‘You must feel it. If you do karate without feeling it,it's empty: It doesn’t work’ – Aesthetic experience as motivation for women athletes’ continuity in sports karate

Abstract

Women and girls who start practising in martial arts and combat sports (MACS) tend to abandon the practices early after joining them. Women and girls usually are not captivated to remain training, instead facing many challenges that push them out of practices. Yet a few continue. We wonder, then, what makes them do so. We explored this in a study with 14 women elite-level athletes, who were in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games, having our focus, therefore, on sports karate. Although they had the life project of an Olympic medal as a motivation to persist, this reason showed not to be the most meaningful for them. Thus, in this study we explore what makes women remain practising in sports karate when there seems to be so many challenges and difficulties for their continuity, as shown in the literature. We inquire on reasons that keep women athletes engaged beyond their commitment to a national team, from how they started, passing through some reasons for their permanence somehow more superficial, to finally those reasons that relate to meaningful experiences, as aesthetic experience. We close the paper with a claim that encompasses recommendations to the MACS scholar and practitioner community to turn practices into empowering experiences for women by listening to them.

Introduction

Women's reasons to join martial arts and combat sports’ (MACS (Channon & Jennings, 2014)) practices are often related to improving their safety. Self-defence training is appealing to them given the promises of equipping women with skills to stop violence against them (McCaughey, 1998). Some women also practice due to fitness goals or general health goals including mental health, focus, and the number two promise made in the name of MACS, discipline (Turelli et al., 2021). Girls are usually led to practices by their parents with the utmost goal of safety as well, and secondarily, with a focus on behaviour and discipline, although this tends to be the main reason for boys to be appointed by their parents (Turelli, 2022). While self-identifying women do take beneficial outcomes from MACS practice, such as feelings of empowerment and fitness improvement (Maclean, 2017; Rodrigues et al., 2024), there are many detrimental factors to their holistic health and even safety that occur within MACS, such as violence, from physical to sexual (Lima et al., in review; Sylvester, 2023).

While there are promises of gaining skills for self-defence through MACS training, violence against women and girls does not stop increasing, revealing a failure in the promise which is often broken within the very MACS spaces. In current days, women and girls joining MACS adapt the best they can to the given scenario, which tend to be martial spaces made without them or their needs in mind (Matthews, 2016). Even when self-defence is proposed as women-focused, many unrealistic conceptions are found there as practices are still put together from men's perspectives. With that, most women and girls who try MACS training end up abandoning it (Ferretti and Knijnik, 2007). For instance, specifically in sports karate, highly skilled elite-level athletes say they do not feel prepared to face street violence (Turelli et al, 2024), even though they are among the few women and girls who do remain practising. The report provided here refer to their experience, specifically.

We wonder, then, why they remain. As elite-level athletes, who were in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games at the time this study was undertaken, we could consider they had the life project of an Olympic medal to justify their continuing participation in karate, or even having in karate a way of living, as their job. Most of them, though, did not achieve the dreamed Olympic medal, neither can they make a living from karate as a profession, due to karate's status of a somewhat unprivileged sport not allowing for exclusive professionalization. And yet they continue. They also experienced first-person or witnessed different forms of violence, including harassment, but stayed in karate. In this study we explore what makes women remain practising in karate when there seems to be so many challenges and difficulties for their continuing. Such challenges have been vastly reported and discussed in the literature (e.g., Maclean, 2019; Maor, 2018; Phipps, 2020; Tjønndal, 2019; Turelli et al., 2024). Their permanence, though, finds justification through aesthetic experience, which will be explored further as encompassing how the performance of martial movements in a sports setting feels, including flow, balance, rhythm, tension and release, precision, and harmony of the body in motion.

