Karate is an effective martial art if you consider and understand its flaws:

* Fist-thrusts aren’t meant as combat techniques.

* Most karate fist techniques were adopted from boxing. Together with them was adopted the risk of the boxer’s fracture and the risk of breaking the own fingers.

* Aerials aren’t part of any real martial art.

* High kicks require a warm-up. Don’t expect the opportunity for a warm-up!

* Fancy kicks aren’t meant for combat, but for increasing strength and flexibility of the legs to the purpose to make leg sweeps more effective.

* Kicks always are high-risk maneuvers!

* Training without shoes and in dōjō attire creates illusions about the ability to move in workaday clothes.

* Many karateka try to become faster to generate more momentum and more kinetic energy. More momentum means the possibility to hit an opponent harder, but the impact will, according to Newton’s Third Law, always go in both directions. So much impact is a not too good idea.

* Conditioning the hands as many karateka do means in truth to injure and disfigure the hands. Egami Shigeru (江上 茂), the uchideshi (内弟子) of Funakoshi Gichin, shall hence have given up the training method of punching a makiwara (巻き藁), while Ōyama Masutatsu (大山 倍達), the founder of kyokushinkai (極真会) style karate, shall due to his makiwara (巻き藁) training have lost the ability to cover himself with a blanket! The purpose of every martial art is to maintain your health, so Egami Shigeru (江上 茂) did it right, while Ōyama Masutatsu (大山 倍達) did it wrong! And yes, the latter was much healthier than the former, but this was cause and not result of their different ways to treat their own bodies.

* Finger-thrusts are an especially stupid idea! Finger-thrusts as well as ridge hand techniques or knife hand techniques should be restricted to hitting air only!

* Kata teach wrestling techniques from tegumi (手組), so when they are, as it is nowadays common, mistaken for “hard techniques” like knife-hand strikes or finger-thrusts, then they lead only to self-inflicted injuries.

* The karate masters in previous centuries wanted to scare bullies away from karate, so some things are intentionally taught wrong! So you can for example savor the full pain of a crotch kick while trying to block it by applying a gedan-barai. It doesn’t help because the gedan-barai (下段払い) isn’t a block!

Do you wonder what is left? Effective karatedō is left! But having to peel it this way makes me understand why many people nowadays disdain karate.