How dangerous Karate really is to practice?
Karate, like any other martial art, does have risks when practiced. Even the most careful practitioners can get hurt. However, you can make practicing Karate safer by taking things slow and following the instructions carefully.
Let’s take a deeper look into how dangerous Karate really is and how to make it safer.
How dangerous is Karate?
Is it safe to start practicing Karate? Let me explain.
There are very few sports where there is no risk of injury. Karate and other martial arts do have a slightly higher risk of injury, but overall, Karate is from the safer end of the martial arts spectrum. You can make it safer by following instructions and taking things slow.
There are a few risk situations while practicing Karate. We will go through them, and also how to minimize the risk of an injury while practicing Karate. Let’s start with the first one.
Tearing a muscle
First and probably the most common injury can easily be avoided. Tearing a muscle during practice can easily be avoided with proper warmup and stretching before practicing.
Typically, there is a time dedicated for mutual warmup and stretching period, before the actual training begins.
This is to avoid any unnecessary muscle tearings and other injuries, which can be avoided with a proper warmup.
Sparring incidents
Sparring is another way of training, where risks are present. Especially if you and your sparring partner are both new to Karate, it might be difficult to know how much each joint can take, when talking about joint locks.
It doesn’t take a lot to take a joint lock too far and cause serious damage to your training partner. This is why you should always take things slowly while sparring. Use only minimal force required. Especially if you are a white or a yellow belt.
Taking things too fast with too much force
This is pretty similar to the previous one. However, it is possible that you use too much speed and strength in other aspects of training as well.
That might be hitting boxing mitts that your partner is holding and missing a punch. Or hitting too hard causing them to get hurt.
Take things slowly. Especially at first as you are new to Karate. You don’t want yourself to get hurt, and especially you don’t want to hurt the people you are training with.
Is Karate dangerous to others?
In a self-defense situation, Karate can be dangerous to others as well. When practiced right, Karate can be effectively used in self-defense situations as well.
Even though Karate is not the best option for self-defense, it is still more effective than having no martial arts background at all. I also have listed the 5 best martial arts for self-defense.
More about how good Karate is for self-defense in this post.
How to practice Karate safely
This is just a short reminder of the things you can do, to minimize the risks as you practice Karate.
Take things slowly, especially as you start. Also in the future, be extra careful when sparring and training with white and yellow belts. They are still new and might not really know how much force is appropriate to use.
Remember a proper warmup. You can avoid a lot of muscle tears and other injuries caused by not warming up enough. There typically is an instructed warmup period before the real training begins.
Use a mouth guard. You can save a lot of money on dental bills, simply by using a good deformable mouth guard while sparring.
Remember to drink enough water during and after the training.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, is Karate safe? Karate like all sports and martial arts do have risks.
However, Karate is from the safer end of the martial arts spectrum, even though martial arts do tend to have more risks compared to some other sports.
You can practice Karate safely by following the instructions carefully and taking things slow. Combining that with a good warm-up and you should be good to go. Keep in mind that there is without a doubt always a risk of injury involved, no matter what you do.
Overall, Karate does have a lot more benefits than risks. Like in every sport, you could get hurt, but the benefits overweight the risks making it worth practicing.
Martial arts especially have a lot of benefits.
Hopefully this was helpful, have a wonderful day!
