Burleigh Shotokan Karate Club - Newport : Be The Best!!

Reasons Why People Take Up Karate by Rob Redmond

Karate as Exercise

One of the major reasons that people take up Karate is to get a little exercise. In our electronically-powered world where the entire middle class is seemingly bolted down to a chair at work where we do little other than clickity-click with a mouse in an email program only to return home and clickity-click on a mouse in a web browser for entertainment, most of us could stand to get a little more exercise. And Karate does provide a great resource to draw upon for exercise.

One of the best reasons for taking up Karate for exercise purposes is that it is a group activity. Instead of drifting to a gym when you feel the urge, and often not drifting to the gym at all because you lack the motivation, we are able to find many workout buddies in a Karate club ready-made and waiting to both inspire us to show up and compete with them while training. As a group activity, Karate training provides more incentive to exercise, and that is probably the most important component of any exercise program. The thing that is wrong with most people's exercise routines is that they are lonely experiences which eventually de-motivate.

Karate training also provides a disciplined environment where you can be pretty sure that the class will be a solid workout. When I have found a workout buddy at the gym, he's usually kept me talking so much (or I him) that we don't really get in a good workout. In a Karate club with more than two or three members, usually the pressure to keep the training going has kept Karate classes silent and intense. This sort of motivation is hard to come by in a professional gym filled with treadmills and weights.

The motivation I get from a Karate club to exercise is hard to come by in a professional gym filled with treadmills and weights.

The competitive aspect of Karate also provides a push to train. Once we are ready for interactions with other trainees, great exercise is had by pushing harder and harder to go faster and make that punch or kick get through their defenses. Competition drives people to a great workout, which is probably why pickup games of basketball or racquetball have become so popular in the big, impersonal exercise industry which tries to provide for both major types of exercise.

There are two types of muscle training out there: anaerobic and aerobic. They are typically referred to by the more common jargon of strength training and cardio. Karate training is suited to both types, and a clever instructor can provide his class with low numbers of repetitions at high speeds as well as high numbers of repetitions with little rest at somewhat lower speeds to give his class whatever type of workout he might desire.

Flexibility training in the form of static and dynamic stretching is also common to Karate training. Becoming more flexible over time can reduce the chance of injury and allow you to perform more and more interesting and fun physical feats of skill. A very flexible person can hop over a railing without any trouble at all, whereas a stiff person will almost kill themselves trying to go over or under it. Flexibility cannot be denied as a major benefit from any exercise program.

Resistance training can also be had in a Karate dojo or performed using Karate techniques at home. Many Karate experts enjoy training with loops of heavy-duty surgical tubing so that they can step, punch, kick, and twist against resistance. This old trick has been known in the sport of Baseball for a long time, as farmer's sons could often be seen tying an inner-tube from an old-style tire to a fence post and then practicing the Baseball pitching motion against the resistance. Other forms of resistance training in Karate exist, but they are mostly isometric, so while they do not build big muscles or necessarily increase strength, they do provide excellent tone and conditioning. Standing in deep stances, stepping around in low stances, and moving slowly with antagonist muscles contracted are all such isometric exercises. All of them can be performed without a membership in a gym.

Karate training is extremely portable. I take my knowledge with me wherever I go, and I can work out in a small hotel room while traveling without having to get out my abdominal-exerciser or stand on a treadmill.

Which brings me to another reason that Karate is such an excellent all-around tool for exercise: Karate training is extremely portable. I take my knowledge with me wherever I go, and even though with a coach I would progress in my skills faster, there is no doubt that I can work out in a small hotel room while traveling without having to get out my abdominal-exerciser or stand on a treadmill. And, while it is not exactly the most ascetic and meditative experience I have ever had, I often perform my karate techniques while watching television.

