sparring in hung-gar kung-fu is it a good idea?

[GTF]

i took up hung-gar a few months ago and my instructor says that hung-gar is not a sport and because many of the moves involve pulling at throughts and things it is dangourous to sparr with. so does any body here do hung-gar and if so do you sparr with it. he also mentioned that the chinease did not believe in sparring because it is not real life and you can not say who won. also is it possible to become capable of actually using an art for real life situations without practising sparring.

[Ninjitsu]

I use to take Hung Gar Kung Fu and it is extremly dangerous to spar using it. There's to much grabbing and pulling and hitting vital points

[Thaegen]

no, if you don't try to spar in any MA, you will not react good in a reallife situation.

There is a huge difference by doing techniques against an opponent who stands still and do nothing. it is good to learn, but after that you need to learn to use it under stress/adrealine/moving and avoiding opponents.

The argument about saying I can't spar, because my techniques are to dangerous are the guys who get beaten up in RL situations.

Form/repeating techniques and spar are all important, you can't be good at your MA if you don't spar.

[elbows_and_knees]

sparring is ALWAYS a good idea, mainly for the reasons thaegan stated. Besides, when you train now, are you REALLY clawing your parnters full power? are you REALLY gouging them? If not, then you are still no better off than you would be by modifying your techniques to spar with them.

Also, remember that fighting is more principle based than technique based. there are several different techniques which utilize the same principle. For example, in judo, I can do the throw tai otoshi with my leg below your knee - you will fall unharmed. Using that same throw and actually blocking your knee, I will damage your knee pretty badly. I can throw a full ippon seionage and you will land safely on your back, or I can stop halfway and you will land on your head - same principles, but different ways of doing the technique.

[Ali]

i took up hung-gar a few months ago and my instructor says that hung-gar is not a sport and because many of the moves involve pulling at throughts and things it is dangourous to sparr with. so does any body here do hung-gar and if so do you sparr with it. he also mentioned that the chinease did not believe in sparring because it is not real life and you can not say who won. also is it possible to become capable of actually using an art for real life situations without practising sparring.

Leave your icq here, I can show you a sparring

between Hung Gar and Kick boxing.

Both are not pro.... but good to see

[GTF]

with all due respect those of you that have said that people should sparr from looking at your profiles you do not study hung-gar so you may not know enough about it to say that. i am not suggesting that you dont know what your talking about but there is one other person on here that has done hung-gar and agrees that it is to dangerous to sparr with.

also this may sound kind of silly but if i was to cross train with another art at some later period and sparr with that would that make me any better at hung-gar because i would still be practising to throw punches and blocks even though they are not the same ones because i have to say that sparring looks like fun but it is not tought in my current martial art although my instructor practises karate and wing chun and i am sure that the sparr in them.

it must be said though that some of the people at my school that are at higher levels despite not sparring are still capable of blocking full speed punches from practising against partners.

this may also sound kind of dumb but when people sparr nobody ever seems to get hurt, a friend of mine that does kick boxing said that he has never been seriously hurt so how hard do you actualy punch each other because you need to make it realistic without serious injuries taking place.

if any body could tell me something about it or give me some advice it would be greatly apriciated.

[elbows_and_knees]

I've seen many injuries in kickboxing. protective gear helps, but it's not 100 %.

NOTHING is too dangerous to spar with. if you don't understand your principles to the point where you can modify a technique and still use it, that is not the fault of the style.

FWIW, my old longfist instructor also trained hung gar, and he sparred with us.

[GTF]

if you don't understand your principles to the point where you can modify a technique and still use it, that is not the fault of the style.

i dont under stand the principles of the style very well yet because i am very inexperienced at the moment, maybe another year or so yet i can imagine.

but i have considered taking up karate as well which is taught by my

hung-gar instructor and i am pretty sure that they will sparr with that so i may start karate as well, when i get up a few levels in hung-gar of course (yellow belt maybe(getting my white belt soon).

[KF Dude]

I've been able to spar with Hung-Ga just fine. Believe it or not the other martial artists who I sparred with actually survived!!! You control the art not the other way around.

GTF/Ninjitsu - Thanks for the compliments on the effectiveness of Hung-Ga but no art is 'too deadly' to spar with.

[GTF]

KF dude

i havnt learned alot of it yet and i asume that you have but all of the kicks that i have done so far have been intended for the knees or groin which seems kind of nasty for sparring with but my judgment may be missled because i am sure that there is alot left to learn and there may very well be some kicks and other atacks that will not cause serious injuries so i will just have to wait and see about that. i must say that i am fairly new to martial arts full stop so i dont know much about other styles so the fact that there are no martial arts that are to dangurous to sparr with i will just take your word for. i would be interested to know why mine and ninjitsus instructers do not teach us sparring but yours does and its not that my instructor is against sparring because he teaches sparring in other arts unless maybe it is simply because he was never taught sparring when he learned hung-gar.

thanks for your contribution KF dude because you actualy have studied the art before making a coment.

P.S am i spelling it wrong because i have spelled it Hung-Gar and you have spelled it Hung-Ga