Welcome to Capital City Karate!

Our mission is to:

Capital City Karate emphasizes healthy minds, as well as healthy bodies. Through intense physical training – emphasizing core strength, balance and flexibility -- a student learns to strengthen physical and mental skills while developing self-control.  Karate is the mastering of the body, the mind, and the emotions. It creates confidence in one’s ability to stop an opponent with a single finishing blow (todomewaza). Such confidence leads to stable emotions. Stable emotions eliminate negative emotions, to the benefit of physical and mental health.  This holistic approach is at the core of traditional karate.

“Traditional schools emphasize self-improvement and self-realization as the primary goal, with “not losing” (in an actual fight) as the result of sincere training.  Modern tournament schools emphasize being better than others, i.e., winning and displaying trophies.”

Elmar T. Schmeisser, Ph.D.  Advanced Karate-do: Concepts, Techniques, and Training Methods

It is important to keep in mind that traditional karate is a martial art, and as such is different than any other recreational activity such as soccer, dance or even more sports-oriented, for-profit karate clubs.  We only accept students who are interested in bringing a serious mind to training. As noted, our emphasis is on practical self-defense not winning tournament trophies or collecting belts.  At the same time, we realize that for people to stay at something as long as it takes to be good at karate, it needs to be fun for all members of the family, especially children. Additionally, people need short-term achievable goals as symbolized by the rank/belt system.  Through many years of experience, we believe we have achieved an important balance for our students.

For a good check list on choosing a karate dojo read How to Shop For a Good Karate Club by Rob Redmond at www.24fightingchickens.com/2006/02/01/how-to-shop-for-a-good-karate-club/