I belong to one of those huge chain gyms that have big mirrors, high ceilings, rows and rows of machines, racquetball courts, a basketball court, an indoor pool, and an open aerobics room with a wooden floor. Despite joining it to use the machines in order to improve my strength and endurance, the most satisfying time I have in there is when I go in the aerobics room during lunch and practice Karate techniques in front of the expensive mirrors on the cushioned and highly-polished wood floor. Walking on a treadmill staring at a television set only gives me endurance and fat-burning. My Karate practice provides me with that, if I want it, or speed training, if I want it, or I can get some mental sharpening in by trying to concentrate on this detail or that detail. I also reap the other benefits of Karate training, and when I am done, I don't have to panic if the gym is closed. I can just pound out some techniques at home if I want to.

Karate training is not the absolute perfect exercise. Certainly looking at the population of any Karate club will tell us that. Everyone is not built like a supermodel or a body builder. Karate training does not provide muscle-building exercises, nor is it usually aerobic enough to burn off all of the fat on our bodies, especially after we advance to the point that we are learning to relax and no longer get as much of a workout in a short time as we did when we began. Karate training is also difficult to do on our own unless we are sufficiently advanced to be able to remember what a typical workout should even have and then perform it without injuring ourselves.

Weight lifting is better for strength and muscle building. Running is better for endurance. Yoga is better for flexibility. However, do any of these other exercise routines have all of the benefits that Karate training has as an exercise program? For someone with a tight schedule, a long commute, and a lot on his mind, Karate training can be an efficient, all-around answer to the question of exercise.

Karate training certainly has it down-sides, as does any activity where more than two people are involved. There are problems in the world everywhere. Focusing on them will not solve anything unless we are specifically working to fix a problem or bring it to light. No matter the exercise programs I have tried, I always find myself coming back to my Shotokan Karate training and enjoying the fact that I have a gym built into my mind that I can call upon any time I want, and that I can do whatever I want with it when I am alone.

Karate as a Social Activity

So, you just moved to a new city to take a great job, and you have no friends. You want to meet people, and as any successful, single person knows, there's no better way to make friends than to take a class. Should you take a karate class?

Karate is a mostly individual activity. Interactions between students are usually limited to conflict-oriented drills where you face each other and try to block their attacks or get past their blocks. Students are ranked, usually with the intent of creating some form of merit/tenure-based hierarchy, and the higher ranked students are usually a proud clique - somewhat aloof toward the less experienced students who tend to quit after a few months. Many clubs compensate for the anti-social nature of their training by hanging around after practice together or by frequently holding social activities outside of class.

When choosing a karate class as a social activity, I think it's important that the student-to-be pay less attention to the type of martial art and the style of training and pay more attention to the kind of people that they will be training and therefore associating with. Are these people you want to be friends with? Don't make the mistake I have made of meeting with unpleasant people regularly because you are convinced they have the best training for you. Years later, you may find yourself looking back and regretting that decision.

I regret having trained with people that I did not click with very well because I thought they would provide me with superior training and therefore better results in terms of skill. My best karate experiences have been those in a tight-knit group of fun people who were not as gung-ho about their training as they were about the karate club social group itself.

The karate club you see me sitting with above is the best experience I ever had practicing karate, and even though I have not trained there in 11 years, I still have regular communication with five of the people in this photograph. We were a very close group, and while we were serious about our karate training, we were also serious about having fun with each other.

I do not have much more to write about this topic, but I believe you do. I think it would be more helpful for some of you to contribute opinions about socializing in karate both good and bad so that readers of this article who are considering karate can learn from your experience and hopefully do better than or as well as we did.

Karate as a Competitive Sport

I was a young man when I became interested in competing in karate tournaments. I remember the very first one that I ever attended. It was held in the gymnasium with a yellow rubber floor which normally served as a community basketball court. Surrounding the building were a dozen baseball fields, and they were filled with young people playing little league baseball. I remember driving up next to the gymnasium in my car, parking next to a fence, and walking toward the old building with several other karate players.

In the lobby of the gymnasium, there were two tables set up. Behind these tables sat two volunteers each. I stood in line for a while, and then I was asked to fill out a registration form. On it, I was asked to state my rank, to sign a waiver of liability, and to state which divisions I would be competing in. The divisions that were listed were forms, fighting, and weapons. I was confused as to why a karate tournament would include a division for weapons, because karate is a Japanese word which means "empty hand." How could someone with empty hands do anything with a weapon?

