Understanding the purpose of Kumite Study...

Kumite study is not a competition in any shape or form. The entire purpose to study Kumite is to perfect the application of techniques against another person who is not an opponent but rather a helpful training partner. Many people forget that self defense is the goal of martial arts...not fighting. Any fool can get in a fight but a truly trained fighter will defend themselves...not fight it out.

When first beginning your study of Kumite you will begin exploring many techniques from striking to kicking, blocking to movement. Each one can take many years to master but when you see black belts who have trained correctly perform Kumite you will sit in awe of their focus, control, technique and execution. They did not get this ability overnight nor by putting on gear and just beating each other up.

As in all combative training a student must first gain the trust of their partner in order to effectively train Kumite. If your partner does not trust you they will flinch, block or move because they do not want to be harmed. What is worse is that if you do harm them then they are permitted to do so back to you. When studying Kumite with this type of mentality nothing good will ever come from it all...only a mediocre understanding what we call sparring which has nothing to do with true Kumite can develop from this. It is true that some people are excellent point fighters in tournaments but most of them, when faced with a properly trained black belt in a real defensive encounter, will not know what do on the street.

When studying Kumite you should begin slow, focusing on extension and perfection of technique. As your skills increase along with your control the speed will increase. Never start out throwing techniques fast as then you will never gain a deeper understanding of how they effectively are applied when needed.

Always remember that Kumite is not a competition where you are to best your opponent but rather to train with someone to increase your skills. Keep in mind that quite often a higher level student will work with you by allowing you to go after them. If all a higher level student ever did was beat the snot out of the lower level students then what would they learn? Absolutely nothing at all.

Keep your ego in check as well. Over the years I have met many people who were lower rank than black belt that thought because they beat a black belt in a point match they were better than them. There is no place in authentic martial arts for this type of mentality either. A true martial artist knows that they can be beaten at anytime so they train to improve every day. They never think because of their trophy count or who they have defeated in classes or at events they are better than anyone else. This type of ego leads to one certain thing in martial arts...FAILURE. I know many people who claimed to have quit because they could best the black belts at their dojo. That is just stupid because Kumite is not about this. Those people never will learn the greatness of their art let alone anything else because their mind is clouded with an EGO. Forgo the EGO!