The Makiwara Post – Traditional Karate vs Modern Karate

How do you rate the quality of a karate school? Do you look at the size of its membership? Do you look at the number of black belts walking around? Do you look at the number of national champions in the dojo? Or do you simply look at the quality of the instruction on offer?

People practice karate for different reasons and for this reason there will always be a market for different kinds of karate schools. However, some schools are to be scrutinized carefully!

Let’s take a look at 4 different types of karate schools you are likely to encounter.

The McDojo

A McDojo is a martial arts school where making money is the primary objective of the owner. Students can earn a black belt within 2 to 3 years through special programs and many of the senior instructors are probably still in their teens. Sometimes the chief instructor may even wear a camouflage belt!

5 Signs that you are training in a McDojo:

1. 10 Year old, or younger, black belts (or 7 year old brown belts, I have seen this!)
2. 21 Year old 5^th Dan “Grandmasters”! They usually wear extra-long belts with stuff like “Grandmaster Koos Poggenpoel” written on them and their uniforms are covered in patches with stuff like “Master” or “Black Belt Club Member” written on them (I have seen this as well!).
3. Belt testing (gradings) every 2 to 3 months. All students MUST attend (more candidates = more money) and you are basically guaranteed a new belt just by showing up and paying your grading fee.
4. Additional belts (ranks) are added to the syllabus to “prevent students from becoming black belts too early” (more belts = more gradings = more money).
5. Sparring practice is limited to point scoring techniques while wearing every possible form of safety gear on the market! Elbow strikes and knee strikes are banned and labelled as “dirty fighting” and hard contact sparring is banned because “only bullies hit hard”!

The Sport Karate Dojo

A sport karate dojo can be described as a club which teaches martial sport, not martial arts. Students are generally treated more as athletes (and sometimes even referred to as such!) rather than karate students. Techniques taught at these schools have very little, if any, value in a real-life confrontation but are often marketed as being “ideal for self-defense”.

Kicking like this in a real fight will get you killed!!!

5 Signs that you are training in a sport karate dojo:

1. The Sensei (coach?) wears only his national colours on his uniform and never his style badge.
2. Students are required to compete in tournaments in order to advance in rank.
3. The school has no clear international style affiliation; they only refer to their world governing body for sport karate tournaments on their websites and certificates.
4. Sparring sessions are limited to scoring points, no hard contact is allowed.
5. Kata (forms) sessions focus on performance for points instead of practical applications.

The Modern Traditional Dojo

The modern traditional dojo is a karate school which started out in a legitimate traditional style but over time, probably due to the influence of sport karate, lost track of its traditional roots. These schools still claim to teach traditional karate but this is only because the instructors themselves cannot distinguish the difference between traditional karate and sport karate.

“And then the mugger/rapist attacks you with a straight punch…”

5 Signs that you are training in a modern traditional dojo:

1. All bunkai (applications) are choreographed and only work against pre-arranged karate attacks.
2. The instructor refers to other schools in town as “Mickey Mouse karate” due to his inability to recognise the value of other, more traditional, styles.
3. When a student asks for an explanation of a specific move within a kata he is told to shut-up and practice the kata! (this happened to me many years ago)
4. There is no grappling taught. The instructor may show “a few Judo moves” he picked up over the years but will deny that karate contains any grappling and also tell you that “if your stand-up (punching and kicking) is good enough you will never have to do any grappling anyway”.
5. The instructor bullies his students claiming that “it will make you tough” and “this is how it is done in Japan” (this also happened to me!)

The Traditional Karate Dojo

The traditional karate dojo is a karate school which teach karate for what it is: a practical and effective civilian self-protection system. This type of school is very rare, not just in the Western world but lately also in the Orient, due to the global commercialism of karate and usually has only a small number of dedicated students.

Practical and effective self-defense techniques from kata

5 Signs that you are training in a traditional karate dojo:

1. You train to improve your own abilities – not to win trophies or earn higher rank. Just training, no ego!
2. Your training includes grappling, joint manipulations, pressure point strikes and many other practical fighting techniques not usually associated with “modern karate”.
3. You practice kata to learn practical and effective self-defense skills, not to “look pretty” and win medals.
4. Sparring sessions include “irikumi” (hard contact) sparring and may include techniques like elbow strikes, knee strikes, low kicks to legs, take-downs and grappling.
5. You compete in tournaments for fun. Or in some cases you don’t compete at all

As you can see, there are all sorts of karate out there. The problem with most new students who start out in karate is that they believe “karate is karate”. Nothing could be further from the truth!

“There are no bad students, only bad teachers”