All

I wonder to myself many times why do traditional arts or those claiming to be "real" martial arts STILL use the following attacks in the Dojo to train their students? In all my years I have never been attacked this way and neither have any of my students. Have you ever been attacked this way in "real" situations etc?

I've wondered the same thing, Dobberskysan. I think the old obverse punch attack is just easier to use in training.... Not practical. We all should be so lucky if attacked in the manner that are depicted in those pictures.Hey, I would be fairly tough if I only had to defend against lunge punches and low strikes like that.We all would. The problem is there are some karate people that only train this way. It becomes quite robotic and doesn't prepare one for the real world of self-defense.

No never and I never will probably unless I insult a traditional karateka enough times.

Most ''attacks'' come unexpected.

And most confrontations leading to violence will happen at a fairly close range (unless you stop the person from getting close to you which isn't always possible) and most people will draw back their arm and throw a wide swing at you like a haymaker type... A lot may try to headbutt you if they get close enough and so on... I don't feel like 90% of traditional karate teaches anything related to self defense or even good strikes...

I still am a purist I believe that what really is karate is quite amazing but the last 100 years or so have really given birth to something very odd and not martially accurate in my opinion... And that type of karate is more popular.

Rigid forms and certain mystery akin to kata, bunkai and what else draw in people who were raised on BS Martial Art movies.

And even if not it's always easier to believe in something a bit mysterious such as doing a kata and fighting an imagined opponent will make you able to fight against a real person. Than hard work in the form of drills, mitts, bags, spars and physical training.

This isnt a problem just with Karate, but with Many TMA. TKD for example. What I offer is this. At some point, if you are serious about MA, then you have to take an objective look at what your doing and decide if it is appropriate for your needs. If your needs are self defense, and you have looked at your style without bias, and you still practice this way, well then you probably were never gonna be the next chuck norris anyways.

MA should always teach self defense if it doesn't then it isn't a Martial Art...

What we mostly have these days is Martial SPORT.

And unless it's full contact it teaches pretty much nothing about self defense.

Even full contact doesn't teach you everything about self defense. At least half of self defense should deal with being attacked without warning, weapons & the possibility of multiple attackers.

I agree Matakiant. The flow of martial sports (Going after your opponent) to "score more" or "knock out" is a totally different mind set. It's a cumulative group of techniques under a given set of rules. The means to an end is to win the contest. Most of the techniqes don't fare as well in a self-defense scenario.

Mark

Theproblem with that is that many"sport" guys dont agree,stating that they could use there art for defense. These places are often blackbelt factories, which is why it means so little now.

I agree...... I was one of them.

Very much agree with this statement!

It s like you either have to train for competition OR train for self defence, different ethos different way of doing things different rules set etc.

I suppose this is why you never see Aikido and Hapkido in the Cage as they are not Competition focused

To me full contact means scratching, groping, hair pulling, shoving your thumb into someone's eye sockets, spitting, smacking across the head with a heavy object, growling like a rabid dog and biting, etc. In other words if you feel you're in serious danger in an unavoidable confrontation, everything goes. However if you can, first try to avoid the confrontation like maybe running away. Any serious study of the martial arts requires serious study of the use of weapons. One of the main points about learning weapons is that if attacked with a weapon, you have a better handle on how to defend yourself against that weapon if you understand the strong and weak points about that weapon.

Now if you look at those karate illustrations above, put a knife in the hand and then it changes the picture totally ... thrust to the head or body and a downward slash to the artery on the insides of the thigh. It doesn't take a lot with a bladed weapon to do a lot of damage. Also most karateka who have trained for a long time will not fight as shown in those illustrations ... stances will be so much shorter or probably with just a half turn of the fist. Those moves in kihon or kata are training purposes to help build speed, agility and power. If they still think one fights like that, then they need to find another instructor.

There are many things TMA teaches you (countless blogs on this) and self defense is just one aspect of it.