The debate as to whether karate is effective on the streets continues to this very day and with current interest in mixed martial arts training it seems that karate is on the losing side. The no camp are winning this one, and to a certain extent I have to agree with them.

The problem with a lot of karate is the way in which it is trained. If you want to be able to get through a live situation in one piece you have to train for it. Marching about doing your kata and inventing clever bunkai, for instance, simply won't work.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) as promoted by such events as Pride and UFC are potentially the closest thing you can get to a live fight without getting seriously hurt. So if we are to be effective on the street it makes sense to switch training and take up MMA. But that is not necessarily the case.

Think about MMA as a philosophy of combat and a training framework for high pressure survival situations, rather than a self contained style or system. MMA represents a certain way of doing things which means that it can fit nicely into any other training system.

Karate is a catalog of movement - the application of that movement, in order to be street effective, has to be trained in a realistic manner. The concepts and philosophies of MMA provides that mental and physical stimulus.

We can keep our kata and bunkai, basics, kumite and all the other exercises and traditions that define karate. What we need to do is look at how to implement them. You have to develop skill, sensitivity, balance, power and reflex and good karate should already provide the means to achieve these qualities. Pressure testing is important for students who require street effectiveness, either to satisfy themselves or because their line of work puts them there. But pressure testing is still just part of the bigger picture.

MMA provides the framework for pressure testing. It's not about being trendy by bolting on a bit of submission wrestling onto your karate syllabus and neither is it about going with the crowd and pretending your karate is something else. I'm not advocating mix-and-match or using similarity between techniques and kata movements to justify putting MMA into karate. It's not about combining styles or pretending to be an MMA player for self gain or promoting your school.

It's about taking on particular training philosophies that put you where you need to be. Kata has its place along with basics, pad work, flow drills, pressure points, push hands, sparring, grappling, bunkai and intensity training.

MMA is simply a distilled form of pressure testing. Any technique within MMA can be found within karate or any other traditional style. What we need to do is listen to the MMA people, learn from them, take their fighting skills and put them back into our karate.

There is nothing radical or new here.

Karate is a holistic art encompassing health, personal development, physical training and self protection. How many schools foster bad habits that go against the grain of karate? Ballistic stretching, bullying, inflexible hierarchies, endless rules and regulations, lack of understanding and bad "self defense" should not exist in modern dojos.

Old-style karate was a complete art and today we can encompass those values without taking a step backward, thanks to increased knowledge of sports science, psychology,combat training and so on. The sharing of knowledge is another important factor with the availability of instructors, DVDs, books, web sites and forums. There is no longer any excuse for anyone to teach bad karate. We have to go to where the good information can be found - and that includes MMA.

To answer the question - Is karate street effective? - Yes, if you do it right.