In the next pages, we will share and discuss our findings from a study of the women's Spanish Olympic (2020/1) karate squad on what kept them engaged in practices beyond their commitment to a national team. We will briefly report how they began in karate many years ago as well, but our focus is mainly on why they remain motivated to train, given the multiple disadvantages they need to negotiate and overcome for doing so. We hope to provide insight to the MACS scholar and practitioner community on the experiences that are indeed meaningful for women fighters in this setting, which potentially could be transferred to other settings, and invite such a community to hear women's voices instead of making assumptions about their needs. Before sharing the findings, though, we share a methodological summary of the conduct of the study.

Methodology

Our study was carried out with the women's Spanish karate squad in preparation to attend the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Games. The researched team was made up of 14 women athletes and four men coaches. In this paper, we are bringing data from the women athletes, identified by pseudonyms, as we are focusing on their motivation to remain practising in karate despite the many difficulties all of them face in doing so. We also rely on the lived experiences of the first author as a life-long karate practitioner, athlete, and navigator of martial challenges to help us to make sense of the women's reported feelings. Thus, our experiences as both, martial cognoscente and scholars, having the second and third authors with a prolific body of academic production, are used to interpret and optimize women fighters' claim for experiences of flow in karate.

We take a critical feminist approach (e.g., McRobbie, 2015; Mason, 2018) combined with historically and culturally informed social constructionism (Krause, 1995) for conducting this study. We deeply reflect on gendered embodiment (Mason, 2018) both from a personal point of view as the first author has long-term lived experiences in sports karate, and from elite-level athletes’ information provided. We critically analyse the set of data confronting what is expected from women fighters in a gender binary environment (Cynarski et al., 2012) and how that is taken by them, often turning into neoliberal ways to keep women dominated (McRobbie, 2015). Following Hickey and Roderick (2017), women elite-level athletes were interviewed twice each within a three-month window in the 2020 second semester, providing us with insights on their motivations to start (interview 1) and remain (interviews 1 and 2) training in karate. Open-ended semi-structured interviews (Hammer and Wildavsky, 1990) were conducted in Spanish, transcribed using Microsoft Stream software, then coded manually (Charmaz and Thornberg, 2021) until corresponding to a series of anticipated categories (epic) inspired from previous studies and lived experiences, and yet other categories emerged (emic) from the data set itself (see Turelli, 2022). After that, data was translated into English and shared among the authors for further critical dialogue in a triangulation process in which co-authors worked as critical friends. The categories presented in this paper are all related (helping to elaborate it in a nuanced manner) to a broad category that expresses athletes’ positive feelings lived through karate. Such feelings encourage athletes of the need to remain practising despite the challenges they faced. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Autonomous Universty of Madrid in 2019, under code CEI-102-1930.

Findings and discussion

Beginnings…

Karate is often depicted in movies as a tool for self-defence, especially against supposed evil enemies, nourishing people's imagination of a martial art for fighting injustice (Bowman, 2010; 2013; 2017). This helps to have adults and teenagers looking to karate as a tool to achieve self-protection, as well as a way to overcome bullying experiences. In developing countries like Brazil, social projects for youth often have karate in their repertoire of activities as an attempt to avoid adherence by adolescents to the world of trafficking and crime (Lautert et al., 2005; ONU Brazil, 2018 ¹ ). However, at very early ages, children usually do not choose karate for themselves, especially if they do not live in social vulnerability or in environments of family violence. Their parents tend to make such choice on their behalf aiming at their safety, as was the case for most of the Spanish women in our study, who started karate as girls, when they were between 3 and 7 years of age. They commented on this as follows:

My mother was quite fearful and wanted to put me in karate for me to learn how to defend myself. (Demeter, Interview 10 (1), 27/07/2020)

I wanted to be a dancer, and my parents wanted me to learn to defend myself. (…) They didn't let me choose. (Hera, Interview 9 (1), 27/07/2020)

The women were put in karate by their parents and would discover and develop a taste for the sport especially when they started competing and winning. Hera, for example, reported:

At first, I didn't like it at all, but when I started fighting, I got a taste for it and then … (she continued practicing) I was seven years old. (Hera, Interview 9 (1), 27/07/2020)

Many times, though, they would not necessarily enjoy being in karate, particularly when they experienced challenging situations. But due to familial or martial hierarchies, as parents or coaches’ impositions and expectations, they would keep going and practising under ‘opaque motivations’, as noted by Bowman (2020). He says that ‘there are complex social forces and relations acting on the contexts of our lives, many of which we may have no conscious awareness of and certainly no control over’ (p. 134); these complex social forces and relations lead to opaque motivations and intentions, according to Bowman. This stands to women adhering to training due to reasons that were less elaborated, as adults’ choices on their behalf.

