What Is Karate?

Karate is the ancient martial art of self-defense developed in Asia from various other fighting arts.The word Karate translates as 'The Empty Hand' or 'The Empty China Hand'.

Karate involves strikes with the open and close hand, the side of the fist, the elbow, the knee and the various parts of the foot.  Arm and leg locks, head locks, restraints and releases, as well as breaking techniques also form part of Karate.  Karate-Do means 'The way of Karate'.

There are many different styles of karate, each having slightly different derivation.  Karate is practiced in a room called a Dojo, which is treated with great respect.  The outfit worn is called gi (pronounced gee with a hard g).
The teacher is referred to as a 'sensei' (pronounced sen-say).

Progression through Karate is made through rank testing in which the student proves their mastery of certain skills and techniques in front of a panel of higher ranks (almost always blackbelts).  The highest ranked belt is a blackbelt.  Above this are various higher grades of blackbelt.

Famous karate practitioners include: Steve McQueen, Jean Claude Van Dammne, Dolph Lungren and Hilary Swank.

"kara" means EMPTY and "te" means hands.  Therefore" Karate" means empty hands

What is karate? Maximum results with minimum effort. It was devised to quickly cripple or kill someone in the fastest possible time so that the next warrior could be dealt with. That is Karate-jutsu! Karate-do has eveloved from jutsu in that the character of the person is developed. Kick boxing, full contact, pro fighters, etc is not even in the same league. Karate uses all parts of the body to fight (teeth, fingers, wrists, elbow, knees, etc.) and target areas (eyes, throat, temple, base of skull, spine, knees, etc), and there are no rules save one lives and one doesn't.  This is what karate is capable of and why it came into being...thus, karate-do had to be taught so that the character of a karateka was also capable of resisting the temptation to strike when it was not a question of live or death.