(Approx 2 minute 5 second read)

Imagine you’ve spent months waiting for a black belt-only weekend course with your favorite Japanese sensei. A teacher as highly regarded as anyone could be. You apply early, pay your hard-earned fee, and look forward to some advanced karate.
.
For those who follow my page, you can probably guess what’s coming.
.
The weekend begins with so-called “self-defense” against a stepping punch.
.
Oh crikey, here we go again.
.
The attacker prepares in a long stance, with a gedan barai and hikite, then launches his attack from six feet away. He halts about a foot short of the teacher, of course he doesn’t want to hit him. The sensei performs an upward block, grabs the attacker’s extended arm (which is kindly left there for him), and then demonstrates the counter.
.
Oh boy.
.
And yes, for those who write to me about how valuable step-kumite is, we’re back on this subject again. If you can’t see the problem with this scenario, it might be time to give up karate and start practicing tiddlywinks.
.
This isn’t a beginners’ class. It’s not about progression. It’s not preparation for later drills. It’s just bad functionality.
.
What’s being shown to adult black belts by a respected Japanese teacher is children’s karate, and not even good children’s karate.
.
The people who defend step-kumite always say the same things: it helps beginners feel an attack, it teaches timing and distance.
.
Really? If your partner stops his punch a foot short in a fixed stance, what reality is that? What timing and distance?
.
Yes, it looks good for an audience, with the loud kiai, the locked stances, the sharp kime, but it has no connection to actual combat.
.
And remember, this is a black belt course.
.
Training repeated becomes habit. Bad training becomes a bad habit. And you don’t just drop those habits when you feel like it.
.
“Continually practicing ‘wrong’ movements (i.e. often those taught as ‘traditional’) or interpretation will make you very good at doing the wrong thing when under stress and pressure!” – Vince Morris, 9th dan Kissaki Kai
.
This is exactly what wrong training looks like. The old clichés of progression, teaching beginners, teaching someone to face an attack, timing, distance, and all the other excuses used for this practice. It just doesn’t hold up.
.
Someone once told me you wouldn’t teach algebra before arithmetic. True. But algebra is at least useful. Teaching something flawed isn’t progression, it’s just wrong.
.
Do you think the pioneers who created our art would have left us methods that fail when we need them most? Of course not. Which means modern karate has drifted away from their intent. But we knew that anyway, right?
.
In my view, step-kumite only has value for practicing step-kumite. Continuing to teach it to black belts, or anyone else for that matter, as self-defense is, quite simply, nonsense.
.
If step-kumite is the future of karate, then Marty and Doc Brown took the wrong timeline.
.
.
Written by Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo
.
.
Note the image is a representation only