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Tournaments are a good thing to train for in that they give a target deadline and allow you to benchmark against others as you progress, as well as a way to garner additional respect for your Master and your School by showing your skills.  Also, there is absolutely nothing as cool as going to watch a big, well run tournament.  The variety and level of the techniques are great, and you never know who might be there.  I met Chuck Norris at a tournament almost fifteen years ago out in California; he let me live.

To make it easier for our readers to search and find an appropriate tournament, we are presenting a calendar broken down by style.

Here is the official ATA Tournaments site.  This one is nice because it lays out the entire year’s tournaments beginning with the World Championships (in Little Rock, AR June 21-27) all the way through Sept. 2011.  It is updated fairly regularly too.

Being a WTF stylist, I would go here for their major ones.  Boy, would I like to be in London 2012!

Kung Fu Stylists should go here.  This lays out the tournament schedule chronologically for the calendar year, but has a nice geographic breakdown feature too, thus letting people in different areas search in case they want to watch.

A good listing of Karate Tournaments and is pretty up to date.  Or here.  Don’t forget that the US Open is July 9^th and 10^th at Disney World.  And of course the most famous of all, the Long Beach July 30^th through August 1st!

I like the home made looking www.judocalendar.com.  The colors are really obnoxious, but man is it useful.  You can search by date or region of the world very easily, and it will synch with your calendar system.  Old School Arts with new tech!  You should also just consider Googling “Judo tournament” with the state you are looking for because there are so many smaller tournaments out there.  This search technique can e applied to any style or geographical area too.

If you are in England I would use this link:  http://www.uknas.com/event-calendar.php as it has a variety of styles listed for a locality not exactly known for martial arts.

This is in no means a comprehensive list as there are constantly tournaments popping up all over the globe, but it does hit some of the high points.  Find your style, chose your time, and find your tournament.  Then get back to your training as you now have another goal to motivate you!