What is the difference between sport Karate and traditional combat Karate?

: What is the difference between sport Karate and traditional combat Karate?
For example if I wanted to learn to defend myself against attackers twice my size on the street would sport or the traditional version be better for it? Are the techniques the US military soldiers being taught based on MMA and UFC cage fighting?

Answers and Views:

Answer by jwbulldogs
Sports karate is just that a sport. You learn how to compete in tournaments. Most likely it will be point sparring, but not limited to just point sparring. You may or may not learn in true traditional kata. It is not probable that you will learn any of the true applications that are hidden within the kata. The focus is not on self defense. The focus is on winning a competition based upon some rules that you will never have in a real fight.

Traditional Karate does not have to be labeled as combat. It is made up of self defense techniques that have been tested and proven to helpful in allowing a person to survive an attack. It was developed during period of war. It focus is not on ego or competitions. Its focus is on survival. It allow a person of any size to equal the odds and in many cases put the odds in their own favor no matter the size or strength of the attacker.

Military training is much different than mma training. In mma a person will go to the ground, relax, wait, a fight looking for a submission. However, on the battle field if that is done you are likely to lose your life. You can’t afford to lay on your back or relax. You don’t have a referee to stop the fight if someone taps. There is no tapping. You are either dead or alive. Most likely there are going to weapons involved such as a knife or gun. Imagine you try a ground and pound. While you are doing this a person from there platoon sneaks up behind you with his trust 10 inch blade and guts you.

The rule for war time and the street is to survive by any means necessary, by being prepared for battle. There are no points to be scored.

Edit:
Big Bill,

Hakko Ryu Jiu-Jitsu is not the correct spelling. To some this may not seem important, but it really is. Placing an “i” in jujitsu was done to distinguish what was taught in Japan from that which was being taught in Brazil. Thus signifying that they are in fact different art forms.

It would be correct to use Hakko Ryu Jujutsu. Depending on who you are listening to jujitsu would be acceptable. Jiu jitsu always is a reference to Brazilian jiu jitsu.

Answer by Yahoo
jwbulldogs has a good point. Sport Karate has rules and focuses on just what the name says, Sport. It is just made to compete but it is not made tu survive like traditional Karate. Traditional Karate is made to survive and the techniques you learn in Karate are very effective and are used to defeat basically any agressor and sometimes even armed.

MMA and UFC cagefighting, which is the same, will not be effective in the battlefield because it is just for competition and cagefighting. MMA does not have applications for self defense and it is basically for competition at the highest level of combat. Of course, you can defend yourself with MMA but it will not work on the battlefield.

Answer by Fat Cobra
jwbulldogs gave you a good answer on what you will learn with sport and traditional karate.

If you are wanting to be able to defend yourself, you will need to find an instructor who has the capability of training you for that type of situation. That is the biggest hurdle in self defense, and depending on the nature of self defense you want to learn would be better suited for traditional karate.

No, the techniques taught in the military are not based off of MMA or UFC cage fighting. They are based off of a wide array of martial tactics that have worked in the various military branches of the world throughout history. You must remember that while some of the techniques and training in the mma wold can be used in self defense, and efficiently; they are not taught nor are they trained as a method of completely incapacitating or killing the opponent. They are trained to win a competition. Those techniques have also come from the martial arts of the world. MMA is not a martial art, but a sport based off of an assumed knowledge of multiple martial arts by its practitioners.

Answer by my friend
One has rules and limits and the other doesn’t. One works in a true combat/self defense situation and the other will get you killed.

namaste

Answer by samuraiwarrior_98
Originally the rules before safety gear were quite different from those largely used now. You fought without gear except for a mouthpiece, groin protector, and maybe a little tape. You were allowed to thump to the body with no contact to the head or face and take-downs, throws, and sweeps were allowed and three seconds to score afterwords. It was male dominated and while penalized for head or face contact disqualifications were not that frequent. There were not a lot of kids nor a lot of females in martial arts then and the thumping allowed for a lot of chest and rib cage injuries as well as a lot of accidental facial damage since it was bare handed.

