What to Bring

01The list

02Clothes

A t-shirt and loose trousers or leggings. Anything with zips, buckles or hard fastenings is a problem in partner work — not for you, for the person you are working with.

Nothing needs to be new, and nothing needs to be martial-arts branded. You are going to sweat through it.

03The gi, and when to buy one

Not for a first class, and usually not for the first few. Two reasons.

The first is money: there is no point buying one before you know whether you are continuing. The second is fit — a Kyokushin gi is a specific weight and cut, clubs often have a preferred supplier, and the one you order yourself may not be the one you end up wanting. Ask your dojo which, then buy.

The belt comes with it and is worth mentioning for one reason: tying it correctly is, by a wide margin, the most fiddly part of the first weeks. Nobody finds this obvious.

04Protective equipment

Ask before buying. This is the single piece of advice practitioners give most often about gear, and it is worth following.

What a given group uses, and from when, is a club-level decision rather than a style-level one. Buying a full set before a first class is a common and completely avoidable expense.

We do not publish a required equipment list, and that is a deliberate gap rather than an oversight: it is a question for the instructor about your specific group, and an answer on a website would be wrong for somebody.

05Hygiene, which is not optional

These are rules rather than suggestions, and they exist because of what partner work involves.

• Toenails and fingernails trimmed. Long nails in partner drills cut people.
• No jewellery. Rings, watches, bracelets, earrings — all of them off before stepping on the floor.
• Hair tied back. For your own visibility as much as anything.
• Clean gi, clean feet. You will be in close contact with other people for an hour.

Our published dojo etiquette sets these out formally alongside the rest of the training-hall conventions.

06Water

Bring a bottle. Kyokushin classes are cardio-heavy and the breaks are short.

07Roughly what it costs to get started

We are not going to quote prices for equipment, because they vary by supplier and would be out of date by the time you read this. What is worth setting out is the shape of the spending, which is the part people get wrong.

The first class costs you nothing but the clothes you own. If you continue, the gi is the first real purchase and it is a one-off. Protective equipment comes later, in pieces rather than as a set, and only what your group actually uses.

The mistake to avoid is buying a complete kit up front. Our registration page covers fees; the equipment question is one to ask in person, because the answer depends on which group you join.

08What not to bring

Shoes onto the training floor — karate is practised barefoot and this is a rule about cleanliness rather than tradition. Chewing gum, for obvious reasons. And a plan for how the class should go, which will not survive the warm-up.

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