I thought only 15 yrs old were not wise enough to realize that a single exposure to an art may not be a fair representation of that art. We all know of killer schools in BJJ and also many of us know some schools that are going the way of TKD.
Personally, I agree with e. kaye. A good shotokan school is tough as nails. Those guys will walk through walls, punch a whole in your chest and rip out your spine. Many Shotokan school train Full Contact and many include leg kicks. To say that someone would choose TKD over shotokan is absurd without knowing the specific schools. I know a ton of TKD that award a new belt every 2 months and allow kids 8 yrs old to earn an adult Black Belt after only 2 years of training. But even I know that there are some good TKD schools out there because the Instructor and his standards are way more important than what style you are training in.
There are killer Shotokan schools and crappy ones, but you can say that for every art including Muay Thai and BJJ. But for someone to say that Shotokan is a soft or BS style as a whole is just rediculous.
shotokan over tkd. buffgeo is correct. i trained in the 60's - 80's and we fought full contact and fought regularly in street fights besides our regular training. we fought point tourney where the points were always full contact and the participants were very tough.
these days from what i've seen the fight has been tken out of the training.
I started training in the UK. The KUGB is no joke. All of the senior BBs are guys from working class cities like Birmingham and Liverpool. They worked the doors of clubs and had plenty of practical experience. Every Sunday was reserved for "practical" Karate.
Tell Terry O'Neill his Shotokan sucks and see what happens.
I got my BB from three of the best Enoeda, Osaka and Mori. Trained with a bunch of other top guys. Kawasoe, Frank Brennan, Angelo Sanna, etc.
I was the only one that passed the BB test that day out of nearly twenty. They do not just give them out.
The kyokushin "family":
Kyokushin, Ashihara, World Oyama, Enshin, Seidokaikan, Shidokan, Daido juku, Sato juku, Zendokan (the japanese style that broke out of daido juku a few years ago, not the australian style with the same name) many MANY others. Styles where the goal is to KO the opponent (with little or no protective equipment used), and dont care if the techniques are less than formal.
But they are not that popular in the US. McDojos where you dont have to sweat and bleed for your belts, and karate moms can leave their kids while they go shopping, are MUCH more popular for some reason
Trad karate (shotokan, gojuryu, wadoryu etc) is ok IF they practice free, fullcontact sparring from day one. But almost none of them do that today. Most dojos only do light contact sparring, with breaks and restarts after each "point".
Some trad okinawan karate styles use full contact sparring with heavy protective armor. Not my taste, but better than nothing.
As a rule, any "american karate" suck.
BTW. Nice seeing my HL on daido juku. Its the first one posted, with "On Earth" as soundtrack. I made that about two years ago now.
I started training in the UK. The KUGB is no joke. All of the senior BBs are guys from working class cities like Birmingham and Liverpool. They worked the doors of clubs and had plenty of practical experience. Every Sunday was reserved for "practical" Karate.
Tell Terry O'Neill his Shotokan sucks and see what happens.
I got my BB from three of the best Enoeda, Osaka and Mori. Trained with a bunch of other top guys. Kawasoe, Frank Brennan, Angelo Sanna, etc.
I was the only one that passed the BB test that day out of nearly twenty. They do not just give them out.
Those days are long gone, sorry.
I have my 1st and 2nd Dans from Kanazawa and trained European shotokan for 15 years.
The VAST majority of shotokan (indeed, all) karate NEVER train full contact.
There is SOME heavy-ish contact to the chest/stomach.
Yeah, Terry O'Neill and some of those guys were tough as nails.
But they are very much the exception and cannot be used to portray karate as a whole.
i trained in the 60's - 80's and we fought full contact
What is your definition of full contact?
Nobody is portraying anything as more of a whole than the guy that posts that the whole is completely useless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhnXQi9V0k0
The brazilian kick is a karate kick. It works.