Remaining…

Considering this, we were broadly interested in why people stick to the things they started or were led to start; in other words, when difficulties arose, why did they not just leave? Yet, knowing that women in karate face multiple adversities to their practice (Turelli et al., 2022; 2024, we wanted to verify what could be motivating them to stay. It could be fair to consider that they may develop a commitment to the group they joined and have the culture of such a group and sport deeply embodied as martial habitus (Brown and Jennings, 2013) that they remain training without further reflection. For instance, Vesta said:

I don’t know! I have never thought why I continue, to be honest. I would say … (…) I don't know, it seems like a pretty entertaining sport. (Vesta, Interview 8 (1), 25/07/2020)

The martial habitus follows dispositions created and performed by men, having women adapting to such dispositions. Thus, overall, women and girls usually have a hard time in martial spaces instead of fun as practices do not consider their specific needs and interests. Our hypothesis relies on girls having less opportunity to raise their voices to oppose the set goals for them of defending themselves, as Hera mentioned with her parents through ‘They didn't let me choose’. So, girls and women tend to submit to the hierarchies and learn how to survive (Rodrigues et al., 2024). Yet, they may start succeeding, since by training with boys, they become stronger and can have good results in competitions against other girls. Hera shared on her process of becoming a brave fighter:

They (men fighters) see you as a girl, and I would tell them ‘Hey, you can train and hit normally, nothing happens’. (…) I developed stamina; within karate, I can take any kind of punches, no problem. (Hera, Interview 9 (1), 27/07/2020)

Growing up in a patriarchal society, in combination with martial environments that do not accommodate them properly (Turelli et al., 2026), instead requiring them to adapt to martial training while lacking voice and acknowledgement, creates a situation that when they reach some recognition for their performance, it could turn into the motivation to stay training, to get some validation and appreciation (Turelli, 2022). Even the requirement of submitting and reifying their own body to achieve recognition may be considered a fair means if they feel validated. In karate, one becomes part of the group after overcoming intentional challenges, such as proving resistance in training, enduring punishments to the body, hurting comments that test moral resilience, and presenting some results in competitions. These things, when achieved, are evidence for the martial culture and community that someone is worthy of being a member of the gym (Gastaldo, 2011). Hera navigated a journey, from not wanting to be there, to enjoying the recognition she obtained:

What I like the most is the adrenaline of the championships. I love to compete, I love, I love, I love to compete, I love to compete with good people. (Hera, Interview 9 (1), 27/07/2020)

However, women are not equally embraced as men are, even when they overcome the challenges that are the same or, in fact, that go much beyond men's (Fasting and Pfister, 2000). To compete at the level they are at, women need to surrender themselves to the sport. Some decided to go with such intensity in the pursuit of results that they understand that everything else in their lives must, at least in this moment of high-performance, be left aside or suspended. They confessed:

Personal life, well, you have to put it aside. Yes. (Atena, Interview 5 (1), 21/07/2020)

My boyfriend asked me to marry him in January of last year, 2019, and we are putting off getting married because of karate. (Ceres, Interview 17 (2), 23/08/2020)

I am trying to pursue a goal that need to be before everything or almost everything. Sometimes it is not well understood, but it has to be like that. (Atena, Interview 14 (2), 15/08/2020)

