The Most Common Karate Injuries & Statistics

Injuries are a common theme in martial arts and something that you will never escape. However, with proper training methods and good form, you can seriously limit your amount of injuries. In brief, injuries can be separated into 2 different categories. Avoidable injuries and unavoidable injuries.

When thinking about unavoidable injuries, these will generally happen in a sparring bout or a competition setting. We will mostly see things such as broken bones, muscle strains, concussions or dislocated joints. It must be added that these are rare, especially in a sports format of karate. It is full contact kickboxing which will cause most of the injuries.

Avoidable injuries mostly happen when training in the dojo and happen for a variety of reasons. Most commonly they will happen from not warming up properly. Karate is a very explosive and dynamic martial art. If you are going to be throwing a lot of high kicks, this means you need to properly warm up your legs as well as many other muscle groups. Not doing so will put you at greater risk of injury.

The other reason comes from inexperienced or careless sparring partners. If you are sparring then it is important that you are on the same page. Whilst the opponent probably isn’t going to be able to hurt you badly under the supervision of the instructor. If they are crazy and out of control they can easily break your nose or hit you too hard. Whilst these injuries aren’t catastrophic, they can be annoying, especially as they are avoidable.

The Importance Of Strength & Conditioning In Karate

Whilst this article is written about Karate, this section is relevant to martial arts as an entirety. If you are stronger with a conditioned body, you are much less likely to get hurt.

This may seem obvious but people still do not take strength and conditioning that seriously in Karate compared with other sports. If you have strong muscles all around your knee joint, if someone were to accidentally kick you there, the muscles would help the joint absorb the impact. If you don’t have this strength in your muscles then the joint has to absorb a lot more force, which is exactly what you don’t want. It is much better to have a pulled or strained muscle than a completely ruined joint that requires months of rest to fully heal.

Secondly, the example can be applied to stretching. If you are doing particularly high kicks and are not very flexible, then you are much more likely to overstretch and pull a muscle. A pulled muscle is not the end of the world as it will usually heal in 1-3 weeks, sometimes longer if it is a particularly bad strain. Going back to the main point, this is a completely avoidable injury. If you care for your body and stretch well before and after class, you can really minimize the risk of this happening.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried About Getting Injured In Karate

The following study was taken from comparing Shotokan Karate to a variety of other sports. It should be emphasized that Shotokan Karate is one of the most violent forms of the art as the sample is taken from Olympic rules. Whilst Olympic rules are not quite full contact knockout karate, it is quite aggressive with dynamic punches and kicks to try and score points.

If found the following rates of injuries:

Karate – 23.6%

American Football – 35.9%

Soccer – 13.25%

Volleyball – 6%

Whilst the results show that karate was the second highest of the 4 sports. Let’s remember that these are reasonably unfair comparisons and also we will later look at how “injury” is defined to reveal even more reason not to worry.

Karate and American football are full contact sports with lots of blunt force blows. Therefore we would expect the human body to have a higher chance of injury when exercising. If we compare this to volleyball, the two teams literally do not touch each other, and in most cases you will not touch anyone else during an entire volleyball match.

This shows us that the baseline of a sporting injury in a non-contact sport is 6%. So your risk of getting hurt when exercising cannot really be lowered any more than this.

Why The Results Don’t Show The Entire Truth Behind Karate Injuries

The meta-analysis study also showed each type of injury reported. The most common injury being called a “contusion” which in plain English means a bruise.

Here are the results:

Contusion (Bruise) – 50.3%

Epistaxis (Nose Bleed) – 16.2%

Laceration (Cut to the skin) – 13.7%

Concussion – 3.8%

Sprain or Strain – 3.5%

When looking at the most common “injuries” in Shotokan karate, things now seem to look a lot better. The data is not perfect as a lot of injuries were not reported properly, but it does give us a good overview of what really happens.

Nose bleeds, bruises and cuts accounted for AT LEAST 80% of the karate injuries reported. To be honest, I don’t know of a single person who would call these injuries. The only worry is that you would get a concussion or strain your muscles. Even with the results showing this, it is a highly competitive contact sport with strikes to the head and torso.

If these are the injuries from a karate tournament, then the data is not concerning at all. The results are really not bad and show karate to not be dangerous at all. It would be nice to compare these results to MMA or wrestling matches. Then we would begin to see that sport Karate is much safer with far less severe injuries than these two disciplines.

Why Do We See Knee Injuries In Karate?

Perhaps the most serious injury in karate are the various knee problems you can develop. Oddly enough this was not covered by academics in their injury research, instead preferring to focus on cuts and bruises.

It should go without saying that if you’re using a joint a lot, then it is at increased risk of becoming injured. The knee is a very complex joint and poorly designed. There are many different ligaments in the knee that restrict its lateral movement severely. The ACL and LCL in particular are very restrictive in which way the knee can bend. Also if snapped, they will never be the same again, often require surgery and take 6-9 months of rehabilitation.

From my experience the most common way to injure a knee in karate is by air kicking too often. Many McDojos do not spar or have their students repeatedly kick the air. This is not good for the stress placed on your knee. You are much better off kicking pads or even a heavy bag. Whilst these may bruise your shins, a bruise is a lot better than knee surgery. When your leg is forced to stop unnaturally with no resistance it places great strain on the knee joints. Kicking the air is fine is you are doing it in a slow and controlled way in order to improve your form, but if this is all you are doing then you will put more strain on your knees which will eventually lead to more injuries.

Summary

Overall it is clear to see that the studies performed were by academics and not martial artists. Most likely because injuries are actually quite rare, they are willing to call anything and injury whether it be a small bruise, nosebleed or a cut. Whilst nobody wants to have a nosebleed or a bruised shin, they can hardly be labeled as injuries.

Anyone who has practiced karate long enough will have had their fair share of injuries. Whether this is a sprained knee or some pulled muscles in their lower back that keep them from training for 4 months. A mistimed blow to the head that causes a black eye is really a minor annoyance. It has no long lasting effects, hurts for a few days and then goes away and is forgotten about.

Karate is really very safe considering it is a fighting sport with blows to the head and torso. If you want to be even safer, you can practice sport karate rather than full contact karate. Whilst this won’t be quite as good for your self defense. You will never have any bad concussions and are extremely unlikely to break any bones. Overall karate injuries are quite minor when compared with other contact sports.

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