shown the true application.

2) Trained it for a little while and didn't have the discipline to stick with it.

3) Are parroting what they heard on here.

Okinawin, Japanese, and some style of American karate are very good systems. That being said i never hurts to cross train, but I find that for self defense against the average person that I am going to have to defend myself from, karate will let me devestate them if I have to. Remember self defense is different then the UFC or street fighting.

I really do not worry that much about roaving MMA's, BJJ fighters, Wrestlers, Judo Ka's, etc. running around attacking people at random for no reason. All of these take discipline and commitment to become good at. It is far more likely that I will be defending myself from an untrained person who has little or no training, so if it goes to the ground, what I know from karate, and all the little dirty tricks I have picked up along the way over 18 years of training should be more then adiquate to survive and get away.

I don't start fights, and I don't go looking for them, and I will do everything in my power to avoid them.

Answer 6

karate is a discipline of stand-up striking. It doesn't cover anything as far as groundfighting/grappling.

it does make it pointless if you are fighting MMA and your going against opponents that know how to stand-up strike, wrestling, and grappling/submissions.

but for the street, karate is better than being trained in nothing at all.

as far as karate vs football player, strikes aren't going to help much on the ground, since any real power won't be generated as opposed to stand up strikes where the fighter can generate more power and torque behind the punch because he is standing.

At the level you are talking about, its really going to come down to the person's athletic ability and attitude. If an intermediate karate guy who was in average shape fought a guy who was a strong, fast athlete who didn't have any fighting training, but had no fear and a competitive drive and a fierce attitude, the karate guy would lose.

Karate is taught in different ways. True karate will teach a person how to fight effectively. Mcdojos, schools that are out there to just make a buck will teach a watered-down version of karate, and all its doing is fooling its students into thinking they are learning something while forking over $$$.

Once the fight begins, though, no matter how much karate training someone has, if he has never actually had any experience in getting punched and being in a full-on fight, all that karate training may just end up going out the window and he may resort to fighting by instincts (swinging wildly, head down, eyes closed, grabbing onto the other person and pulling them down in an attempt to flip them over, but usually just pulling them on top of them, etc...)

Mcdojos don't have actual full contact...real karate schools and teachers have plenty of full contact. You WILL get beat up at the real places. And if you do get into a fight, real karate will have you prepared to feel punches, while mcdojos won't have you prepared for any of that, but they won't tell you that as they collect your monthly fees, and other fees they can squeeze out of you.

So remember, "karate" means many different things in this day and age. From the fierce true fighting style of Japan to the fake, watered down version taught to children at Mcdojos in an effort to make a buck.

The real stuff will help tremendously in a fight against an untrained guy who just wants to fight. The mcdojo stuff...not so much.

Answer 7

I'l be be truthful with ya any form of martial art will not work unless you pratice those move and tech. Example if you are a black belt or 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 Degree and if you cant even smash through a coconut, those ppl have only praticed showing moves like a movie star, 1 hit and win sort of thing.

martial art is really for those who devote them self for life, is not something ppl should get into for long or sort term has to be for life, cause ppl out there can make all arts look bad by doing the wrong tech and moves. etc

Answer 8

I agree, true Karate will give you an advantage on the street against someone who does not expect it...true Karate teaches you the mentality of destroying your opponent quickly, in as few moves as possible.

Answer 9

while it takes study of several arts to become a really well rounded fighter, training in one style alone is better than no training at all.. karate has its advantages in the stand up game because it deals with strikes and will have a limited ground game. normally it will teach you to get away when floored. to try to use karates basic ground stuff against a bjj or judo guy would be suicide but against the average thug without training it can work well enough to defend yourself with.. hope this helps

Answer 10

Most karate styles will not pepare you for a real life street fight. A football player or a wrestler will pound you into the pavement if all you know is karate. The punches thrown in most karate styles will be extremely ineffective in a real altercation with a football player or a wrestler who will take you to the ground, neutralize your punches, and hurt you badly. You need to do boxing, kickboxing, jujitsu, or wrestling to be able to fight well against a football player or wrestler.  If the football player is smart he will not risk injuring himself in a street fight. A wrestler is far less likely to get injured fighting someone who only knows karate. Some karate styles incorporate grappling, but most have very little grappling. Brazilian jujitsu is a great style to learn to defend yourself in most one-on-one encounters.

Answer 11

Honestly if you have a GOOD teacher than you will already have all you need incorporated into ONE style already!!  That is if you have a real good teacher.

Most cannot offer that to students hence they have to go to more than one school. Fine one that can teach it all to you in one place for now.  Where as I have trained in several other arts with Rank One would have been sufficient for I had a good Shotokan teacher and Kenpo teacher.

Answer 12

if you train in karate then train in kyokushin karate ( hard style)

Answer 13

While I would even argue that any art that is a pureist art has its limitations I might also remind you that you have to start some where.  Karate alone is not a bad art at all as far as atemiwaza ( Striking ) goes.  I think that Karate will always hold its own among the martial arts of the world and that as a "stand alone" art it isn't half bad either.  There's always time in life to learn another art form down the road. As far as part two to your question YES Okinawan Karate leans heavily on grappling and pressure points within the human muscle anatomy system.  Okinawan Karate can be used just as well as any grappling art on the earth.  In some ways Okinawan Karate is almost the complete package.  I only know this because I happened to touch base with Okinawan Karate some 4 or 5 years ago.  One thing I do not like about Okinawan Karate though is its punch.  I prefer Japan's mainland Karate punch to the Okinawan Karate punch.  Hope that helped a little.

One more thing I will add is that many MMA pros spend their time going over the stand up rather than their ground game in such organizations as the UFC.  Rich Franklin, Andrei Arlovski, Evan Tanner and some of the UFC's most famous fighters are world renoun for their stand up and ability to counter grapplers and beat the living day lights out of would-be grapplers.  That's major food for thought, but you have to watch as much tape as I do to understand this aspect of MMA in the cage. I'll even leave you a major bomb right here. grappling is easily countered by using what's known as the "Sprawl" or "sprawling".  To take a man's reach advantage away you use ground and pound, but to counter a grappler the "sprawl" is where it's at 100% of the time. You can google or yahoo search this little simple technique and practice it and you will find just how easy it is to use against grapplers, but with this comes stregthening and conditioning for endurance.  Too easy to wear a grappler out inside of round one in the amateurs in MMA and in the pros maybe two rounds. Chuck Liddell 's style is Kempo Karate let's not forget that and it took another stand up fighter to finally take his belt away and even Quinton Jackson will admit he could care less about the ground game. Key word in Kempo Karate there is "Karate" right?