What are the differences between these two types of Karate?

Shotokan and Kyokushin





Please no google/wikipedia response, I would like to hear from people who have studied and love karate.|||shotokan is a combination of shorei ryu and shorin ryu, it is a long to mid range style, with both hard and soft techniques.


it consists of strikes, joint locks and throws.


most noted for its long deep stances and reverse punch. it is one of the 4 major styles of karate.





kyokushi is a combination of goju and shotokan, it is mostly a short to mid range style, the stances are shorter then shotokan and is more of a hard style, know for its contact


this style Less likely to be a mcdojo or a belt factory then any other style. all the kyokoshi dojo%26#039;s i have been to or see were of excellent quality.


the are a much small group in karate, but this is still a great style as shotokan is as well.|||Ray N is right, Kyokushin is a type of full contact karate. It has seven belt levels with two levels per belt.(a stripe per belt). This one focuses more on breaking techniques and sparring. Some dojos also incorporate grappling however, it is not usually used. Also, as Ray N said, this style is known for its breaking techniques. There are videos of its rigorous training such as when they strengthen their abdominal muscles by breaking wooden poles and planks by having someone swing them onto their chest.





Shotokan however is a more traditional type of karate and is considered one of the five traditional karate styles. It focuses on forms, katas, and kumites(sparring).|||Shotokan was brought from Okinawa from the Shorin-ryu (to use modern terms, it was not called Shorin-ryu back then, but just Todi) Gichin Funakoshi. Funakoshi was not the only karate master to bring his system to Japan, but he had a rival named Choki Motobu. (Also a practictioner of what is today called Shorin-ryu, the fighting system of the guards of Okinawa%26#039;s Shuri Castle) After Funakoshi%26#039;s death Masutatsu Oyama founded Kyokushin, primarily off of Shotokan but also implimenting some of the things he was taught by Choki Motobu, focusing heavily on full contact sparring, an aspect of Funakoshi%26#039;s teaching that was going undeveloped in more modern Shotokan dojos.|||THe sparring part and training is different.


In shotokan they will focus more on kata and technic training and the sparring training, tournaments are point based system. So if you hit your opponent 1time you have 1 point and the fight will be stop and start again untill some1 scores a point again. In kyokushin you will do technics some kata and condition , power training and how to KO some1. The sparring part and tournaments are KO based system here you will fight till some1 goes KO or the time is over and then the refferies will choose a winner.|||Shotokan is the parent style of kyokushinkaikan/kyokushin. Shotokan was developed by Gichin Funakoshi who%26#039;s pen-name was shoto which means tiger. He called his style shotokan which means tiger school/hall. Kyokushinkaikan was developed by Masutatsu/Mas Oyama who%26#039;s birth name is Choi Yeong-eui(he was korean). When he was 15 he left for Japan to become a fighter-pilot but was side-tracked by a stream of events that lead to him wanting to become a better fighter. Using elements of taekkyeon(a native korean martial art),2nd dan Shotokan that he learned from Gichin Funakoshi,and Goju-ryu he learned from a sr.disciple of Chojun Miyagi(founder) he forged kyokushinkaikan karate(he secluded himself in the woods to do this. once for 14 months and again for 18months). Mas Oyama also used daito-ryu aikijutsu - the parent style of aikido - so it combines the techniques of all the above martial arts and teaches the forms of goju-ryu and shotokan. Also,kyokushinkaikan was the first style of full-contact karate and inspired many other styles|||Well to tell you the truth i do shotokan and compared to most Karate%26#039;s it is very disciplined and it is a traditional style so it is a lot better you know i find that if you go for a more traditional style it will be more disciplined but i dont know that much about kyokushin the best thing you could do is search for it reserch it and if you want to even try it it is worth the experience and if you decide that you like shotokan try and find a jka (japanese Karate Association) Shotokan they are a great style you should enjoy it but its not for everyone





Hope it helps|||The founder of Kyokushin was Masutatsu Oyama. The founder of Shotokan was Gichin Funakoshi. There is not much difference as evidenced by the katas. A Shotokan stylist can train beyond the limits of human endurance just like Kyokushin stylists emphasize. Oyama may have given more emphasis on training the hands and feet as weapons, but Funakoshi, with his much more original katas, moved in a way that implied knowledge of pressure points.|||Shotokan%26#039;s a bit older. The competitions are mostly point-stop, which means limited to no contact. Most of the kata come from the Shuri-Te (Shorin-Ryu) lineage.





