The Martial Arts Society

is there any martial arts club in city uni london

yes they have wrestling, and trad jitsu

Hey guys, thinking of taking up karate. Is training once a week sufficient? I feel I'm too busy to go any more than once a week (as I already play football, go to the gym a lot and do a really hard degree).

I've never done Karate before, so out of curiosity by going once a week how long would it take me to get a black belt? It's not the title I'm after and I understand that getting your black belt only means that you've mastered the basics, but have a whole road ahead of advanced technique, I'm just curious because it's quite a big achievement.

Three to four years usually I think. Maybe a little longer if you're busy and not really dedicated to karate in particular.

Hey guys, thinking of taking up karate. Is training once a week sufficient?

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Okay cheers. I've been watching a lot of videos and I'm really excited. Looking forward to joining in September.. but I'll be looking to find a place to start learning in the summer.

Do people without black belts compete as well? And normally at least how many months does it take to train before you have the right skill level to compete?

I think 1h a week is good enough for someone who starts and don't really know about Karate. Obviously they won't be very good very fast but then that they're choice whether they practice as a means to be able to defend themselves or simply as a weekly sport to stay fit or even as an hour dedicated to just let off stream.

I completely agree with the rest of the post which could be summarized as "avoid McDojos at all costs".

Honestly, not even close if you want to be anything more than a 'once-a-week warrior'. I've trained for 18-22 hours a week for the past couple of years and wouldn't consider myself particularly good. While looking for decent clubs I've been to a few places populated by such hobbyist fighters and utterly destroyed them - I've found once-a-week blackbelts who'd been practicing MAs for ten years who were only marginally better than some random off the street. I remember going to a local judo club a few months ago and throwing the instructor (supposedly a 2nd dan blackbelt, hah) five times in a row with the same technique - ippon seoi nage which is a very basic (and fairly easy to counter) technique. He was thoroughly embarassed but still insisted I call him 'sensei' (an honorific which absolutely no-one should refer to themselves as let alone insist people call them), which I refused and was subsequently asked to leave. What I'm saying then is that you can't get good with an hour and a half of training a week - would you expect to get a decent degree result when only studying for that amount of time every week? No, you'd fail or gain only a very superficial knowledge of your subject - the same is equally true with martial arts.

And a word of warning about karate: Be very careful about which club you join. Make sure they train with 'aliveness' (by this I mean that they don't pull punches or train unrealistically - a great deal, if not the majority of karate clubs in the West practice little more than 'point sparring' which is next to useless); emphasise fundamentals (if half the lesson is spinning back-fists and flying kicks then look elsewhere); don't teach stupid, noncombative, tournament-based elements such as a low guard (due to not training head strikes thus leaving them open to getting hit in the head in a real situation) and turtling when on the ground (which would get your head stomped outside of a tournament); that there aren't kids in the class - adults should not have to train with children as this brings the whole class to a lower level; kata and forms - mostly useless except to preserve dangerous techniques that can't be used in sparring for safety reasons (i.e eye gouges, groin attacks), if you find your club devotes a lot of time to these then move on as they're a very outdated and obselete way of training; and finally that sparring (good 'alive' sparring) is emphasised - it's all well and good learning the techniques but if you can't pull them off against a fully resisting opponent then they're worthless. I'd suggest western boxing and muay thai as generally much safer bets in this respect, you might want to start there unless you have some specific reason for wanting to train karate in which case kyokushin is generally considered an excellent style whereas shotokan and wado-ryu are more hit-and-miss.

Edit: Also, as Roye Gracie said "A black belt only covers two inches of your ass. You have to cover the rest." Calling yourself a blackbelt is meaningless if you'd get your arse handed to you by some random thug on the street. So train, train, train and forget about belts and gradings!

Honestly, not even close if you want to be anything more than a 'once-a-week warrior'. I've trained for 18-22 hours a week for the past couple of years and wouldn't consider myself particularly good. While looking for decent clubs I've been to a few places populated by such hobbyist fighters and utterly destroyed them - I've found once-a-week blackbelts who'd been practicing MAs for ten years who were only marginally better than some random off the street. I remember going to a local judo club a few months ago and throwing the instructor (supposedly a 2nd dan blackbelt, hah) five times in a row with the same technique - ippon seoi nage which is a very basic (and fairly easy to counter) technique. He was thoroughly embarassed but still insisted I call him 'sensei' (an honorific which absolutely no-one should refer to themselves as let alone insist people call them), which I refused and was subsequently asked to leave. What I'm saying then is that you can't get good with an hour and a half of training a week - would you expect to get a decent degree result when only studying for that amount of time every week? No, you'd fail or gain only a very superficial knowledge of your subject - the same is equally true with martial arts.

