Karate

At its simplest it is a striking art: punches, strikes, kicks and blocks, trained through repetition, patterned solo forms and partner work, and organised into a graded syllabus that takes a student from beginner to black belt over several years. That much is common to every version of it.

What is not common is almost everything else. The art reached the Japanese mainland from Okinawa in the early twentieth century and fragmented as it spread, and the resulting style families differ in stance depth, in how power is generated, in how much contact is normal, in which forms are taught and in what the training is understood to be for. Those are not cosmetic differences. A student moving between two clubs in different families will find much of their technical detail contradicted, in good faith, by an equally qualified instructor.

On top of that sits an organisational landscape that is genuinely confusing. Styles have their own international bodies; the sport has a separate international federation with its own competition rules; and national governance has been repeatedly reorganised. A beginner who cannot work out which body their club belongs to has not misunderstood something — the picture really is like that.

What a session contains

Kihon, kata, kumiteBasics, forms and partner work, in varying proportions by club.

Time to black belt

Commonly four to six yearsVaries substantially by style and association. It marks competence, not mastery.

Contact level

From light to fullThe single biggest difference between clubs, and the thing to ask about first.

What you need to start

Loose clothing and a trial sessionNearly every club will let you try before buying a gi.

What actually happens, in order:

1. 1

   Step 1: Watch a class before you join one

   Any club worth joining will let you. What you are looking for is how beginners are treated when they get something wrong, and whether the sparring looks like something you want to do in six months.

   You will know it worked when: You have seen the thing rather than a description of it.

2. 2

   Step 2: Train in what you own for the first few weeks

   Loose trousers and a t-shirt. Buying a gi before you know you will stay is the classic beginner overspend, and clubs expect you not to.

   You will know it worked when: No money committed while you decide.

3. 3

   Step 3: Expect the first month to be basics and etiquette

   Stances, a small number of strikes and blocks, how to bow in and out, where to stand. It is repetitive on purpose — the repetition is the training method, not a preamble to it.

   You will know it worked when: You can join in a class without being lost.

4. 4

   Step 4: Take out a licence and insurance

   Nearly every club requires an association licence with insurance before you grade or spar. It is a routine annual cost and it is also your first clue about which organisation your club belongs to.

   You will know it worked when: You are covered, and you know who governs your club.

5. 5

   Step 5: Grade when the instructor says, not when you want to

   The first grading usually comes after three to four months. Gradings are not tests you can revise for; they are the instructor confirming what they have already watched you do for months.

   You will know it worked when: A first coloured belt, and a syllabus for the next one.

6. 6

   Step 6: Start sparring lightly, with kit

   Mitts, gum shield, and whatever else the club requires. Controlled contact with a cooperative partner is a skill of its own and is where most of the real learning about distance happens.

   You will know it worked when: Sparring is a normal part of the week rather than an ordeal.

The thing nobody warns beginners about is how much of the first year is spent on a very small number of movements. This is genuinely how the art is taught, and it separates people fairly quickly: those who find the repetition meditative stay, and those who wanted variety usually do not. Neither response is wrong, and it is worth knowing which you are before paying for a year.

Competitive karate under the World Karate Federation is contested in two separate disciplines with separate rulebooks: kata, judged on the performance of a form, and kumite, a point-scoring bout with controlled contact. The federation publishes each set of rules as its own document and revises them regularly, which is why any figure quoted second-hand should be checked against the current version.

The important thing for a beginner to understand is that the competitive sport is one expression of the art rather than its definition. Scoring rules reward what the rules reward, and a club training for competition will train differently from one that is not. Neither is training incorrectly; they are training for different assessments.

