Originally posted by Kung Lek
[B]In my opinion, Kyokushin Kai Karate is the “best” karate you can study if you are gonna study Karate in modern context. THis is only my opinion, I have studied Karate and no offense intended for those who practice whatever you practice.
peace [/B]
Alaikum Asalaam! BTW what style(s) of karate did you study (for 4 years)? For commercial purposes, like selling “Inside Kung-Fu” mags, you are correct. Kyokushinkai (and K1) is the best sport karate there is.
There are styles out there which will teach you kickboxing skills and self-defense. There are styles out there that very few folks have a clue about. Like anything, just because it’s popular doesn’t make it the “best”.
In Okinawa and on Japan we sparred with many different ryuha (subsystems). The kyokushin guys weren’t any better than the Shotokan dudes. In fact they fought basically the same way; Out of control and straightforward. This was schoolboy karate at its finest. They were too tense to spar with fluidity, quickness and speed. We didn’t have K.O. or knockdown matches, but backfists and ridgehands to the head and face were allowed, as were throws, sweeps and leg kicks. A couple of guys from the KK dojo and one of our girls (who was sparring a much bigger DUDE) were knocked a little silly. One KK guy that got a good low roundhouse/high roundhouse combo to the head, thought his moms was trying to wake him up for school. He was like 30! Those were the rules we used at our dojo all the time.
At first they disagreed to the face contact as we were just wearing hand pads. We thought it odd that they didn’t allow face/head contact in their kumite. Their Sensei explained that they often fought bare-knuckled, so I guess that made sense. Well anyway, since they weren’t use to face contact we would rack up the points. They only tried to punch the body, and when they started to go high with their hands, they were slow, looping and often hesitant. I wonder why? They got winded quickly and insisted that we fight 2, not 4 (which was standard at our school), 4 minute rounds . Our students agreed emphatically. It was frantic, but kind of easy to score. A lot of our students though it odd that they taped their ankles and feet. Why? They said that due to their intense training methodology many guys had bad ankles and unhealed, broken bones in their feet. Wow, all that and this was all they could produce?
When the sparring was done, they would argue that the backfists and ridgehands wouldn’t have done anything in reality except anger them. My sensei use to come back with, “yes you are right, without padding they would have broken noses or concussed temples. Ridgehands can become hooks and backfists straight leads and jabs.” They couldn’t say a thing about our kicks, especially our rendition of leg kicking, which was always setting up sweeps and trips. They didn’t like the “holding and hitting” as they put it. We just giggled and said that was all Ti and this was “karaTI” after all! This happened every single time we would spar with a certain mainland school. They would invite us many times throughout the year. Same result every time.
Kyokushinkai in the USA must be a different animal. Since I’ve moved back in the early 90s all I hear about is Shotokan, TKD and Kyokushin. I guess that’s what people have to choose from and observe. There’s very little legit karate out there (about 20 % of schools). The same can be said for Kung Fu, probably. Europe is even more worse off.
I saw it as karate that used brute strength to compensate for its lack of varied and indepth knowledge of karate. Now Ashihara’s Karate, a Kyokushinkai offshoot, was very intriguing. Their use of forms and its practical application was refreshing to see in Japanese Karate. Maybe Oyama’s karate will finally make it back home to the Ryukyus after all. Regardless, the world will still be oblivious to the facts. They’ll say that KK was the innovator and earth Mover, hahaha!
So for those of us who study “Whateva-otha’ Ryu” I’d like to say go ahead and kill yourselves in training. It ain’t making me an invalid at 60. I get stronger and better everyday. Lates…
