Martial Arts Tournaments

Tournaments can be a lot of fun, and can be a good way to get people out of their comfort zones and undertake new challenges.  Tournaments are friendly competitions, and it can certainly feel good to win trophies and whatnot. But tournaments are not essential to martial arts training, and a tournament victory does not necessarily mean that one person is a better martial artist than another (whatever that would even mean)!

There are different types of tournaments, and they can have significantly different rules and judging criteria.  Most people like and do best at tournaments that are closest to the way they train. Since we are a traditional school, we tend to prefer traditional rule tournaments over the "sport tournaments" that seem to require flips and spins and weapons acrobatics and 5 second long, movie-style Kiai and facial expressions. -Not that the acrobatics are not impressive; they require athleticism, and action movies would be much less entertaining if they stuck to the simple techniques that actually work the best!

Tournament kata are like music recitals for martial arts - but with scoring and winners. You can practice your "song" at home all you want, but when you have to get up in front of someone else and perform the same thing it can suddenly be scary or overwhelming.  Overcoming this can improve self-confidence, and the skill of "ignoring everything around you and just doing what you know how to do" is helpful in life. Some tournaments reward the acrobatics such that is can be extremely difficult to win without such moves, while others reward stance and technique effectiveness. Some tournaments only allow you to choose kata from a list of their kata/forms, and they judge based on their accepted way of doing those kata (stances, etc.), whereas most allow anyone to do anything, and judges often have to rate people doing kata that the judges either do not know or perhaps do differently.

Tournament Sparring is yet different, as it is not simply you doing your thing, but instead involves someone else also trying their things. Many tournaments have mixed styles, so karate people spar kung fu, tae kwon do and other practitioners. To keep everything standardized, the tournament will publish their rules and requirements, which can vary greatly! Some do not allow punches to the head, some give different points for different types of techniques, and some allow takedowns, low kicks, sweeps and such. If you have only trained with no punches to the head allowed, and you go to a tournament where that is allowed, there is a high chance you will get surprised by a punch to the head.  And if you have trained the punches-okay styles (like ours), it can be very limiting and difficult to go to a tournament where that is not allowed (you will see MANY opportunities to punch their head, but you can spend a lot of focus filtering yourself to not do that today).  Especially if trying a tournament with different rules than you are used to, it is important to practice that way to give you the best chance of victories.

I think tournaments are good for people to at least try.  It brings a new challenge (and hopefully a sense of achievement, whatever the outcome), and can motivate people to train harder and just get better.  It can be a chance to see new styles and people and weapons and whatnot, and perhaps you make some new martial arts friends among the tournament regulars.  But we don't put too much stake in whether someone wins or loses, as the ultimate goal of martial arts should be to make future you better than current you. Hopefully the extra training involved in trying to get ready helps with that, and the confidence to perform in front of people is also good for your overall life!

Mark Swingle, KF USA