tournaments every set amount of years. The countries themselves would have to push the
tournaments, not necessarily to have fighters travel to different countries or in open tournaments, but just so it gives the youth a want to compete. If they want to compete in point
sparring competitions or other comps, that’s fine. In England we have members who want
to do both, but unfortunately because we do practice traditional Karate and we have some
much to cover like Kata, Kakies, Bunkai, etc, Kumite is not really the main objective. So
unless you get someone who is very, very talented you won’t get someone who will win
these open competitions.
So I think that’s another step to strengthen IOGKF in the junior ranks.
Do you think because of this, IOGKF needs its own set
of tournament rules?
I don’t think it is so much the rules. In the past we’ve had lots of seniors who are high level
referees in their own country and they’ve actually helped us in formulating sets of rules. But
it’s not so much the rules themselves, it’s getting the referees to all be on the same page
and use the rules in exactly the same way. Generally what happens is what one referee
deems as too much contact, another referee will think that’s ok. What one referee will accept as contact, another referee won’t and that’s basically what it is like in different parts of
the world.
We have some countries where they like to have a higher level of contact and other countries that think there shouldn’t be any contact at all. What we actually need to do is try and
even it out a little bit and find a happy medium between the two, because when we have a
world tournament, we’re going to have good fighters disqualified, not through any fault of
their own, but because they’ve just been used to making heavier contact or they get hurt
because they’re not used to having any contact. The bottom line is if you haven’t got an
even playing field, you can’t really have a fair tournament.
As for teaching, say you have a students who come into
the Dojo young and is quite tournament orientated and
trains like that for years and then suddenly becomes to
get board, how do you steer them towards traditional
Karate?
Well if they do start to become board with the tournament side of things, you really should
have make sure that they actually have a real love for training itself. You know they really
have to have a thirst for knowledge and you create this by not feeding them too much too
early. I am not saying you should keep people in the dark by not showing them your Kata
and things like that, I think that would also be the wrong approach. But you can only fill a
glass so far before its starts dripping over the side and losing things, so you need to find a
good balance and only give them so much at a time.
However, if you do have someone like that who is very talented and board of tournament
Karate, you can ask them to start helping with teaching. Because sometimes instructing
can also give you a greater insight into Kata, different combinations and techniques and it