An Investigation into the Reasons Why Karate Does not Qualify as an Olympic Sport

ABSTARCT: Karate-Do is a martial art; a means for developing character through performing training exercises. Since karate is not an Olympic sport, the studies carried out in this regard are quite few and limited. It appears that one of the reasons why karate has does not qualify as an Olympic sport is various styles of this martial art and that these styles are notcongruent. 581 karatekas of Tehran City with an age range of 9 to 48 years voluntarily participated in the present research. These individuals were divided into three groups, namely under 14 years, 14-21 years, and above 21 years. A questionnaire was compiled and distributed among individuals, which contained 14 questions regarding the reasons of individuals’tendency toward karate, the reasons for irregular attendance at training sessions, and the reasons why athletes change their styles or coaches. Cronbach’s alpha was run in order to examine the reliability of the questionnaire. Chi-square test was applied as an inferential statistics test to compare the relevance and difference of measured variables between the groups of interest. The significance level of the test was set to ?=5%. The results of the research revealed that: (1)vivacity and health were of the most important reasons for individuals’ tendency toward karate, and no significant difference was observed between the controlled contact and full-contact styles; (2) Only 30.2% of individuals chose their styles with prior knowledge and others mentioned other reasons for choosing their styles, such as being in the vicinity of the club, choosing quite randomly, and choosing based on other’s recommendations; (3) 64% of the individuals attended training sessions irregularly and a significant difference in its reasons was observed between different age groups (p=0.00). In the under 14years and the 14-21 age groups, doing homework assignments was considered the chief priority for irregular attendance of the karatekas with 50% and 30% respectively; while in the above 21 years age group having financial problems was considered to be the chief priority with 23%; (4) on the whole, about 39.2% of karatekas had changed their coaches and among the three chief priorities were the lack of attentiveness on the part of the coach, successive losses, and the distance from the club; (5) almost 50% of karatekas had changed their styles and on the whole three priorities, namely inopportune training schedule, lack of regular style-specific tournaments, and lack of attentiveness on the part of the coach, contributed the most to this change of style; and(6) the priorities of tendency toward various types of training were reported as: kumite with 49%, kata with 31%, kihon with 14%, and physical fitness with 7%. The result is that individuals are attracted to karate mainly to reach vivacity and fitness and that tendency toward a specific style or changing styles is not due to the nature of the style itself; rather environmental factors influence these decisions.