When we were kids, some of us simply loved to watch kung fu flicks on television. In my country, it was common to see particularly bad martial arts B-movies on regional channels late at night, and those of us who had the luxury of a bedroom TV (not yet a giveaway in the 80s) got often hooked on them, and then enjoyed exchanging comments the day after about the impossible stunts and the deadly techniques shown. There was invariably an aura of mystery around those movies which, together with the ridiculous special effects, spread among us the idea that all oriental martial arts featured "secrets" too terrible to be taught openly, and too difficult to learn for mere mortals anyway.
Then came the 90s, and the evolution of home computers and gaming consoles took the fighting games genre to a popularity peak also thanks to a load of fantasy elements. Previously, the fighting games of popular earlier home computers such as the Commodore 64 or arcade cabinets were mostly realistic, as in famous titles like Karateka or Ye Are Kung Fu. But with franchises such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken, everything became wacky and supernatural. Oddly enough, during the same time the martial arts movie industry became a lot less fantastic (and for my taste, way too boring), being dominated by US-based action movies with stars like Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The only asian kung fu movies to regularly reach the west were those of the comic-relief genre championed by Jackie Chan.
A resurgence of the fantasy theme in fighting movies came in the early 2000s, both thanks to much improved special effects (see The Matrix trilogy), and to the Chinese movie industry release of a streak of stunningly visual blockbusters ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Hero", "The House of Flying Daggers" and more), where once again martial arts were portrayed with a supernatural image.
It's quite evident that through the years the movies and the games have played a huge role in spreading the myth that far-eastern martial arts feature secrets such as uncanny strikes and near-mystical powers like blinding speed, flying, teleportation, elemental powers and anything you can think of... Clearly, nobody can seriously believe in going as far as beyond the laws of physics, but nevertheless a lot of people probably still think that each martial art harbors a bunch of "secret techniques" which allow to push an adept's skills to the human limits, either for defense or offense.
So the questions a karate beginner like me wants to raise here are these: is there really any "secret" at all in karate? And what may the word "secret" truly mean in this context?
Less than a month into the beginner's course, and I am already confident that in fact yes, there is something we can call the "secrets of karate", except that they are not secret at all, if they are teaching them to us since the first day! They are simply things that a clueless outsider of the martial arts world, like I was a few weeks ago, could not have easily imagined before getting into the art. Obviously they aren't nearly as fancy as the stuff of movies, but after all they are actually much more interesting. At least because they are real...
We've already got a bunch of samples in the first few lessons: many, many times as you are learning a technique the main purpose of which is clear, you might be overlooking a series of alternative and non-obvious applications of the same technique. For example, something that is presented as a defensive block may be used as a strike, if employed in a different scenario or combined with another technique. Already in the case of the very first block we've been taught, we've been also shown how to use the same move for breaking free from a grab, plus two different ways to employ such block as an actual offensive move or counterstrike. Conversely, it is also possible to turn some strikes into defenses, or steps into attacks. Even something that is normally only an athletic, non-martial drill can be sometimes turned into a combat move.
Beyond the basic techniques, there is then the whole world of the kata, or "forms": these are predetermined sequences of moves to be performed solo (in the most basic setup). For an outsider a kata may just seem a display of techniques or a "demo" performed by the karateka for an audience, however performing in public is not the reason why martial artists learn the various kata, it's rather just an inevitable consequence of our western cultural need to have a public for pretty much everything (can you think of anything at all that has never been turned into a show?). For a martial artist, studying a kata is first and foremost a method of practicing the strikes and other various techniques in motion and in sequence. However, each traditional kata is the result of imagining a whole battle around the karateka: we see only the person performing the kata, but we should try to picture imaginary opponents around him. In fact, given the defensive nature of karate, the ancient design of a kata might have stemmed from the actions of the imaginary opponents rather than from those of the "protagonist". As such, a kata hides the real applications of each of its moves and techniques, which are finally revealed when the kata is performed in its bunkai form, i.e. with the aid of a few other karatekas interpreting the roles of the "missing opponents". A beholder doesn't easily see those applications from a basic, non-bunkai kata performance. But not even the student himself may see them, or fully understand their potential, until many years of practicing the same kata over and over.
These are the kinds of martial knowledge which I am not ashamed to call "secrets of karate". They aren't really concealed or jealously guarded, but you cannot figure them out without studying and practicing your martial art with qualified teachers. And given the number of examples we've encountered in merely a few weeks, I suspect we won't likely run out of secrets to discover in a whole lifetime of practice.