Shotokan vs Shotokai

[random]

angelag said:

would have alarm bells ringing in my head.

That would be the ambulance

[kenshiro]

Actually I wouldn't be surprised even if some dojos prohibited free sparrings. That should be the original way of training in Karate and similarly there is no free sparring in Aikido. If there was an excellent master in your school, predefined sparring would be more efficient to improve your real techniques. I hear that top boxers don't often do free sparring as well. Also you can easily find most of the people fail to bring real Karate techniques into free sparrings.

[Aefibird]

kenshiro said:

Also you can easily find most of the people fail to bring real Karate techniques into free sparrings.

That's true. A lot of people (even if they're not using competition rules) tend to revert to "Sport Karate" mode and stick with the standard gyaku-tsuki/mawashigeri combo.

You see that too when some people are performing Ippon kumite - when the instructor gives them the option of performing any counter attack then their knowedge of kata and correct basic technique goes out of the window and they just end up doing any old thing.

[AngelaG]

Yeah, but you tend to get into trouble if you break someone's neck whilst sparring.....

If karate was to defend one's life by lethal force if neccessary then doing any sort of reality based sparring is an impossibility, unless you are prepared to kill, or seriously injure your partner...

[Aefibird]

angelag said:

Yeah, but you tend to get into trouble if you break someone's neck whilst sparring.....

Why?!?!

yeah, but I'm sure you know what I mean - you can spar and train without just resorting to the same old techniques every time. A lot of people (in ippon kumite, juy-ippon, etc etc etc) seem to think that mawashigeri and gyakutsuki are the only techniques available to them, when they could use so many more, especially if they know a little kata application.