Minimum Effective Dose

Karate-do means the Way of Karate. There is a sense of being on a journey or moving along a path. I really love this imagery and encourage my students to think of their training in this context. I even pulled my dojo name from a quote about a path. Clearly, I believe that training is for the long-term.

But

This does not mean that I think you need to train for a lifetime to develop effective skills. Specifically, I mean effective skills for self-defense, fighting, combat, “hard skills”, insert-your-own-term-here. The bang and crunch part. I think you get much deeper and more rewarding insights by focusing your training beyond this, but you do get those hard skills from karate training. And relatively quickly.

For those new to karate, here is my rough back-of-the-envelope calculation for how those hard skills are developed in Goju-ryu:

Assume a complete beginner, no prior martial arts experience, but in decent shape without any health or physical problems.

• White Belt – 10^th Kyu – You’re going to start with the basics. Stances, strikes, blocks, etc. All of it will feel awkward, movements will probably be robotic, and any partner work is going to be at a distance, usually arm’s length. But you are learning to move your body through space with balance and with power. You are also learning how to strike correctly, in a way that doesn’t hurt yourself. All very useful and a foundation to build on.
• Orange Belt – 7^th Kyu – At least half a year of training, maybe close to 1 year. At this point the student has developed strong basic technique, especially punching and blocking. The movements are feeling more natural and the student is comfortable in that arm’s length distance, and maybe even closer. In my mind, the 7^th Kyu karate student is already effective against an untrained person. A hammer is a very useful tool and our orange belt has that tool… in the ability to hit a target hard. There is much to be learned, but they are not such an easy target anymore.
• Green Belt – 5^th Kyu – Probably around the 2 year mark, the 5^th kyu should have a clear command of the basics. They can hit hard. Harder than you expect. Kicks, punches, everything in between. This is symbolized by the traditional tameshiwari test for 5^th Kyu where the student breaks through a wooden board. But more generally, the student knows how to move with power.

In my mind, that journey from White to Orange to Green is working to develop the Go, or hard, portion of Goju-ryu. This will continue to be refined as you move up, but a Green Belt is already dangerous. One could spend the rest of their training in this mindset – attack-and-smash karate – and I think a lot of other karate styles do just that. Picture the quintessential 1970’s Karate Man here.

So that’s 6 months to 2 years to develop an effective set of “hard” skills in my opinion. Obviously the specifics will depend on the person, but this doesn’t seem like such a long time to me. There’s a lifetime of work to perfect this one aspect of training, for sure, but capability and familiarity come much sooner.

Hmm so what is the rest of the training for then? I’m glad you asked, Reader!

Back to the bullets-

• Brown Belt – 3^rd Kyu – An estimated 3 to 4 years of dedicated training by this point. Moving from Green to Brown is where the student begins to learn the specifics of the Goju-ryu style. Up until 5^th kyu, we are focused on building a solid foundation of quality, but somewhat generic, karate. The Goju-ryu style begins to move the student closer to the opponent (closer than arm’s length), adds in grabbing and pulling to unbalance, throwing, sweeping, and joint locking techniques. We have moved from “Punch-Kick Karate” towards a wider set of skills as we work to develop a well-rounded martial artist.
• Brown Belt – 1^st Kyu – This is the penultimate rank before black belt and it is usually a difficult time for most students. You are being exposed to a lot of new and difficult requirements at the same time that you are expected to consolidate and polish up everything you’ve learn up until now. This mental friction can be overwhelming and it definitely can raise feelings of inadequacy and doubt all through the brown belt ranks. But the skill is building! If the student can push through.
• Black Belt –1^st Dan – The student has accomplished something rare and empowering at this point through years of dedicated training. Physically, the student is strong, balanced, and can bring force to bear when needed. Mentally, the student is tough, sharp, and knows when to charge in and when to back off. Spiritually, the student has faith in their own ability, confidence in themselves, and understands how to endure a challenge. There is more that lays ahead in karate-do, but a black belt is an accomplishment to take pride in.

The key for this second half of training is that we started with developing the powerful, percussive striking that is often associated with karate. Then we’ve worked to broaden our student’s skill set so that they are more capable in a range of situations. They have more than just a hammer. This includes grappling, take-downs, and weapons training, all of which help to create a well-rounded martial artist that can fight at a range of distances. We certainly aren’t expecting the student to out wrestle a wrestler, but we don’t want them to be a complete fish-out-of-water in an unexpected situation.

At the same time, as we approach black belt and beyond, we are also working to soften the hardness we’ve developed. Goju-ryu is the hard-soft style and we want to be able to respond to situations with hardness or softness as required. If we began with an attack-and-smash mindset, we’ve evolved towards a defend-and-protect outlook.

All together what you end up with after five… eight… ten years of training on the way to black belt is a well-rounded karata-ka who has a lot of different martial skills that they can apply effectively. Again, there is much more to learn and much more to refine, but I think those so-called “hard” skills have been developed quite effectively and in much less than a lifetime of practice.