I walked through the gymnasium carrying my bag with me, and proceeded toward the locker room. Inside, everyone was changing into their karate uniforms. Some karate Corona uniforms were white. One man had a uniform which was airbrushed to make him look like a tiger. The arms, legs, and torso were all airbrushed with orange and black stripes. He had also used face paint which was orange and black to round out the look.

I walked out onto the floor of the gymnasium and found a quiet corner to stretch out in. As I sat on the floor straining to reach past my toes and pull my face into my knees, I saw others stretching as well, some more flexibly than I could ever hope to achieve. The entire event had a carnival atmosphere, and many of the competitors seem to know one another personally as they greeted each other in a familiar way, slapped one another's backs, and smiled when they saw one another. One man with a megaphone announced that a black belt meeting would begin in a few minutes, and that all black belts were required to attend it. I stood up from my spot, and I walked with the lobby of the gymnasium where all of the other black belts were headed.

We gathered in a small room which must have served as a meeting room of some kind for the community because it contained folding chairs and tables. We did not sit down. Instead, everyone stood around the edges of the room listening to a man in the center to tell us how to properly referee a tournament. He made along dramatic and boring speech, and seemed more determined to explain and teach to us his personal beliefs about karate practice than about how to run a proper karate tournament. Eventually, the meeting was ended and all of us returned to the gymnasium. Five of the older competitors had been chosen to serve as referees for the black belt forms competition. They teach grabbed a chair and the five of them sat next to one another in the middle of the gymnasium.

The rest of the black belts headed to the other side of the room, and we continued stretching. One of the judges came over to us carrying a hat filled with little pieces of paper upon which were written numbers. We eat reached into that hat one at a time and chose a number. I chose number one. Little did I know, but I had chosen the one number in the hat that everyone was trying desperately to avoid. It was the reason that numbers were placed into a hat in the first place. Everyone else knew that the first person to compete in the forms division would be used as a baseline for the scores that all who followed would receive, and he would therefore receive a score that would not be high enough to win no matter how well he competed. Ignorant of my bad luck, I walked out onto the floor when my name was called, and I began to perform the kata that I had practiced many times leading up to this event. After finishing it, an array of judges who were wearing anything from stars and stripes uniforms to silk Chinese pajamas bestowed upon me a score - almost always one of 7.5. After I was finished, I sat down and I watched the others perform one at a time. The last person to perform was apparently famous, because when he walked out onto the floor the spectators in the gymnasium rose to their feet and began to applaud. Music began to play from somewhere off to the side, and what he performed was more of a dance that it was a karate. The raised his right leg to perform a round kick, and leaving his leg up in the air, he performed about twenty or so to a fast paced drumbeat coming from the portable radio sitting in a place I feel I should refer to as offstage.

When he was finished, the crowd once again rose to their feet and applauded with great enthusiasm. The other competitors who had performed kata that looked more like the one I had done exchanged glances with one another and with myself. Their faces revealed that they were feeling the same thing that I was: what he had done was not really karate so much as it was dance. In the end, the entire competition had been a farce, and anyone coming to it without a prearranged, choreographed dance routine executed to a techno song never had any hope of winning.

After the forms competition for black belt men was finished, we were asked to serve as referees for all of the other divisions. I was escorted to a seat at a 20?x20? ring in which children and adults of all the levels would compete against one another and other forms and fighting. No matter the differences of their styles, they would be judged by me, someone who had absolutely no knowledge of their martial arts unless they happened to do the one that I was trained in. I guess I should also mention that I was completely untrained to serve as a referee in a tournament at this time, and I was only seventeen years old to boot.

After eleven hours sitting in a chair, I began to feel more like conscripted labor than a karate tournament referee. Hundreds of competitors went by so quickly that I barely had time to even consider whether or not they were actually any better than one another at what they were doing. And many cases are truly believed that none of them were any good at all. But I tried to give scores the reflective of someone who was much more interested in what they were doing and I felt at that time.

