What's you're opinon on sparring?

[delta1]

All kinds of sparring are essential. I look at point sparing as a chance to work on entries, evasion, and the like. At the other extreme, hard contact is imperative to a reality martial artist.

 

If your school is primarily a sport oriented school, the instep padding is good. They are concerned with scoreing points and protecting you from injuries in the meantime. If you are training to fight, they encourage bad habbits. Kick with the instep to a hard target and you'll likely break your foot.

 

If your school is telling you they teach effective self defense, but spar only with light tournament rules, they are kidding you and themselves.

 

Bashing your face into a wall- might toughen your face, but if you don't train to block with your face, what's the point? (I know, you were being sarcastic- but so am I )

[swooshfinn]

liability sucks... but in a lot of places, a fact of life.

 

sorry.

 

i'm sure you can find a group of people who will mutually agree to take beatings from each other. until one takes too much a beating and sues.

 

sorry.

 

I agree, liability is a fact of life in many places. However, i wasn't meaning i wanted a place where i could beat up and get beat up, i think that if people have enough skill, they should be able to hit each other, at least to some degree. I do not want to get hurt or hurt anyone, but would like a little more......... reality sparring i guess, so the skills i learn will be more usefull.

 

At the dojo i used to go to we sparred alot, and usually without body armor, but they let people spar who had no control, and solved the injury problem by not hitting each other at all.

 

Then we would have high ranks who would always throw techniques from far away and not really try to land them, meaning that you didn't really have to block because you knew it wouldn't hit you anyway. Also it made me wonder if the person could hit someone. It was hard to know, because they never had to.

 

Having just recently started back up in my original KSW studio, I am not comfortable enough with my control and my body is seriously not as fine tuned as it was a year ago when I left. We did no-contact sparring last night and I could tell I just didn't have the control I needed... so I was playing my typical "non-aggressive" role and doing some reactive sparring, much to the dismay of my instructors and myself since on Wednesday night I was definitely showing signs of improvement in my sparring style with the pads on.

 

I personally like the idea of the pads because a couple of people in my studio don't know what control is, and they get away with it. I personally am sick of it, and am about to refuse to spar with them for that reason. I think of the pads as added insurance in case you decide to make a wrong move or forget to cover or just don't have the instinct to cover hits.

[Ironberg]

Don't like the wussy foot pads - kick harder.

 

Aside from my sarcasm - you do need to learn control, in my opinion. Learning how to become a good point fighter, or continuous moderate contact sparring with some pulled techniques is essencial to developing a certain sense of timing and especially coordination. Not everyone has the coordination to be able to control their techniques in that ideal manner - even experienced people who generally spar under moderate to low contact. However, I believe that strong contact is important - but I hardly have that opportunity to spar full contact.

 

Seriously, I don't really see the point in foot pads. They will not help protect your opponent from any, say sidekicks. They only seem to be good for making very loud s when your rondkick comes into contact with forearms, or ribs (in that case a crackling noise accomidates it).

[MichiganTKD]

Free fighting is important for several reasons.

 

1. It forces you to deal with someone face to face. How would you respond? How do you deal with someone taller by 6 or more inches? How do you deal with someone who prefers punching? How do you fight someone with a solid body and power? You don't have to like sparring (I do), but understand it is important.

 

2. It gives you a chance to practice your technique against someone aside from just drills. If you hit someone with your favorite kick, and your foot bounces off them, you need more practice. Having a smaller student spar a big guy gives the smaller one a chance to practice full contact hitting.

 

3. Sparring forces you to adjust to different strategies. Everyone fights differently. Some people are very aggressive. Some people try to sucker you in and then use spinning kicks. Some people like jumping. You must become aquainted with different strategies and adapt to them.

 

4. Having women spar men gives women a chance to practice power technique and going full contact. The men are forced to develop gracefulness and footwork. Women against women is a category in itself.

 

We stick with bare hands and feet sparring until they have shown they understand control and accuracy. Once they understand that, we do periodic sparring with hogu and headgear.

[TKDCat]

TaeKwonDo is now an Olympic sport, so now we have to take more cautions to look more professional. Go to tournaments, they don't care how hard you hit!

[Ironberg]

That's true - and it's cool. However, you can't punch the head - grr!

 

I recollect a recent TKD tournament I went to where me and my opponent both threw really really hard body hooks at the same time. Though we both connected, his elbow smashed into my bicept pretty bad. Though I was able to finish (thank heavens for side kicks), it took my bicept a good week to heal. Lesson to be learned: too bad I wasn't able to hook the head and avoid the injury altogether.

[DLopez]

At the risk of sounding contentious, I have to disagree somewhat that light contact sparring induces bad habits.

 

Quite the contrary. I find the natural tendency is to want to hit full contact, and it takes extreme control to strike fast, but not hit my opponent with much force.

 

IOW, I am constantly having to *think* about not hitting hard. That's not something I will have to worry about in a street fight.

[markusan]

Muhammed Ali would sack sparring partners who hurt him too much, and I'd challenge anyone to accuse him of being a wimp. The logic was that he'd save the tough stuff for the ring when the dollars were on the line.

 

I like shin instep guards. I don't think they are to protect your opponent but to protect your instep. I agree kicking with the instep to a hard target is not a great idea. But I know on occasion my front Kick TKD style, with the foot pointed forwrd and toes pulled back to hit with the ball of the foot, has impacted with a downward moving elbow right in the middle of the instep. Needless to say each step for the next week reminded me of my error.

 

As for sparring. I think good martial arts is about deception, a bit like chess or pool. You have to work to set up a winning technique and you need a live thinking opponent to practice with, the more skilled the better.

 

But if that opponent is better than you, and there is always someone better, and you're going full contact......you can't practice or train when your lights are out or your ribs are broken.

 

I think a good rule is optimise fitness, techniques skills and minimise injuries.

 

I like light contact sparring for earlier belts, heavier but controlled for more senior belts and every strike must be blocked whether it makes contact or not.

[ShadowGoomba]

IMHO TKD sparring is a GREAT exersise but a BAD simulation. It is really hard to do those high kicks over and over...but you probally wouldn't even wan't to do even one kick above the gut in a real fight. At my school, we were even encouraged not to block! What proceded was a steady exchange of light taps until one person got too tired to continue. Also, punches and practically ALL handwork was basicly nonexistent. Hence I quit. Just My 2 cents.

Edited June 27, 2004 by Shadow~Goomba

[markusan]

Shadow, here in Australia there are at least two quite different styles of tkd, one as you describe, designed more for sport, and the other puts much more emphasis on the hands. I do the latter and have competed with a degree of success against karate guys at all styles tournaments, and found that our styles are very similar. And we block everything, even in no contact or light contact sparring.