Karate Injuries

Is Karate a dangerous activity? A fine question.

Don't have any hard statistics, which would be the right way to decide this issue. Nothing easy to find. The National Youth Sports Safety Foundation down in the States records 23,018 martial arts injuries requiring a hospital visit. Less than dancing at 38,427 but more than boxing at 9,183. Not really useful raw data without knowing how many participants this represents or how much they do their sport. I'm pretty sure Karate is more dangerous than dancing, and safer than boxing which is not what these numbers indicate.

Have to go on my own experience. I've seen very few people have needed a hospital or doctor after training, or who had serious injuries they get attended to. Knees do get hit hard every so often in a nasty way. Toes sometimes hit something hard, like a bone. Had a partner once land a full speed punch on my own full speed punch. My hand was fine, his swole up to about pumpkin size, but it went down in a few days. Took a few shots in the face, the best being a hit on one side of my head that caused bruising on the other. Don't know how that worked. Taken many, many body shots, but never a broken bone or anything like that from it. Best body bruise I ever got left a foot-shaped bruise in the middle of my chest.

Seen cut lips, and black eyes. Jammed fingers really suck. Had a friend with an old knee injury, received while training in Japan, collapse in pain when his knee locked up without apparent cause. Another friend, Bernardo, once got several ribs broken.

For the thousands and thousands of hours I've done Karate, I'd actually call the injury rate pretty small. Item by item it does sound a tad brutal. How does this compare with something more mainstream?

My sister went skiing once in her life, and shattered a knee. That's a worse injury than anything I've ever seen in Karate. I've been skiing once. After the bunny hill, did the big hill once. At the bottom I hung around a while and watched ski patrol guys bring several injured people away in stretchers. One of these was a ski partrol guy who crashed almost at my feet and got hauled away by his chums. Skiing definately has higher risk.

I'd call soccer safer, rugby riskier. Never seen or even heard of a death. Read somewhere that golf is the most dangerous activity because so many people doing it, including all ages and health levels. It has the highest death rate in sport, due to heart attacks.

My theory is do what you love, as long as the risk isn't out of line.
Maybe that's why I stick to safe activities like kicking and punching.