At the end of the day, the sun was setting, and all the eight or nine black belt men were left in the gymnasium with one another. It was in then that the final competition was held for black belt men's fighting. Four of us served as referees for the others who fought each other quickly. We were finished in a matter of minutes. At the end of the day, I spent only five minutes competing and eleven and a half hours sitting in a plastic chair. And in my experience, this is not unusual for a karate tournament.

I have also competed in tournaments hosted by major credit associations which were specifically Shotokan in style. These events are usually closed so that only members of the organization which is promoting them can participate, and so they are run a little differently. Because everyone does the same style of karate at these events, kata competition can consist of to the performing at the exact same time. One of the competitors wears a red colored belt, and each of the referees is given a white and a red flag to hold in each hand. Both athletes perform the same kata at the same time. After the performances over the lead referee bellows is missing, and the referees must hold up either the flight or the red flag in order to indicate the winner. The basic kata of the style are used for the initial round of competition, and when the only a two or fewer or left, then they are allowed to perform their favorite kata one at a time. This last part is exactly like any of the competition, such as the one I previously described, with the first man almost automatically being eliminated because his score is the average of all of the scores.

Fighting competition is single elimination, just like in the open competitions, although sometimes that year that the Competitors where is different. Association events are often more organized, and do not have to the initial one hour-long meeting in which the rules and all of the methods and procedures are taught to the referees which are conscripted from the black belt competitors. Also unseen were the hideous uniforms such as the airbrushed tiger stripe uniform that I described previously. Despite the belief of many to the contrary, association tournaments which are specifically Shotokan in style and open competitions in which anyone can compete are the same thing.

Participating in competitions is an excellent motivator to continue and even increase training in anticipation of the event.

Many people enjoy these competitions as the primary reason for which they continue to practice karate. Participating in competitions is an excellent motivator to continue and even increase training in anticipation of the event. Karate tournaments are also an excellent place to meet other experts and to learn new things while associating with people that you would otherwise never meet. Also, there is something about the pressure of competition which pushes a man to struggle Harter but in his training in preparation and in his effort during the competition itself.

I believe there are very few karate experts who practice karate for the sole reason of participating in karate competitions. More than likely, competition is merely one of many reasons that karate experts continue to practice despite long years of training leading to a flattening learning curve. However, karate competitions remain popular among karate practitioners, despite the obvious flaws including being conscripted to serve as a referee, using largely untrained judges, and a training and waiting long hours in order to participate for just a few minutes.

I do not believe that karate competitions are a reason that very many beginners take up the martial arts. More likely is that their appeal is limited to people who were already expert in karate and wish to test their abilities. I believe there are a few reasons for this, not the least of which is that karate competitions are terribly subjective, and because of this no athlete can be sure that he will win no matter his ability or his long hours of training. When I have competed in martial arts events, I felt as though I may as well have been in a popularity contest. Unlike baseball, basketball, and other sports, karate competitions rarely produce winners that anyone can clearly acknowledge and appreciate. Often the losers of karate competitions come away feeling cheated a rather than defeated. I have even thought before that karate competition is probably a good reason to take up a different sport, one with rules and trained referees.

Karate tournaments, while serving to liven things up a bit and provide objectives and a timeline for establishing a training regimen, still fail to deliver in terms of a spectator sport. As of today, tournaments do not attract many spectators other than the relatives and friends of the competitors. Even worse competitors often have to pay in order to enter the competition.

But some experts do maintain involvement in karate specifically for competitions. The reason? Karate sparring provides a very personal victory when you win. The victor does not merely do better than others; he individually and personally bests another person. That sort of victory can be very satisfying to hyper competition people. The loser is humiliated, and the winner stands over him like a tower. That is, if the competition is manned by excellent and objective referees, and in my opinion, almost none are.

Karate as Self-Defense

I believe that most people who seek out martial arts instruction are looking for a way to reduce fear. Whether they are afraid of being surprised by a mugger in a dark alley or being challenged to a fight in the parking lot by a kid at school, most people who push their children or walk themselves through the doors of a karate school for the very first time hoping that they can increase their sense of personal power over the world and reduce their feelings of fear.

