I have noticed that since the new USANKF rules came out tournaments seem to try to mold their rules to comply. I understand the USANKF is the officially recognised sanctioning body for the sport of Karate in the U.S. and they are members of the U.S. olympic comittee, but do you think their rules favor difficult techniques at the expense of more practical techniques and your students have been wanting to focus on the impractical for points over the practical. For example a perfect reverse punch is only one point no matter how good and a kick to the head is three points no matter hw impractical head kicking may actually be.

Although this is true I think the thinking is that head trauma ends fights more often than punching to the body. However, sweeping and following with a punch is also worth three points, which is very practical for the street. Instead of trying to score big with kicks to the head, I think you should train your students to score big with sweeping and striking a downed opponent with a strike. Wayne Otto is the best ever at this and he is one of the greatest point fighters ever. He is also one of the few who could probably handle himself in any fighting arena.

Personally when I compete 70% of points come from kicks to the body, I grew up in a very tough neighborhood and although I do not brag about being in 20-30 real fights I have been forced into two fights that I consider to have been for my life in both cases I was able to escape with a single kick to the leg in one the ribs in the other. I think that a leg kick is more practical than a sweep in most situations. I remember the good old days where perfect technique on anything got a full point and anything less was a half point and three points won.