This self-denying way towards a personal life putting karate before everything else goes on saying something about women and their life projects (Gonçalves and Vaz, 2016), what they aim to achieve. Notwithstanding, this is not unanimous among the athletes, with a portion of them advocating for more personal life, given the many uncertainties and turnover within sports teams, theirs included. They put their goals as professionals on one side of the scales their irreplaceable life priorities and on the other side. Some of the athletes shared:

I like to have a life apart from karate, that's why I have never asked to be in Madrid as an intern (in the High-Performance Centre). (Ceres, Interview 7 (1), 24/07/2020)

We know that karate will end one day (as a phase in their lives), so it is a bit silly to focus only on karate, when it does not feed us, for example. As a general rule you cannot live from it, you have to get something else out. (Afrodite, Interview 11 (1), 29/07/2020)

I also have a boyfriend, and I also like spending time with my family, with him, with my friends, because in the end … (time will not go back). (Juno, Interview 24 (1), 05/09/2020)

There are still people who may locate themselves as ‘in-betweeners’, such as Ceres who advocates for ‘a life apart from karate’ while postponing her marriage, and in Venus’ example, who shared:

When we girls reach a certain age, we want to be mothers, almost all, or all. (…) (In the future) I want to have my family, I want to be a normal person, since now I cannot be because it is my moment as an athlete. So, it's temporary, that is, one year, two years, three years, four years, I don't know how long it can take. (…) I'll start studying because, in the end, if you don't study, you have nothing. And I, right now, my life is not normal. But I want it to be normal in the future. (Venus, Interview 3 (1), 14/07/2020)

These women, some advocating for surrendering everything to the sport, others saying it is not worth it the effort, and yet others in between, show multiple approaches to their continuation in karate. Nevertheless, despite this range of dispositions towards karate, all of them are still there, training. And so, we ask why? Some possibilities are discussed next.

Under a neoliberal ruling patriarchal society, the demands for perfection fall on women, not leaving any of them immune, despite the previously nuanced dispositions pointed out. According to McRobbie (2015: 7) ‘the idea of “the perfect” emerges as a highly hetero-normative vector of competition for young women today’. McRobbie refers to the creation of an archetype of a woman who has value, is admired and sought after, almost desperately, as the ideal woman, who is nothing less than a super woman. In a search for validation given unfair social, and power imbalances, women in sport pursue perfection, possibly even when they adopt the discourse that there is more in life than devoted karate training. Dedicating monastically to achieve perfection in karate, as illustrated by Hestia in the next quote, or seeking perfection simultaneously in various facets of life, both approaches seem to end in the same issue for women under a neoliberal regime.

I do things once, two, three, four times, until I get it perfect. I'm a very perfectionist person. That is a problem, because you end up getting frustrated. (Hestia, Interview 6 (1), 22/07/2020)

Hestia notes that this problem may affect people's mental health, although the ‘problem’ is more often taken as a positive thing than a problem indeed, with high-performance sport increasing the demands. In the pursuit of pleasing others to achieve and hold a position in a team, or to just feel validated, the message is that looking for perfection is a very good thing. McRobbie (2015, p.7) argues that ‘in seeking this degree of excellence in life the young woman is therefore doing herself proud’ as she complies with expectations, remaining within standardized gendered diktats that aim to please others, yet may be violent to herself. If she does not do so though, she will be blamed for her failure, sparking many other issues, as acting disruptively is not an easy path. McRobbie (2015: 9) explains that

By the perfect I mean a heightened form of self-regulation based on an aspiration to some idea of the ‘good life’. This also functions as a border-marking strategy, and a new dividing practice, since it is predicated on calculation and self-assessment against some elevated and rarely described benchmarks.

