Understanding The Symbolism Of The Karate Uniform

By Author: Andrew Bui
Total Articles: 1224
Comment this article

"Both spectators and participants of martial arts many times wonder where the karate uniform came from and what special symbolism it holds, after all it is a part of a very deeply rooted and traditional sport. Truthfully, there are more types of attire related to this sport than most people know and many of these ensembles have special meaning and symbolism, sometimes dating back to the very beginning of the sport.

For starters, these unique looking outfits were initially worn during training sessions in Japan many long years ago, where they are referred to using their traditional Japanese name, karategi. This piece of customary attire is composed of 3 separate parts that are pretty very well recognized, these pieces include the jacket, the lose pants, which typically have a tie in the front, and a thick belt, which comes in a variety of different shades.

The karate belts that are worn with the karategi are known as obis and are colored for the specific purpose of being able to identify the rank and skill level of each participating member of a dojo or martial arts school, so that the instructor and fellow ...
... students will be able to keep up with each student's progression in their training. In a traditional dojo, the color of the belt darkens as the participant achieves high rank, with white being a novice practitioner and the darkest of black representing someone who has been practicing the sport of a very long time, often years.

These ensembles are intended to be lose fitting, practitioners who buy a prepackaged suit are often encouraged to select one that is one or two sizes larger than the size they wear in street clothes, the purpose of this is, of course, to provide a full range of movement. When completing a roundhouse kick or a flip, tight clothes would be incredibly restrictive and possibly even break or wear down quickly, for this reason a high quality, lose fitting karategi is preferred.

Another reason that the jacket of the karategi and the obi are formed the way that they are is so that they can be removed easily when a student would like to fight with more freedom and less risk of overheating. The above mentioned attributes only scratch the surface of what makes up the traditional karate uniform, as many of these details are shrouded in a history of myth and mystery. "
If you want to see some expert opinions about martial arts gear then just check on Karate Uniform or you might want to check also on Karate Gear.