Is karate effective in improving postural control?

Background: Performing complex motor skills, such as the ones performed by karate athletes, requires a great sense of balance. the posturo-kinetic performance seems to be improved by sport practice, especially by sports involving a of posturokinetic activities, the aim of this review was to critically analyse the scientific literature in order to whether any positive correlation between karate and improved postural control is scientifically supported./Methods: The online search engines Scirus and Medline were used for generating the data. A comprehensive literature search conducted based on the following keywords: “karate”, “postural control” and “body sway”. Results were collected filtered manually.: Four articles were identified related to karate practice and postural control, covering a period between 1998 and2009. Although different experimental approaches were used to investigate this concept, overall the results of these confirm the effectiveness of karate in improving postural control.: Practicing karate seems to elicit long term improvements in postural control. However, a much deeper approach this fighting sport, which would take into account its technical specificities (e.g. kata & kumite), is required in to increase our understanding of the posture-kinetic impact of this relatively unexplored sport activity.