The broad shape of competition, without quoting figures that change:

• Kata competition — Performed solo or as a synchronised team, judged against criteria covering technical performance and athletic performance. Which forms are permitted, and how the scoring works, are set by the federation and revised periodically.
• Kumite competition — A bout between two competitors in weight categories, scoring for techniques delivered to defined target areas with control. Different scoring values attach to different techniques, and excessive contact is penalised — control is a scoring requirement rather than a courtesy.
• Para karate — Contested in kata, with categories covering visual impairment, intellectual impairment and wheelchair users, under its own published competition rules.
• Other rulesets — Full-contact styles run their own competitions under entirely different rules, and several style associations hold their own championships. A club’s competition calendar tells you a great deal about which world it belongs to.

In the order you will need it:

• Nothing, for the first few weeks — Loose trousers and a t-shirt. Clubs expect this and it is not a mark against you.
• A gi — The uniform. A student-weight gi at £20–£40 is entirely adequate for years; heavier competition-weight ones at £60–£120 hold their shape better and are what people buy second. Buy generously long — cotton shrinks noticeably in the first few washes, and every club has somebody whose trousers no longer reach.
• A licence book — Association membership with insurance, usually renewed annually, and usually required before you can grade or compete.
• Gum shield — The first safety item and the one nobody should economise on. A boil-and-bite is fine to start with.
• Mitts, shin and instep pads — Required for sparring in most clubs. Federation-approved kit is only necessary if you intend to enter competition under those rules, and buying it before then is a common waste.
• Body protector and headgear — Style- and age-dependent. Junior and full-contact competition generally require more; check what your specific club and association mandate rather than buying on general advice.

The single most common purchasing error is buying competition-grade equipment in the first month. It is expensive, it is specified against a rulebook the buyer has not yet read, and it is usually the wrong colour for their association. Wait until the club tells you what it needs.

Almost every class is built from the same three components, and understanding what each is trying to achieve makes the whole thing far less mysterious than it looks from the doorway.

• Kihon — basics — Individual techniques drilled in isolation, usually in lines, usually to a count. The purpose is to make a movement automatic and correct under no pressure, so that it survives being put under some. It is the least interesting part to watch and the part most instructors regard as the foundation of everything else.
• Kata — forms — Fixed sequences performed solo against imagined opponents, each one a compressed record of a set of techniques and principles. Kata are the memory of the art: they are how the syllabus is transmitted, they are what most gradings are assessed on, and they are a competitive discipline in their own right. The interpretation of what a given movement is actually for — bunkai — is a substantial study on its own and varies between styles.
• Kumite — sparring — Partner work, ranging from entirely prearranged sequences at beginner level through semi-free drills to free sparring. The prearranged forms are not a watered-down version of the free one; they exist to build distance and timing safely, and every style uses them.

The proportion between the three is one of the clearest differences between clubs, and it maps roughly onto what the club is for. A club oriented towards competition will spend more time on free sparring and on competition kata; a traditional club will spend more on basics and on the older forms and their applications. Both are common, both are legitimate, and a beginner who wants one and joins the other will be quietly frustrated without quite knowing why.

The coloured belt system is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese administrative invention rather than an ancient tradition, and it does a specific job well: it breaks a very long learning process into visible steps a few months apart, which is why almost every martial art adopted something like it.

Grades below black belt are kyu grades, counting downwards, and the colours attached to each number are not standardised — a green belt in one association is a different level of experience from a green belt in another. Black belt grades are dan grades, counting upwards. First dan is best understood as the point at which a student has covered the basic syllabus competently and can begin to learn properly, which is very nearly the opposite of how the public understands it.

Roughly what to expect, with the caveat that associations differ:

First grading

Three to four months inAssessed on a small syllabus: a handful of basics, one kata, some prearranged partner work.

Interval between kyu grades

Three to six months, lengtheningMinimum training periods between grades are usually mandated by the association.

First dan

Commonly four to six yearsFaster is possible and is regarded with suspicion by most of the sport.

What a grading costs

£25–£50 at lower gradesRising substantially towards black belt, and typically payable per attempt.

