An example of shotokan sparing .
http://www.24fightingchickens.com/shotokan/japan/7/page04.html
fought in some full contact stuff with the kyokushin guys beforer i changed to CMA - i respect them a lot 
Nowadays i just do qigong 
dawood
Another thing we hear is that Shotokan is missing some of the elements from the Okinawan Karate. I’m sure someone will say it was streamlined - but are there classes of techniques missing from Shotokan entirely?
Funakoshi wasn’t the end-all Okinawan karate man, so it stands to reason that there were things missing. Add to that the changes made to make the art more Japanese and the performance art aspect of it and you have something that started out behind the eight ball.
With that said there are many in Shotokan that are trying to put the missing parts back into it and seem to be making headway. One thing I believe is that the Koreans stood a chance of “fixing” much that had gone wrong with Shotokan as they were trying to make arts that were superior to those of their Japanese masters. Sadly I think nationalism killed the effort.
Shotokan and realness…
Shotokan is a good, solid karate style. It’s an amalgam of Goju and Shorin, with the emphasis leaning towards Shuri Te (Shorin Ryu). It utilizes both principles of hard and soft, linear and circular. Due to the Japanization of it, a lot of straightforward Kendo philosophy has been added to it, or should I say supplanted the “softness” and circular action of ALL Okinawan karate. As a modern style, a Japanese style with some OKinawan influence, it is one of the best. Kyokushinkai borrows heavily from Shotokan, but uses boxing and Muay Thai principles too. Still it’s kata are the newer Okinawan versions (like Heian for Pinan, so on) and it is still very Shotokan-ish.
There is a lot of good Shotokan Sensei still alive. Many have trained in Kobudo (Okinawan weapons arts) and Okinawan Karate (Kanazawa Kyoshi comes to mind). The linear aspect of Shotokan is a result of it being a Kumite (sparring) intensive style. Bunkai is not usually emphasized, and besides many sensei do not know the application of a movement. Many of our students (I do Shorin) migrated from Shotokan dojos. Their stances tend to be long and wide; very unnatural. Still, they are very good, fast and strong with good stamina. Those traits are necessary for competition but not necessarily for self-preservation. Much of the intent of KarateJutsu was omitted by Funakoshi for a reason. At the same time, Shotokan is still better than most styles of karate due to its very strong Okinawan fighting history. I gots nothin’ but love for my Shotokan cousins.
Peace…
Originally posted by African Tiger
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My comment to you is, uh that’s a hell of an achievement for your instructor. But if he isn’t at least 7th degree at 60 years old, then something is wrong. My sifu is 6 years younger than yours and he’s no less than 9th Dan in 7 different arts
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Ok… you see it takes a certain amount of time to get a Dan…
you can be good and start at a young age and get to a ceratain dan quicker and be done with it in the least amount of time possible. Or you can seriously train and perfect all of your techniques to really achieve a high level of training.
Or you can just buy your belt like some other people i know…
not you or your sifu, but people i seriously know:D
And yea pot is good;) 
j/k
But 9th Dan in 7 different arts???
I guess hes pretty **** good!!!
any system that encourages everyone to participate will experience some shortcomings. as long as there are still some who train properly, all will be well
“And yea pot is good j/k”
j/k?
wtf?
Anyone who dismisses a stylist because they know karate, or tkd or whatnot, is ignorant. I have seen people from karate give tkd beat downs, tkd give beat downs to bjj, vice versa and such. Its the fighter more than anything, and the training. In all honesty tho, I have never seen a good TCMA vs. Karate or TKD… I studied old school TKD (not the olympic watered down sh!t) and as much as I make fun of it, it gave me a good base to start from.
On another note, anyone heard of a style called “water boxing” ?
so what’s the strategy the Shotokan fighter uses to get past the opponent’s long weapons (like jabs or kicks) and throw the reverse punch?
The one’s I’ve sparred like to lure me in close by allowing me to punch them several times in the face.
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I fought one guy that would wait for me to kick him in the head, take the blow on his facemask THWACK!, then rush in and try to take me down. I have it on tape and it is quite funny.
In all fairness, he practiced some other Okinawan Karate, not Shotokan.
And certainly in this case, it was the practicioner rather than the style.
Yea, they’e usually counter punchers. Back in my TKD days I was badly winded by a shotokan guy, couldn’t breathe for two or three minutes. I’ve never been so glad to start screaming
useless are those old karate macho blowhard guys that kiai every time they punch, etc. they are left in the dust of time. i can see them breaking bats on each others stupid shins, hahaha.
i used to use “nagashi -uke”, which is a soft sweeping parry as you step round offline to the side. Then i used to just punch or whatever depending on the situaiton
dawood
most Shotokan guys will jam the strike before it ‘gets out of the gate’ (jeet) or time it going back. I forget the Japanese term-help me out-maai-which I beleive combines no-mind with timing-meaning the practitioner is completely in the moment and as you initiate your attack, he drives right through you. This is seen in Kendo,Hsing-Yi, and Wing Chun, as wellas Hung-Ga and other arts. Pretty basic concept-intercepting intention. BTW, I also had a brief stint in Kyokushinkai, wish I did more, but my shins and ribs are thankfull I didn’t. Great style for guys in their teens and early 20’s for just plain spiritual toughening.
“Their forms don’t follow, they are typically stiff and while they move their hips, they don’t add leg power to it.” --Andy Miles
I practice shotokan and I can tell you that if that’s the case then these particular people aren’t doing the technique correctly…
There’s a sh*t load of leg power in shotokan techniques…assuming you are doing the technique correctly, of course.
As to the orignal post that started this thread, I think someone made a good observation about all the mcdojos. That’s not only watered down the basics of shotokan but also many other martial arts.
And as for 24fightingchickens. :rolleyes: Sigh What more need be said? It’s a shotokan site run by a former shotokan martial artist who HATES SHOTOKAN and EVERYTHING SHOTOKAN (except a few books written by one of his buddies). Yet, he runs a site about shotokan. I’ll leave it to Freud to try and figure that one out…
Get into the site and read his diary about when he went to Japan to ostensibly study shotokan. It’s very revealing re: his hatred of anything not American and his own naivete. Basically, it’s pages upon pages of him btching about how Japan is different from America. Well, no sht, Einstein…!
Still, it’s funny to read for the freak factor is nothing else…
Oh, and check out the place where he even rates his own web site. Kee-rist. What an anal retentive wanker…
But like I said, it’s good for a laugh or two if you have a couple of six packs inside you.
I think Im going to go pick fights at the kuk sool won school.
hehehee
Bruce Lee was the one who started that “Shotokan is too stiff” jazz but that was a generalization on his part. According to Bruce himself one of the finest Martial Artists he saw perform was a Japanese stylist. Really, if anything makes a style “stiff” it is the Sport Sparring! Plenty of different approaches and movements in the Kata!