Kyokushin utilizes full-contact sparring. They combine some elements from Shotokan with elements from Goju-Ryu, including some Goju kata and body-hardening excercises. It%26#039;s about 20-30 years younger than Shotokan.|||All the other posters here are largely right, except they forgot to add one thing;





Kyokshin Karate was heavily influenced by Hung Gar Kung Fu, as in a test of skill its founder Masatatsu Oyama was beaten by a high ranking expert during a trip to Singapore. Now, this event happened AFTER Oyama had perfected his Karate to a level where he could get away with slaughtering bulls with his bare hands. Despite having that sort of power, the Hung Gar expert handily and soundly defeated him.





Also, don%26#039;t listen to posters who take on the %26quot;racist%26quot; or rather Japanese biased side of things regarding Karate; both westerners and the Japanese themselves often regard the Chinese martial arts styles as %26quot;weak%26quot; %26quot;showy%26quot; and %26quot;inefective%26quot; when the truth is, in virtually every encounter against high ranking Kung Fu experts, and we are talking full contact fights here where anything goes except killing, Karate experts of all sorts have been shut down in China. In fact, high ranking Judoka and Karateka from Japan or anywhere have yet to make a good showing against graduates of the Beijing Wushu institute, or the Shaolin temple.





In tourneys, sure, Kung Fu guys get shut down all the time. However when the time comes for actually full contact, no gloves fighting, where even the joint locks and throws are allowed in other words when a martial artist is allowed to use ALL of their style%26#039;s weapons, all of their moves, against the TRUE experts of Kung Fu, again, Karateka and Judoka from anywhere in the world have yet to make a good showing. In days past in China, some masters were defeated or matched by Okinawa%26#039;s Karateka, but those days are over now. The reason the people of Okinawa made no further modifications to their Karate after the 1800%26#039;s, is because they felt that technically they had learned everything they needed to learn. Indeed; much as I respect the Shaolin monks, even the modern ones %26quot;corrupted%26quot; as they are, I doubt very many of them could beat the likes of Gichin Funakoshi, or his teacher%26#039;s teacher whom he said was even more formidable, Sokkon Matsumura. Aside from the fact that he looked like Yoda, Funakoshi did become a REAL master in his own right, he wasn%26#039;t some fake @ss green CGI or puppet alien!





Oh yeah differences; the more advanced Kata in Kyokshin borrow several moves from Hung Gar, so many of the advanced routines if they look taken out of Hung Gar Chuan its because they are. Additionally, Mas Oyama was an avid practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan, don%26#039;t know which style, which he believe that without it, a Karateka%26#039;s training curriculum just wasn%26#039;t complete.





Regarding the sparring, what everyone else here said is accurate to a point; Shotokan used to be full contact as well, but the rules changed. Also what everyone else said about the training is correct; Shotokan training involves more drilling than Kyokshin which involves more sparring than anything else. However, as much drilling as there is in Shotokan, it is not nearly the same as in Funakoshi%26#039;s time. I have posted this in other answers before; Funakoshi was a teacher that, every night, I believe 6 days a week, had you do 100 everything, while maintaining a furious pace. Master Funakoshi produced no pot-bellied black belts, that much I%26#039;ll guarantee. Actually very few (if any) martial arts instructors of his day did.





In Funakoshi%26#039;s time, unlike the modern corrupted version of Shotokan, there was virtually no sparring, now I%26#039;ll tell what there actually was; being an Okinawan traditionalist, what his students DID engage in, was full contact tests of skill. See in Okinawa, in the %26quot;old days,%26quot; tests of skill were engaged in with men stripped down to that traditional Japanese thong underwear, often the tests would take place on the beach, and it would be full contact. In other words if you did not have proper training and skill, your semi-naked body would be bludgeoned by a fist hardened by years of makiwara board drilling. Funakoshi%26#039;s students all wore gis and he often discouraged them from doing such things but one thing I do know is, like all Okinawan teachers he said that when it came to testing your skill, either go full speed, or not at all. You either fight with all of martial arts weapons, and the other person with all their weapons, or not at all; see in Okinawa skill tests are taken VERY seriously, so seriously that they would rather not do it at all if it can be avoided as the results were often ugly.





Kyokshin is seen by Okinawan traditionalists as the ultimate corruption of Karate, because limiting the strikes only to the torso, and restricting the sparring only to strikes, develops bad habits, when Karate has a much bigger arsenal that you DO need when worse comes to worse. This isn%26#039;t my opinion; I read in a lot of traditional martial arts magazine articles the opinions of Karateka and very few of them (Okinawan traditionalists) had respect for Oyama.|||Kyokushinkai is more of a full contact style, the training is rigorous with emphasis on breaking techniques (Tamishawari). When taking senior grades, breaking is included in the exam.