One caution worth stating plainly. Because no single body owns the meaning of a karate grade, a black belt is only as meaningful as the organisation that issued it, and there is a genuine market in cheap and rapid certification. The signals of a serious club are unglamorous: mandated minimum training periods between grades, gradings conducted by somebody other than the person who taught you, and an association with a published syllabus and a complaints process.

The four families usually described as the main Japanese lineages, plus the full-contact tradition that separated from them, cover most of what a British beginner will encounter. Every one of these has internal factions, and the descriptions below are the broad tendencies rather than definitions anybody inside them would fully accept.

What you are likely to find within reach:

• Shotokan — Long, deep stances, linear power, large committed movements. The most widespread family in Britain by a distance, so it is the default a beginner meets. Emphasises precision and strong basics, and is often criticised from outside for stances that are longer than anything used in a fight — a criticism its practitioners answer by saying that is not what they are for.
• Wado-ryu — Lighter, more mobile, with a visible influence from Japanese jujutsu. Evasion and body-shifting matter more than meeting force head-on, stances are shorter, and partner work tends to feature earlier and more prominently.
• Goju-ryu — Hard and soft together, as the name suggests. Closer range, circular movement, notable breathing forms, and a strong Okinawan lineage. Feels markedly different from the linear families from the first session.
• Shito-ryu — The family with the largest catalogue of forms, drawing on both the Shuri and Naha Okinawan traditions. Technically broad, and disproportionately successful in kata competition for that reason.
• Kyokushin and full-contact styles — A separate tradition in practice as well as name. Sparring is bare-knuckle to the body with no head punches, contact is heavy, and conditioning is a central part of training rather than a by-product. A different sport from point-scoring competition, and a beginner should know which one they are walking into.
• Okinawan styles — Several traditions that stayed closer to the pre-Japanese practice, generally smaller in Britain, often with more emphasis on close-range application and on the older weapons forms as a related discipline.

The practical advice that follows from this is simple and is worth more than any comparison table. Visit three clubs. Watch a full class rather than a demonstration, notice how the instructor corrects a beginner and how the students treat each other, and ask directly what the contact level is in sparring. The club — the instructor, the people, the fifteen-minute journey — will decide whether you continue far more than the style will.

The bowing, the lining up by grade, the formal opening and closing of class — these are the parts that most often put people off from the doorway, and they are worth understanding rather than tolerating. They do two practical jobs. They mark the training space as somewhere with different rules from the corridor outside, which matters in an activity where people hit each other on purpose. And they make the hierarchy legible, so that everybody in a room of forty knows who is responsible for whom.

How much of it a club keeps varies enormously, and it is one of the better signals of what a club is like. Some maintain a formal Japanese-language structure throughout; others are considerably more relaxed and use English for most instruction. Neither is more serious than the other, but the mismatch between what somebody expects and what they find is a common reason people leave in the first month.

The conventions that genuinely matter are the safety ones. Do not train with an injury without telling the instructor, do not escalate contact because you are losing, stop instantly when told to, and look after the person you are training with — in partner work their safety is in your hands and yours is in theirs. A club that is casual about those is a club to leave.

Practised in a well-run club, this is a moderate-risk activity of a fairly ordinary kind: the common injuries are bruises, jammed fingers and toes, sprained ankles from turning in stances, and the occasional strain from the explosive movements. Most of it is unremarkable and most of it is preventable by warming up properly and not going harder than the class is going.

What sensible practice looks like:

• Nails short, jewellery off — The commonest cause of a cut face in a partner drill, and entirely avoidable.
• Gum shield from the first session of sparring — Cheap, and the injury it prevents is expensive and permanent.
• Tell the instructor about injuries — Before class, not after something has been made worse. A good instructor will adapt the session.
• Head contact is a separate question — Policies vary and the differences are meaningful, particularly for children. Ask what the specific policy is rather than assuming a norm.
• Stop means stop — Instantly, from anybody. This is the one convention with no flexibility in it at all.