While this is presented as a strong reason for women to do what they do, following external expectations and models given to them, there are other reasons for them to remain training. Bowman (2020: 134) observes that ‘our rationalizations for our activities may well be alibis and pretexts whose real motors operate entirely outside of our consciousness’. Deeper meanings and purposes for women athletes to be kept in karate may be there, yet mostly not conscious but providing somewhat transcendent experiences that impact their identities, such as aesthetic experience. Thus, while they may be played and absorbed by the martial habitus, they also build their identities linked to karate and find in it a source of aesthetic experience (Kirk, 1996; Maivorsdotter and Lundvall, 2009; Maivorsdotter and Quennerstedt, 2012). Thus, we argue that these factors can be intertwined in what can be a women's martial habitus. Our research helps to unpack and make explicit a part of the habitus (aesthetic pleasure) that was not obvious.

Meaningful continuity…

Kirk (1996) explains that aesthetic experience is not something exclusively experienced by high-level athletes, but it can also be experienced by beginners in sports. That is, aesthetic experience is achieved whenever the performance has ‘a certain quality that, when evaluated in relation to an individual's own standards of excellence for such events, make that event special enough to evoke an appropriate emotional response’ (Kirk, 1996: 131). However, there is a difference in the experience lived by the performers of the movements and people who watch. The spectator needs to use discernment to perceive the quality of the movement; the spectator experience is based on what they are able to capture through vision; it is a ‘detached’ experience. Whereas the practitioner's experience is ‘involved’, own and kinaesthetic (Kirk, 1996).

To be able to live aesthetic experience in karate, women need to be there for some time though, given that karate is a complex sport to be learned and some level of mastery, and comfort with the task being performed, are required in order to reach a state of fruition, of flow. Thus, unfortunately, most women leave karate before experiencing this. And those who remain enough time to be able to try, unfortunately have faced many difficulties, including harassment, in getting there. But once they have the aesthetic experience, karate gains another meaning for them and perhaps justifies why they consider that it is worth it to face the odds. Some examples of these rewarding experiences in athletes’ words:

When I finish the fight or competition, I don't know what I have done, I mean, you are so deep, that you do not remember how you scored, you do not remember what, what you did. It is a feeling that you exist only for what you are doing and the rest of the aspects, don’t, don’t, they do not exist. (Ceres, Interview 7 (1), 24/07/2020)

Once I mentioned it to the psychologist, and he addressed it as a state of flow. I am fighting, and I know before throwing the technique that I am going to score. It's that I think I'm going to score and then I score or is it that you really know for some reason that you're going to score? I do not know. (Atena, Interview 5 (1), 21/07/2020)

There are many championships that you say, ‘OMG, things really worked out for me!’ I mean, you do a technique and everything goes smoothly (flows). The truth is that it is a sensation … the best of all! I wish it were always like that! But it is difficult, it is difficult to get it. It doesn't always come out. (Juno, Interview 24 (1), 05/09/2020)

Juno highlights that experiencing this fruition is the best she can feel, but it does not come for free. There is a price to be paid in terms of training loads, which includes standing to a set of challenges as we have been pointing out. The three athletes’ quotes are referencing mindfulness and specially the state of flow, a concept from Csikszentmihalyi (2000). Their experiences combine timing with specific sensations, or feelings, leading to fruition through the body as a unit. They experience things through the most concrete senses, but often being somewhat transported to another dimension, subtle, inspired, free from what could be concrete bonds to matter; something that leads them to ‘lose themselves in the intensity of concentration’ (Gumbrecht, 2007: 45), allowing to see things in slow motion when there is a lot of speed, or to apparently not to see things at all, just executing them, as Ceres said.

Other athletes also commented on timing and feelings helping to unpack the profoundness of these experiences for them. On timing, they said:

When you understand and know a super-fast technique, happening at the perfect moment – that is incredible, takes a lot, and is amazing. (Diana, Interview 13 (2), 13/08/2020)

In fighting there is the moment. (…) It is incredible when the technique is in the moment it has to be. Suddenly, how the attacker knew the opponent was going to go exactly there? (where she is beaten) (…) It is as if the technique is one second ahead! (Atena, Interview 14 (2), 15/08/2020)

