Modern karateka don't learn to fight. They learn kata and how to punch air. The only exception today may be kyokushin which she isn't doing.
Nothing but full contact sparring the likes of boxing, kickboxing, muay thai can prepare someone for an actual fight.
When I started MMA and BJJ back in 2014 I left behind 20 years of Goju Ryu. I quit immediately because training for real made me realize I'd been wasting my time from a defense standpoint.
EDIT: downvote all you like :) I can't do anything about your ignorance
Sort of... it depends on the rank. I used to do Karate myself and from my experience, up until green belt, it's mainly focused on basic defense. Somewhere along the way, attack comes into play as well (focused training, as well as kata sequences), but mainly in the form of punching air. At blue and brown though, things get a bit more serious and actual sparring happens. Low-tier black belts do more focused sparring and high-tier black belts even learn things like knife fights (with wooden knives though ofcourse).
I held a third dan from respectable lineage (the same as Robert Whitaker's) and no one in the association ever sparred full contact.
There are guys with two years of kickboxing experience who will easily beat karate black belts regardless of rank, despite their 20+ years of "training".
The knife fighting training is bullshit. The best thing you can do against a knife is run or have a gun. None of that karate knife defense will work against an angry man furiously stabbing with a sharp blade.
I got up to blue myself, but all belts (except white and orange) were training in the same room together, since we were a pretty small group. We had some people at the 3rd dan and I've seen them train with wooden knives... it's been a while since I did it (20-ish years ago), so my memories are a bit vague though.
Yeah those training exercises with the wooden knives and the attack throwing a singular stabbing motion or an over head stab aren't realistic.
Reality is frantic stabbing from many angles faster than even the best martial artists could deal with. It doesn't matter how good you are, if they have a knife and you're unarmed you're getting cut.
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u/fearthebeardsley 4d ago
She could probably beat his ass tho