Many people might debate whether or not they took up karate initially because they were afraid, and some might deny it vehemently, but I feel that the difference between someone who takes up karate and someone who takes up another activity is usually at least some small hope in learning to defend oneself and no longer be afraid of other people.

From watching TV shows, movies, and reading books about martial artists who have various adventures, the general public seems to have come to believe for a while that martial arts training would turn them into something akin to a super hero, so powerful was the exotic and mysterious nature of martial arts training.

Today, the public at large is connected by the Internet and cable television such that they no longer see the wider world as being as mysterious as they once did, and so the martial arts have lost the appeal that they enjoyed during the period from the 1960's to the 1980's. Despite reduced enrollment and lower overall interest in the martial arts, many beliefs persist from the days when the public was more fascinated by these skills which often motivate people to enroll in classes:

Martial Arts are great for defending against sudden attack in the streets
Speed is more important than size or strength
Size and gender are not important in self-defense
Other forms of self-defense are inferior

One of the biggest fears that the average middle class person walking the streets of a large, seemingly dangerous city might is that they will be attacked by surprise, have their belongings stolen and be injured, killed, or at the very least, humiliated. Quite a few people walk into karate schools and practice in the hope that if someone attempts to attack them, that they will have a response ready and defeat the attacker. Others are more afraid of their fellow students in school and others they know trying to bully them or challenge them to a fight.

Thus there are two possible self defense scenarios: surprise attack or duel. You will either be suddenly attacked out of nowhere, or you will be challenged to a fight and will have a chance to prepare yourself mentally for the exchange.

Shotokan karate seems designed to support dueling rather than defense against a surprise attack. Shotokan training typically focuses almost exclusively on dueling situations, and therefore seems to be optimized for dueling one to one. All Shotokan competitions are duels, and virtually all Shotokan training drills assume two people standing toe to toe punching and kicking at one another in a dueling scenario. Different instructors and experts approach self-defense in different ways. Some focus on the competition style sparring that is so popular today, and others prefer the emerging interest in jujutsu style defenses as derived from kata. Either method, however, is really training for a dueling situation, not training against a surprise attack.

Training in defense against surprise attack involves learning to escape from already desperate situations. Surprise Attack is Difficult to Overcome. The problem is reflexes. Your current reflex to being surprised is to inhale and stiffen up. If you train that response to one in which you respond with violence, you will end up injuring everyone that startles you. This should illustrate why training for surprises is impractical. Luckily, human beings are not very programmable in such a base way, and the startle response tends to stick the way it is unless the person in question finds himself in a very potent environment such as constant, daily combat as in a real battle. Reflexes developed in combat lessen after the combat is over and continue to diminish over time, so even this training is no safety measure.

It is impractical to do what Inspector Clouseau did in the Pink Panther movies and have a martial arts expert as hired help jumping out from behind doors all the time attacking us when we come home. As you can seen from what happens to him, the only thing that happens is a lot of injuries, desperate struggles, and a destroyed apartment. As a result, prevention is the only real usable, civilian remedy for surprise attack. Everyone, even a karate expert, is susceptible to being surprised and overwhelmed. That's why all smart villains use The Element of Surprise… That's why it is called a surprise.

I believe that karate training is optimized as a dueling art. When approached by an enemy who says, "Shall we step outside?", the man trained in dueling is unafraid and defends his honor if he so chooses. But when surprised by a mugger on the street, no matter the amount of karate training at a school at night after work, a karate expert remains completely vulnerable, and nothing he has learned will be available to him until he is done being startled and is already at a severe disadvantage.

Just as karate training cannot provide you with the ability to overcome your startle reflex and block every attack from every angle as if psychic, it is also not a secret, magical system that can be employed to help the meek overpower the strong, much to every small person's disappointment. What karate training really does is take a person with a potential of 100% and a current output of 50% and teach them to achieve output of 80-90%. Karate training is about using what you have and getting more out of it.

If you are a 90 pound weakling, you can learn to get more out of your 90 pounds by increasing your speed, flexibility, distancing, and timing. But that does not mean that you will therefore be a superior fighter to those who are not trained in karate. It merely means you will be better than you used to be. That might not be enough. You will increase the range of people that you are able to defend yourself against, but that range will still have limitations based upon your size, strength, aggressiveness, skill, and the same qualities in your opponent.

