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WHAT IS KARATE?
I do karate since 1992 in our club Budosport Heerlerbaan (graduation: black belt, since december 1999).
Karate is a wonderful kind of sport to learn about and actually is a "school";
karate-do (the way you must follow to learn all the fascinating aspects of karate).
You can see karate as;
* self defense,
* a kind of living,
* relief,
* social contact with others who have the same interest,
* science.
To me karate acts in all the five ways;
self defense; a selfconfident feeling in uncertain situations
a kind of living; respect for the fellowmen and selfcontrol in difficult situations
relief; mental discharge of everyday's fuss
social contact; in a pleasant way doing sports with others
science; the "why" of doing karate
There are a lot of karate styles, the style I do is called Shotokan.
The differences between the different kind of styles are mainly the stances and the way of doing techniques (read: blocking, punching, kicking).
WHAT IS KARATE ?
Karate is a martial art where the accent lies on blocking, punching, kicking.
You do this with your whole body; very important are the stances and the hips.
So, if you do a block, punch or kick you should always have a good stance (that means stay strong) and use your hip in a good and powerful way (to give the block, punch or kick an extra push).
In the karate lessons these aspects get a lot of attention.
This forms the basis for the blocking, punching and kicking.
One needs a lot of patience and perseverance.
The starting karateka should keep this in mind and the fascinating karatemovie-kicks are still dreams.
Only the karateka who has got the ripeness, as human being and as martial artist, will be able to do the more "spectacular" things.
A good control of kick, punch and block techniques are an essential part of karate, as extra value to the basis (stances and learning of techniques).
You can get this control only by years of training of body and mind.
Except the basis also the blocking, punching and kicking gets a lot of attention.
One can get a high degree in perfection by intensive training.
To learn the mentioned things above karate contains different parts;
* kihon: technique training,
* kata: doing the techniques you've learned in the kihon part in a predefined form,
* kumite: the free fighting: use of the learned techniques in a free way.
Karate exists in different kind of styles (and so a lot of karate organisations).
One of the styles of the traditional karate is Shotokan.
Karate has an examinationsystem, in which the karateka (the person who does karate), can earn a higher degree dependent on the individual development.
lowest kyu degree: white belt,
yellow belt,
orange belt,
green belt,
purple-1 belt,
purple-2 belt,
brown-1 belt,
brown-2 belt,
highest kyu degree: brown-3 belt,
lowest dan degree: black-1 belt,
etc.
The graduations from white to brown are called kyu-degrees (pupil degrees). Black belt-1 and higher are called dan-degrees (master degrees).
The personal motivation for doing karate decides whether you follow this "line" of graduations or not.
If you see karate as "your life" you will pursue higher degrees than someone who does karate because of relief.
Karate can be done by younger and older people.
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