In my experience Karate Dō isn’t for people that want to be UFC fighters, getting their nose smashed in every week, nor are they really people who want to engage in any kind of real violence to begin with.

Will you be able to go for five or more minutes with someone, maybe with it going to the floor? If it’s actual traditional Shotokan you’re practicing, and not something with ‘mixed martial arts’ involved, that’s unlikely. But that’s not the point of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

You aren’t being trained to be punched in the face. You will gain some stamina via your training but not like UFC fighters. Getting into a protracted engagement with an opponent is not what you’re trained for. You’re trained to react when someone tries to punch or attack, then work out an escape plan.

Years of doing this, and you’re probably already there with the time you’ve put in, will give you the reaction time and muscle memory necessary to throw a block up and counter attack instinctively, then get the fuck out of there if possible.

There’s a reason Uke Waza only usually features very few movements. The idea is for your body to be trained to react in defense of itself, to be able to throw that block up with surprising speed and launch that counter attack before they’ve even thought to want to attack again.

I’ve cross trained with a bunch of different styles over the years at seminars etc. All of the true martial arts have that same thing in common. They don’t teach you how to go five rounds, going to the ground, to accept being punched over and over as part of the process.

So for me, it’s not about how effective Karate Dō is in ‘a fight’, the idea is you don’t get into ‘a fight’ in the first place. You defend an attack and fuck off as soon as possible.