After all, it isn't all dependent on your qualities. Your opponent's relative level of threat to you is equally important, and how the two of you stack up against each other as individuals is very important in predicting the outcome of a fight.

But even if I am larger, stronger, faster, meaner, better trained, and carrying a big stick, I know from my experience in the martial arts that I can still lose. Anyone can step on a banana peel and slip and fall at the wrong moment. Trained fighters know that fights are unpredictable and volatile events and no matter your expertise in fighting, anything can happen. No truly experienced fighter feels overly confident entering into a confrontation, no matter who the opponent is. Sometimes random events conspire to deliver victory to the hands of the one with less chance of winning.

I believe it best to explain to new students that karate training will help them get more from what they already have, and therefore I will push them to go beyond what they believe their limits are. However, I also remind them that they still have actual limits, and that we will not be able to go beyond them.

This brings up the issue of gender in fighting. There are exceptions to every rule, but in general, men have some distinct advantages over women as fighters: They are naturally more aggressive and risk-taking. On average, men have more pounds of muscle mass as a percentage of body weight. Men generally have larger, stronger bones. Men have superior spatial perception on average. The average man is faster, stronger, meaner, and more naturally inclined to have distancing and timing skills than the average woman. These generalizations are politically incorrect to acknowledge these days, and because of that, some karate instructors refuse to believe it.

When making any generalization, the first objection that someone will make is always that they know of an exception. Yes, there are tiny, weak, cowardly men and there are large, muscular, aggressive, steroid-using women out there, and those women can probably break those men over their knees like twigs. But the generalization holds. Most women, facing a man, bring much less to the fight, and therefore have lower chances of success.

I was very unhappy to come to grips with the fact that my size and relative strength were not going to be limits I could overcome completely with karate training. But, I have come to accept that I have certain limits.

When I try to punch or kick someone, I am attempting to create a collision that will damage my opponent or be very painful. Pain and damage will increase the harder I hit someone, so my goal is always to hit as hard as I can if I am trying to disable someone completely. Usually, when we start discussing how to hit hardest, someone will walk in the room and start spouting a bunch of physics equations, pointing to the equation for Force, the equation for Power, or the equation for Momentum. Others will start talking about transferring kinetic energy.

That's great theory for an after dinner chat, but it makes everything too complex and tries to analyze things that really are not important to us as people looking to push our fists into other people's faces in order to defend ourselves. Everything we really need to know is pretty simple and easy to understand.

We hit hardest when our fist is moving fast and when our fist has a lot of weight behind it. A 100 pound ball of gold traveling at 100 mph will go right through a brick wall. A 2 oz ball the same size doing 100mph will bounce off of the wall. A 100 pound ball of gold doing 1 mph will also bounce off of the wall. Weight is important. Speed is important as well. When we punch or kick something, we want our technique to go fast and be heavy.

But when thinking about training, we are interested in what we can change. Most people can punch a certain speed. I believe that training only increases their speed a small amount. Most people only gain a small increase with karate training. Weight, on the other hand, can be manipulated by putting as much of the body as possible behind a punch or kick. Weight is a huge variable because it can range from a 15 pound arm to a 150 pound weight from your arm, shoulder, half your torso, and your front leg. It all depends on what position you are in when your fist lands and what body parts are in motion pushing your fist or foot forward.

Physicists argue incessantly and without resolution about what equation describes a punch or kick. Force, Momentum Transfer, Kinetic Energy transfer, and lattices of moving points with combinations of these effects have all been argued to death without any conclusion being reached. The bottom line seems to be found in common sense: hit with something heavy, hard, and really fast. Do everything you can to make your punches and kicks heavy, hard, and fast.

Therefore, not only is karate training helpful, but so is being big, strong, muscular, having good endurance, and also a nasty disposition and some confidence is helpful as well.

The karate industry has done nothing to dispel the myth of the small, weak person taking up karate and being able to overcome an entire gang of bullies. That is probably because if potential customers learn that they can take karate lessons for ten years and still lose a fight to a high school football player, they might not sign up for karate classes. Instead, they might invest in a gun and take tennis lessons.