And a word of warning about karate: Be very careful about which club you join. Make sure they train with 'aliveness' (by this I mean that they don't pull punches or train unrealistically - a great deal, if not the majority of karate clubs in the West practice little more than 'point sparring' which is next to useless); emphasise fundamentals (if half the lesson is spinning back-fists and flying kicks then look elsewhere); don't teach stupid, noncombative, tournament-based elements such as a low guard (due to not training head strikes thus leaving them open to getting hit in the head in a real situation) and turtling when on the ground (which would get your head stomped outside of a tournament); that there aren't kids in the class - adults should not have to train with children as this brings the whole class to a lower level; kata and forms - mostly useless except to preserve dangerous techniques that can't be used in sparring for safety reasons (i.e eye gouges, groin attacks), if you find your club devotes a lot of time to these then move on as they're a very outdated and obselete way of training; and finally that sparring (good 'alive' sparring) is emphasised - it's all well and good learning the techniques but if you can't pull them off against a fully resisting opponent then they're worthless. I'd suggest western boxing and muay thai as generally much safer bets in this respect, you might want to start there unless you have some specific reason for wanting to train karate in which case kyokushin is generally considered an excellent style whereas shotokan and wado-ryu are more hit-and-miss.

Edit: Also, as Roye Gracie said "A black belt only covers two inches of your ass. You have to cover the rest." Calling yourself a blackbelt is meaningless if you'd get your arse handed to you by some random thug on the street. So train, train, train and forget about belts and gradings!

Also, I have no idea where you got '1 hour a week' from.. a session is two hours long.

Actually I'm considering Muay Thai alongside Karate. Karate because I'm interested in the actual art of it as well as combat, Muay Thai for the combat.

I'm sorry but if you trained 18 to 22 hours a week and you're not good at it, perhaps you just don't have it? I know I'm not in a position to comment credibly when I haven't done Karate before - but I do have a black belt in TKD, so I guess I can say I'm more experienced in the martial arts than you (having started at the age of around 5 or 6 then stopping at 13). However you are right that having a black belt doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I did win a bronze medal in some national junior open (in which I was knocked down, then knocked out with another kick to the face in the semi's.. lulz).

I was training TKD once a week 2 hours per session and was doing well as a kid, but I guess kids learn faster. I did a bit of TKD in uni earlier this year , but still found that I could beat people sparring who'd done TKD for the same amount as you have for Karate ..

Not trying to be cocky, but I disagree that '18 to 22' hours or 'as much as possible' is necessary to become good at a martial art. I will however concede that once a week is probably insufficient, especially when I'm now 19 and my learning curve isn't as steep. But surely twice a week would suffice? Considering uni classes only take place twice a week?

Also, I have no idea where you got '1 hour a week' from.. a session is two hours long.

Good.

When I said 'I don't consider myself that good' I meant in comparison to the likes of Eddie Bravo, Roger Gracie and Marcelo Garcia - guys who have trained all day, everyday for the past 20 years; guys who get paid $50,000 per fight and draw huge crowds. In comparison to that I'm most certainly 'not that good'.

I don't train karate, I train Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Freestyle Wrestling and Submission. I also take MMA striking classes and used to to train boxing for a few years too. I have plenty of friends who do or have done karate and I try to familiarise myself with every martial art as much as possible.

If that's all the classes that run then go to them, but the more the better generally so definitely think about cross-training if you want to be a well rounded fighter. I'd advise that you establish a base in karate then start practicing other martial arts to supplement it.


Xurvi mentioned the one hour thing so I went with that, although plenty of places do only teach one hour or hour-and-a-half lessons especially if they involve intensive, full contact sparring - MMA classes are usually only an hour because anything more would be like a Nazi death march.

Cheers for the advice. That's precisely what I intend to do, Muay Thai + Karate. Just found that my university doesn't do Muay Thai / Kickboxing but just boxing, so I'll probably give that a go instead.

You might want to consider something like Judo (I give Judo as an example because it's widely available) as well once you get your striking down in order to make you even more well-rounded. Just a thought.

Well I've thought about Aikido as opposed to Judo, but at least in university I won't be able to take up so many activities whilst doing an Engineering degree.. as I mentioned earlier, I play football and go to the gym 2-3 times a week as well.

Aikido is a nice philosophy but it just doesn't work in practice. We had a joint Judo/Aikido session recently at my university and they got destroyed, even the instructor was getting nailed by green belts. It's overly stylised and they just don't spar with resistance. By all means check it out - I personally have been to several Aikdio clubs as I always liked the idea, but compare what you see to a Judo club or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu club and the difference is huge.

I'm sure many people into aikido would debate that. They say it takes around 10 years to become adept, and once you do you're very formidable. As people in martial arts say, respect other martial arts.

Aikido is easy to grasp, but hard to master. I've heard numerous times that aikido coupled with something like Karate can make you a very deadly weapon. I'm sure aikido is useless in a fighting cage, but come self defense I don't see how someone with plenty of experience in aikido, plus striking experience from karate/Muay Thai is worse off than someone who did Judo or JiuJitsu. Judo and BJJ in particular take place when both are on the floor, which is pretty bloody useless in a street fight against multiple assailants.

So I would have to disagree strongly that Aikido doesn't work in practice. Each martial art has its strengths. It's quite surprising to hear something this low coming from someone as 'experienced' as yourself in martial arts.