Gumbrecht (2007) points out different ‘fascinations’ that high-level sport may be able to awaken in viewers, and one of them is ‘timing’, which athletes call the perfect moment, the ability to put the correct movement in time and correct space/place. It is a combination of patience, related to chronological time, with opportunity, the timing guided by awareness. For Gumbrecht, sport is an object of pleasure and enjoyment when watched, it is ‘a phenomenon that paralyzes the eyes, something that constantly attracts, without indicating any explanation for the attraction’ ² (Gumbrecht, 2007: 20). He defines this as ‘presence culture’, meaning that the value is in the presence of the perfect moment or the emotion that generates impact, that chills; no other explanations or purposes are required, with the aesthetic of what is seen being justified by itself. Afrodite reflects on how she corroborates such experience in an embodied manner:

I think it is a set of aesthetics, technique, strength, expression. It gives me goose bumps, you know. (Afrodite, Interview 19 (2), 24/08/2020)

The athletes know their bodies, although, not always, and they will be aware, as mentioned by Bowman (2020), of their reasons to keep doing what they do. But the intimate relationship with an intense long-term practice of karate through their bodies leads them to trust their feelings. Yet what they experience does not last, it leads them to epiphany (Gumbrecht, 2001) and finally a certain fascination with their sport. Gumbrecht (2010) explains that the sum of ephemerality, given by the culture of presence, with the epiphany, what happens in a moment and then disappears, causes fascination for both athletes and public. This happens ultimately because in such experience there is a suspension of reality. Athletes report on this, also showing how they take responsibility for providing this to others, those watching to their performances:

I try to show outside (when performing karate) what I feel, what I have. So I transmit a lot (audience can grasp that). (Afrodite, Interview 11 (1), 29/07/2020)

Karate is very plastic [adaptable], there is a feeling that the person doing things has to convey. (Atena, Interview 14 (2), 15/08/2020)

When karate is well executed, it is lived and felt, when it is executed with feelings. For me that is beautiful, when you live what you do. (Demeter, Interview 20 (2), 27/08/2020)

When speaking about feelings in a more personal way, athletes use words that connect to a cathartic experience, so deep and meaningful because it is known by them, as in the case of knowing how the frustration of defeat feels on one's own guts. There is a somewhat mystical experience, containing ecstasy of being apart from reality, as Diana notes next. Following her, Proserpina condemns karate performances that do not project people beyond the superficial:

When someone wins, I have goose bumps when I see a person winning. (…) And it is also precious seeing the other losing a semi-final. It has two faces, the one who is winning and is screaming at the air of adrenaline, and the one who is on the ground crying. That frustration also seems precious to me. It is that feeling … (Diana, Interview 13 (2), 13/08/2020)

Karate is felt. You must feel it. If you do karate without feeling it, it's empty. It does not work. (Proserpina, Interview 2 (1), 12/07/2020)

Another athlete, Minerva, seems to put all together, the timing and the feeling, which are quite ephemerous but revealing of transcendence. The words she used to describe her experience associated it with happiness and the achievement of a goal. Notwithstanding, the goal itself turns minor once the feeling is experienced in a brief moment, although it may last by producing a change of state in her, a change of mindset, affecting the perception of one's identity. Minerva said:

On Monday, when you get home, you are the same person having won or having lost. But just that moment of having achieved a small goal, that moment of happiness … Knowing that you have given everything and that has become what you wanted, it is not the medal, it is that moment. (Minerva, Interview 12 (2), 12/08/2020)

Although on Monday, when they fly back home, they ‘are the same person’, that lived ‘moment’, as a synthesis of a journey indeed, may produce a change of state for their consciousness. Those moments, however, are possible because there is considerable investment, training and effort, therefore not coming for free. That becomes ingrained in who the athletes are, being a fundamental part of their lives and an inseparable aspect of their identities, thus justifying why they continue to practice. They explained:

Right now, karate is a part of me. (…) It is a pleasure, and it is something that my body asks me for. (Ceres, Interview 7 (1), 24/07/2020)

