---

What is Karate?

---

Karate is a Japanese word meaning "empty hand". It began on the island of Okinawa and spread to the Japanese mainland in the early part of this century. There are four several different styles of karate, for example shotokan, wado ryu, shito ryu, goju ryu and kyukushinkai, which differ from each other in small ways. Karate is a fighting system that relies mainly on high-energy punches, strikes, and kicks. The Korean martial arts of tae kwon do and tang soo do are both similar to karate, but use more kicks.

Karate training is split into seven parts: basic practice focuses on individual techniques; combinations are made up of two ore more techniques linked together to form a series; kata is a formal arrangement of combination techniques; in prearranged sparring both you and your opponent know the moves in advance; in semi-free sparring you know how your opponent will attack, but you choose the defence; in free sparring you both attack and defend as you wish; in competition points are awarded for good techniques against an opponent.

Basic karate training involves practising punches, strikes, blocks, and kicks. There is a grading system of coloured belts and beginners wear a red belt (although some clubs use the white belts for novices). Next is the white belt followed by yellow, orange, green, purple and tree grades of brown before the black belt. There are also stages within the black belt called "dans", so a new black belt is a first dan and the most experienced in the world is a tenth dan.

Kicks are used as middle- to long-range weapons. Although they are more powerful than punches, kicks have to travel a long way to reach their target, so an alert person can avoid them. There are four basic kicks in karate. The front kick strikes with the ball of the foot, the roundhouse kicks uses either the ball of the foot or the instep, and both the side and the back kicks use the heal and little-toe edge of the foot.

---