As kids and women became more involved in martial arts and safety gear came onto the scene things became watered down for safety sake and to protect people and keep promoters and instructors from litigation and being sued. Participation from those kids and women involved in martial arts became more emphasized; safety gear mandatory, and there was no more ground fighting and three seconds to score. Light touch to the head and face was allowed in some divisions but hard contact was not per say because the idea of head injuries and trauma to that area became more known to the medical world and those involved in contact sports. So in some ways sport karate became a game of tag although some of the tagging can be pretty hard since the gear worn is meant for light contact. I have actually had more injuries in tournament or sport karate because of the light gear than in kick boxing but I was fighting at a pretty high level in sport karate.

Sport karate is good in the sense that it helps teach you not to hesitate and the importance of thinking, acting, and reacting quickly and to use your skills doing so. If you can’t do that you will not fare well in that type of fighting. However some of the techniques, strategies, and things you rely on to score are not what you would use or do in a street situation. They would not be effective and so you have to understand the differences there I think.

Traditional karate emphasizes this a little bit better and helps teach you this to some extent but even here some groups in traditional karate don’t do a good job with this. I know one group that does not believe in sparring and so they don’t at all. To me that is unrealistic and does not help a student like yourself learn how to take strong, powerfully executed techniques or combinations or ones that will be effective and gain the needed experience to use and apply them against a moving, thinking, reacting opponent on the street who has bad intentions.

Since you are looking for something that will help you in the street look for a school and instructor that includes sparring as well as emphasizes self defense and teaches and emphasizes those techniques that will be effective in that environment over the sport karate type techniques and that type of fighting.

In answer to the second part of your question some of what they currently teach is based on MMA type fighting but not near to the extent that you would think. The military, especially the Army and Marine Corps had started to jump on this heavily at first but then pulled back from it to some extent. This was because they still want that soldier to rely on the use of his weapon and keep his hands on that and his ability to use it and lend fire support to his fellow combat team members as much as possible. That soldier, with an automatic weapon, can do more harm and kill more of the enemy that way and by using that weapon is what they still want to continue to emphasize and reinforce in a soldier’s training and do so.

Some of the ground fighting aspects of MMA are very good though for self-defense and street situations if there is only one adversary and they don’t pick up something to use as a weapon or have one. That along with the use of the knees and elbows are very good things as well but a good instructor well versed in traditional martial arts and self-defense will teach these as well.

Answer by SiFu frank
Self defense and sport Martial Arts are not the same. Not only are the expectations and mind set different so is the training and techniques.
Military training and Traditional training are different as they also have different goals though some goals in common.

Does this sound confusing? Probably.
MMA and FC cage fighting are a sport and the expectation is that your opponent is trying to submit you not kill you. The techniques are limited in sport fighting.
The military does teach only limited hand to hand combat because the time constraints on training and the expectations are different. You rely more on weapons and team work in a combat situations. Typically the military does not have several years to train you in hand to hand combat; therefore they teach only some basics.
For the average person looking for self defense training the best option in my opinion is a traditional art. There are some schools such as ours that have alternatives for someone looking to learn basic self defense without all the trappings of a traditional art. But (everyone has a big but) it is strictly a buyer beware market. Not every traditional school has a good self defense program. I only know of a few where the training is good enough and the Master has real self defense experience and the ability to teach.
Annother point that must be brought up is that often people take some training and think this is an end in itself and do not realise is that to save your life you must continue to devote yourself to training constantly for the rest of your life. You can not expect to take some classes and that is the end of it. If you do not train constantly it will fail you when you need it most.

Answer by pugpaws2
To put it simply, Sport karate is limited at best. It is designed to impress the judges, and to win trophies. Traditional Karate was designed to be used in life threatening situations. That is all the information you should need to see the difference. Using sport karate (which is a contradiction of terms) in a life threatening fight, is like using those plastic Sai they sell during Halloween, and thinking that you know how to use the Sai. It makes no sense.

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Answer by BigBill
First of all, Karate is not a sport.

Back in the 1960s you had a ‘point’ system of karate. Most of the effective techniques of karate were disallowed, such as spear hands or eye strikes or open hand strikes and even shuto (the karate chop). So karate tournaments degenerated into kick boxing matches.

Since 1945 the U.S. marines have included Judo, Hakko Ryu Jiu-Jitsu, and Goju ryu karate into their hand to hand combat systems. These are effective martial arts.