No glove sparring

[Dragn]

I practise a full contact karate/mma style.

 

We spar with either fingerless bag gloves or bare knuckles/ shinpads / mouthpiece / groin cup and a plastic bubble faced head gear.

 

This headgear allows us to throw headpunches / elbows / knees etc without the use of cumbersome boxing gloves.

 

I feel boxing gloves allow for various cover up defences that dont work so effectively without the gloves on.

 

We can then use our hands more effectively for grabs, throws, chokes etc.

 

So we are able to use all our weapons in a realistic mannor with pretty hard contact.

 

Of course the down side is your visibility is sometimes reduced by fogged up visors and its really hard to breathe. It takes alot of getting used to.

 

The head gear is also a little cumbersome on the ground. So we also do ground sparring without the gear on.

 

I feel this is the most realistic way to free spar.

 

How many others out there use this kind of sparring?

 

Thoughts, oppinions, alternatives?.........

[kataman]

We don't use that type of fighting,but I do tournements with the japan karate shotokan association and we only fight with glove on. At first it fell strange, but I fell more confortable with less equipments.

[jarrettmeyer]

I wish that we had something a little harder at my dojo. We do have sparring, requiring full sparring gear: headgear, punch, kick, shin, groin.

 

We also do light practice with cup only, but this is really, really light. The good news is that I have managed to find a few partners that have increased their definition of light, but only a little. That's extended into kata no bunkai, as well. I've got more bruises from kata than from sparring.