Your friends or family ask you, ‘really everything you have done, the money you spend, really everything you do, go train every day, traveling, not being with your family in important moments, not celebrating certain parties, is it really all worth it?’ I … Yes. I cannot find the explanation, but it is worth it. It would not be me if I didn't. I would be failing myself if I didn’t. It's my way of being. (Minerva, Interview 12 (2), 12/08/2020)

These quotes exemplify how karate can turn into athletes′ identities, especially because they started really early in their lives, developing their bodies concomitantly with the learning of the sport. For instance, at the time of the research, they have been training in karate for 13–26 years. It is so deeply embodied that it is where they can feel themselves, the best, and the worst, of themselves when they are on the mat, wearing their karate uniforms and performing martial movements that feel as comfortable as walking or talking. In its best version possible, it is a language, and they feel pleasure in mastering it.

Conclusion

In this paper, we aimed to explore some reasons that keep women practising in karate despite the various challenges they face to continue. The women that were researched discussed their commitment to a national squad, what potentially facilitates the athletes’ aesthetic experiences, along with other motivations that kept them engaged enough to remain on such a long-term karate journey. Most of them joined karate due to their parents will and initiative, who appointed them with the intention of making them able to defend themselves. At a somewhat surface level, they remained training out of imposition, for example, by their parents’ authority not allowing them to stop or move to other sports, or even due to martial hierarchy and martial habitus’ embodiment. The embodiment of tradition combined with the hierarchical system within karate, taught them obedience and submission under the name of discipline. Senseis, the coaches, are placed at the top of the hierarchy, often with unrestricted power, and yet at times in tuned work with parents to ‘build the character’ of children. They, and specifically girls in a patriarchal society that broadly reinforces such message, learn those teachings and want to perform them with perfection, pleasing people in a search for validation. By learning the rules and playing the game well (Fasting and Pfister, 2000), they start winning competitions, which then may get them involved in a cycle of efforts that bring the reward of competitions’ results.

Our intent to interpret deeper meanings for women's continuity in karate brought us to analyse athletes’ quotes related to aesthetic experience and flow. Athletes made reference to the perfect moment, connected to timing, and the feelings they had through karate practice in very specific and special moments. Despite the ephemerality of them, such moments or experiences revealed to be transformative, affecting athletes’ lives by actively participating in the formation of their identities. Karate turns into an ingrained part of women athletes themselves, allowing them to feel authentic in contrast to so many experiences of oppression that they also face, and this is revealing about why they remain training. The way they feel through karate practice, when it is conducted accountably, could become, therefore, a source of healing from the very damages generated through and within karate. Thus, karate shows to be a tool of great potential if used aiming at empowerment and liberation, instead of used in a way that allows, authorizes and legitimizes oppressive and abusive actions for the sake of patriarchal privilege. Both directions are possible, but only the former should be chosen in detriment of the later.

We would invite the MACS scholar and practitioner community to focus on the experiences that are meaningful for women fighters, as we reported here. Experienced women athletes are speaking, and although some deep meanings may not be completely clear to all of them given the embodiment of tradition, hierarchy and martial habitus, in addition to social expectations and neoliberal demands posed on women, their claim is clearly identifiable. We advocate that this focus on women's expressions be taken into account and honoured, with more scholars focusing on women's voices in MACS, making sense of their experiences with them, thinking together with a real interest in understanding things to achieve justice and change in sport. We advocate that all the MACS community do not assume things in women's place, as if they do not know anything about fighting, requesting them to constantly adapt to male models and ways of performing. They just need to be respected and have enough space to figure out how things work better for them, in addition to receiving the correct and well-intentioned stimuli. If this is embraced and coaches of all genders educate themselves and give alternative proposals to conventional models a try, many people will be surprised with the outcomes. Such coaches must trust women, as much as women must trust their own feelings. Finally, further research could study the experience of non-elite female karate participants to check if it matches/differs from elite-level participants.