Tournaments - Inspire or Undermine Karate?

The other day after training, one of our students whipped out a photo of their freshly framed, place-getting tournament certificate from our recent Okinawa trip. Sexily framed it probably cost more than my first car. And ya know what? That’s great. The whole experience clearly lit a serious fire under their ass. The kind that makes you want to train harder and sweat like a fat dude in a sauna. Already, there’s a buzz about next year’s Okinawa trip (and tournament). There’s nothing better than seeing students enthusiastic and hungry to improve. But it also got me thinking, raising a deeper question: Should tournaments and certificate-chasing be the only reasons people train?

The 3 Stooges.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to take a massive dump on tournaments. Competitions have their place. They give students a goal, a bit of pressure, and a reason to actually care whether their stances look like stances or like someone who’s never heard of knees, angles, or the word lower. The travel, the medals, the validation? All pretty cool, right? For children, it obviously keeps them off their phones for an hour or so and gives them a reason to keep showing up week in week out. You could even say tournaments are an effective tool, a big, shiny carrot. Actually, nah, not a carrot. It’s a double bacon cheeseburger with fries, dangling just out of reach. You want it. You’ll chase it. It's a hard one - the act of trying to preserve traditional Okinawan karate while attempting to maintain interest for kids.

Get that carrot people!

But here’s the concern: when tournaments are all you’re training for, the rest of karate, the actual deep, meaningful, character-building, soul-polishing stuff flies out the window like a fart in the wind. And maybe that’s part of why traditional Okinawan karate has seen a slump in recent years. Without that internal drive the why behind the punches, kicks and stances - students start treating karate like a seasonal sport.

One of my instructors in Okinawa, I’ll call him Mr. Grumpy Face (eternal frown, probably allergic to joy, especially around foreigners) often shares his not-so-silent lament about modern karate. Sit him outside the dojo, watching the kids bounce around like over-caffeinated kangaroos, and you can see it in his eyes: This is not karate, it’s a bloody circus.

And honestly? He’s not wrong. Today’s kids and many adult karateka too need a reason to care. And without the excitement of winning something or bragging on social media, most kids would rather be home watching people scream over video games on YouTube. That’s the world we live in. So sure, use the tournament hype but don’t let it be the only flame keeping that karate spark alive. Karate is about way more than just winning a piece of round metal. It’s about pushing through when you’d rather quit, shutting up when you’re full of yourself, and still showing up after a workday spent getting pricked by rose thorns (You like that one, Greg?). That’s the real treasure. And it lasts way longer than any certificate, no matter how fancy the frame.

As instructors (and, allegedly, mentors), our role isn’t just to prep students for medals and Instagram-worthy moments once a year, or however infrequent. The real challenge is helping them discover that karate’s true value lies in perseverance and patience. These are the lessons that stick long after the medals tarnish and the certificates gather dust. So yeah, let’s celebrate the wins and train hard for Okinawa. But let’s also keep asking the question: What are we really training for?