Do all Karate styles support hard-sparring?

**Seiryuu** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 5:10am

I know Kyokushin does a lot of hard sparring. (Duh.) But what other styles incorporate irikumi? In the Goju dojo that I go to, we do a lot of hard sparring. What about other styles?

**whatever123** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 6:25am

Originally Posted by Seiryuu

I know Kyokushin does a lot of hard sparring. (Duh.) But what other styles incorporate irikumi? In the Goju dojo that I go to, we do a lot of hard sparring. What about other styles?

No some do

Unless the style is known to compete in full contact Karate it is more likely that they either spar as point sparring (either ippon as JKA or multiple point system with deduction for hard hits) or some that don't spar at all.

**thrutch** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 6:29am

It's not really down to the style. more down to the individual dojo.

Having said that you're more likely to get contact sparring at a kk/enshin/ashihara place than at a "family karate" little dragons style club.

**kitkatninja** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 7:10am

From what I've seen, it really does depend on the association/club rather than the style, unless you bring in a style from down under.

**Moenstah** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 8:48am

it depends within the style even what dojo you train: for example, not all goju dojo do advocate hard sparring.

**kdawgious** · Posted On: 3/05/2012 9:41am

From my experience, the JKA-style dojos typically hard-ish spar in the dojo, but the sport kumite is severely lacking (usually). You can always find highlight clips and such with hard hits and beautiful knockdowns in point sparring tournaments, but depending on the organization that promotes it, these can either be awarded points or heavily penalized.

If looking for hard sparring in Shotokan, I'd generally recommend going to a school that has some direct link to the JKA (whether actual JKA school or an offshoot), or a Kenkojuku lineage school. Those are usually the only ones that will hard spar, if ever, everybody else seems to love their slap-happy NKF/WKF type sparring.

**Seiryuu** · Posted On: 3/10/2012 5:06am

Thanks for the answers guys. Now I have a wider idea.

**Giga Oni** · Posted On: 3/16/2012 6:27pm

Do all Karate styles support hard-sparring?

I dream of a world where they do...
unfortunaly the majority of traditional styles run like hell from em...in my first Goju dojo they did, but with very light contact to the face bareknuckle, hard shots in the body and legs...it was fun, though we didnt used to spar everyday( it was once a week) i was always waiting for Friday when we did Kumite.I remember many guys and kids used to skip training this day just to not fight lol i think i was 12 or something and loved to spar with the adults...miss the old days. I cant find a decent Goju school in my area for ****, and i refuse to waste my money and time on tip tap.

My advice? if u cant find one too, look for Kyokushin, Kickboxing, muay thai or boxing!

**Goju - Joe** · Posted On: 3/16/2012 6:50pm

There's vids of where I trianed Goju-jitsu http://www.facebook.com/tntmartialarts/videos you can scroll through them and find some sparring clips.

Not Full contact, not soft contact, not point sparring although the SJJ is point based. Anyways it a lot of fun and I miss that type of sparring.

**DaTedBear** · Posted On: 3/21/2012 11:34am

Some yes and some no. Byakuren always had nice sparring, but head contact was prohibited (except in tournament). The point style schools were sometimes okay, but too much padding.