hey all,

 

when semi-contact sparring , are you allowed to make contact with the face with some power, even if the oppenet isnt wearing a head guard????,

 

often the advanced players, throw a series of punches, pushing me back, making me handicaped in fighting , and i just clutch in a boxers position to keep my head low, ??

 

any ideas for those two quesies,

 

cheers "knowledge is king"

 

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when you are semi contact sparring you can make contact with the face, as long as it isnt excessive or you draw blood.Best way to get around that is just simply if you are going for the face, not to aim for the nose...aim for the forehead, cheek or chim instead, then theres less chance of blood being drawn.

 

As for your second query the only things that i could suggest really is that you make your you keep moving around your opponent, stay light on your feet and try not to stay in one spot for too long. Once you've sussed your opponent, blitz him/her! simple really!!

 

Ad over time and with more experience your skills will improve and this problem will lessen.

 

In the meantime protecting our head is one of the hardest things for some of us to learn when it comes to sparring.

 

Actually walking into my opponents handpads was one of my worst weaknesses in my sparring. I have a blind spot.

 

What I learned and was working on was holding the hand on that side much higher than in the normal sparring stance.

 

 

How about keeping your hands up, that helps me alot. Then again, I'm a boxing-kickboxing oriented type of fighter. Keep your chin down, keep your head moving left to right. Stay out of boxing range, use lateral movements. Use your elbow to smash their fist when they try to punch you in the face.

 

I think the rules are very shady myself, it's very subjective to the judges as to how hard you are hitting.

 

 

when i box wiht my inexperienced firned I taut him by sticking my chin high and sticking my face right to where he can punch me on the eye. Then i would get out of the way all the time making them really pissed. wait i'm getting off subject here.

 

Anyways, yea keep your hands up and dont' try to copy Ali.

At my school we do semi contact, We are allowed strikes to the face but without exessive contact or blood being drawn. I take advantage of this by striking to the chops and the forehead, I tend not to strike the chin, as it may cause the opponent (if not wearing gumshield) to bite their toingue off, and its much harder and you could hurt yourself if not punching correctly.

 

C YA

 

 

the face always seems to be the most open target when i normally spar with somebody,

 

but i often slightly worried because most of the people i spar with dont wear head gear, yet they still knock me in the face even if i am wearing a head guard, i was interested, in the four hit combo that they normally do, normally a jab,cross, hook, hook, it seems effective, since i am know more confident to hit in the face, do you guys know any decent move to strike towards the face??

Backfist. Very effective after a press block. Or even a head block.

 

 

In semicontact sparing, your control has to be good enough not to injure your partner. A good way to work on this is with a swaying heavy bag,

 

try to make contact lightly while moving around it will also help with your timing and distancing. (Im still working on this. )

 

 

Jabbing to the face is very effective to set up other combinations whether you make contact or not. It gives your opponent something to think about and if you throw the next part of your combination right after the jab, the intitial jab blinds them from seeing whats coming. Again you don't even have to land it to achieve this "blinding" effect momentarily.

 

Ingemar Johanssen, the former world heavyweight boxing champion from Sweden,

 

had a light, weak, jab that he pistoned at his opponents almost non-stop. Opponents would quickly weary of this annoying and seemingly harmless punch. Frustrated they would charge past Ingo's feeble jab, into the path of his murderous right hand, nicknamed "the Hammer of Thor". He repeated this technique right up to dropping Floyd Patterson seven times in the third round of their first title fight.

 

 

OSU!