While you are lamenting that karate training might not enable you to beat a larger, stronger, meaner bully, you can take heart from the fact that bullies are usually easily deterred with a token defense. Like most predatory animals, bullies are usually put off by a ferocious and determined defense, even if there is no chance they will be defeated. Some women have successfully used hand-to-hand combat training to injure and deter male attackers despite all factors being in favor of the male. A determined, violent defense may deter an attacker and make him give up in frustration if not fear. Often the little cat that stands up to the big dog ends up chasing it out of its territory.

If statistics show that most attackers that are resisted strongly tend to retreat no matter how effective the resistance, your token defense will improve your odds if you are trained to make it more effective, however hopeless it may be, and it could be your attacker steps on a banana peel. This is good news, because it means you always have a chance, and that by resisting someone who is trying to harm you, you increase the chances that they will leave you alone.

The bad news is that most of the bad guys out there are bad all day long, every day, their whole lives through. Most bad guys are seasoned experts at intimidation and violence. For them, it's their daily mugging, their regular bar fight that they like to start, or their usual dose of bullying someone weaker than they. For you, it's a once in a lifetime attack that you are praying you will survive. The willingness to do evil and the enjoyment of making others suffer combined with a bad guy's superior experience is usually enough to give him a huge advantage that you will have a hard time overcoming.

The willingness to do evil and the enjoyment of making others suffer combined with a bad guy's superior experience is usually enough to give him a huge advantage that you will have a hard time overcoming.

Let's face it: bad guys are typically poor males with almost nothing to lose. Most of the folks who take up karate are middle or upper class people who cannot afford so much as a black eye in the conference room the next morning. The victim who has everything to lose has a mind full of consequences from a proper upbringing. The deck is stacked against the person who can afford karate lessons.

But there is more good news. Most bad guys perpetrate their crimes against other bad guys, or against people who have demographics different from those who typically sign up for karate lessons. The typical middle class person who is afraid of being mugged is actually very unlikely to ever be mugged during his life.

Before considering taking up karate lessons for self defense, I believe it is a better idea to consider self-defense first, and then decide whether or not karate training will help. And when I think of self-defense, the first thing that comes to mind is not jumping through the air throwing karate techniques. It is prevention, because prevention is the best defense.

Self-defense means to protect yourself. I believe we can best protect ourselves without challenging every would-be bad guy that dares to offend our sensitive nature. Some of these rules should be pretty obvious. Don't make obscene gestures at motorcycle gangs on the freeway. Don't cut people off in traffic. Allow entering vehicles to merge onto the highway. Don't go to dangerous places where people are drinking and doing drugs. Don't let yourself be surrounded by irresponsible people. Don't go places after dark alone. Keep a very alert way about you, and don't be afraid to ask for an escort or call out for help when you are intimidated. Don't go to grocery stores at night, and don't go jogging alone in bad neighborhoods. Stay out of convenience stores. Keep your car well-maintained, and check the tires, oil, and gas daily.

No matter the martial art, it is probably not going to pay off in benefits of self defense equal to the cost of you going to class regularly for years.

No matter the martial art, it is probably not going to pay off in benefits of self defense equal to the cost of you going to class regularly for years. It is a comical tragedy that so many people spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours sweating and suffering, punching and kicking in funny white pajamas for years in order to defend themselves when simply choosing a safer lifestyle would have solved their problems with little more than slight inconvenience.

Most people will be attacked once in their lifetimes. Usually this encounter is not life threatening. Usually it can be avoided or survived simply by preparing properly and offering a violent resistance of any kind. Karate will improve your chances, if you train "for real" for a decade, but it will not equalize the playing field necessarily. It all depends on who you are and who the attacker is. That's where your odds are generated.

Karate training can give you a little more of what you've already got, but not so much more than you will become some sort of death machine or professional assassin. Karate certainly can accentuate your ability to defend yourself, and it is one of many combined reasons that most people have for doing karate. But as the only reason, it is perhaps not the best one for everyone.

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