Best Martial Arts and Combat Sports Classes in Palo Alto, CA

For your first few classes loose fitting clothing you can move (and sweat) in is good. After a few classes you will want to wear a karate-gi (uniform) to class. They're easy to move in, and you'll be more comfortable. We order them for students at a discount, but you can certainly choose to purchase one elsewhere. It should be plain white.

There is no uniformly established set of colors to designate progress in karate training. There are also no uniform criteria on which the grades are based. It's up to qualified instructors to judge. Some places have just a few belt colors, while others have many, each with different options for stripes or intermediate grades. Originally the belt color and grading system was adopted from judo by early karate instructors. In traditional karate there are generally fewer colors and higher standards to progress from one grade to the next. The belt colors we use at SVSK are: white (up to three stripes for kids) yellow (typically only for youth) orange (typically only for youth) green purple brown black

Karate in Japan was developed and refined from Okinawan karate, which was based on various Chinese martial arts styles. Those styles in turn had origins in India. Japanese karate is usually said to be about 100 years old. But the Okinawan versions on which they are closely based date back well over two hundred years.

It's tradition. Karate used to be practiced almost exclusively at the home of the instructor, in private. Students would basically strip down to their undergarments to do their workouts. At that time in Japan undergarments were the lighter layer of kimono that other layers were worn on top of. Classes conducted in larger groups were usually done in uniforms -- either school or military uniforms. The karate uniforms, or karate-gi we see today were created about 100 years ago and are based on the thicker judo uniforms that had recently been developed. Later karate uniforms were mass produced. The original mass-production karate uniform manufacturer was Tokaido, still in operation today since 1958.

Questions during class are not usually tolerated at dojo in Japan, but instructors at SVSK welcome questions. You can also ask the students senior to you (your sempai) after class for help. Traditionally in Japan those with more experience (sempai) help those with less experience (kohai), and in turn kohai show respect to their sempai.