World Shotokan Karate-do Federation - Perth - Brisbane - Melbourne - Martial Arts, Self Defence, School

The question is often asked by someone just starting out in their karate training – “how long before I can use karate to defend myself?”   We don’t want to encourage the use of karate, and hope our students never have to call upon it and in fact one of the basic tenets of Shotokan Karate-do is that there is “no first attack in karate” and this philosophy is always promulgated in World Shotokan.  However, we’re also aware that there are others who don’t follow this policy and there may be a time when one needs to protect him, or herselves families or friends from a potentially harmful, even lethal, situation.  So to answer the original question, we would typically find that after 3 or 4 months training, a new student would / should find feel more confident about defending themselves, using karate, than they were prior to starting their training.