Coed sparring? Some questions for you . . .

[taekwondomom]

1. Does your dojang have coed sparring? Or do you segregate by sex?

2. Which do you prefer?

3. Are there advantages to women fighting men? To men fighting women? To fighting with someone basically your own size and strength?

4. Is your dojang ITF or WTF? What does sparring look like in class?

My answers:

1. Coed sparring.

2. I prefer when I fight women, or at least people basically my size.

3. I think it's useful to fight people of different sizes, but I don't like ALWAYS having to fight people who are way bigger than I am (often happens in class). I like to be more evenly matched because I feel like I can just practice the techniques without "stretching" to reach.

4. Our dojang is ITF, so sparring is "light to no contact" We use mitts, legpads, and helments (sometimes) but no hogu. Sparring in class is usually done in long lines, randomly mixed men, women, children, with little supervision.

[Shotochick]

I like to fight. Men or women. Usually fight men as there are not enough chicks in our style. But, fighting the men pushes me harder, makes me try things I wouldntnormally do, we usually geta bit of close qtr fighting/semi-grappling going which is brilliant. We glove up. Love it. Great adrenalin rush.

[karatekid1975]

I like fighting men (my dojang does co-ed sparring). My take on it is, if a woman gets attacked on the street, 99% of the time, it a man that attacks her. If I can hold my own with a guy twice my size in the dojang, I have a better chance of it in the street (which I have defended myself against a man for real. That's why I like fighting men).

In my TSD dojang, when I learned a new defense technique, I picked a buddy of mine to try it on (he is a 250 lb male). He wouldn't hold back. If I did the technique right, he and I would know it. That's one reason, I defended myself well when the time came. The guy who attacked me wasn't 250 lbs, but the training helped a lot.

We are WTF. In the advanced class we go full contact with gear. Sometimes we do drills "hitting" each other with no gear for conditioning. We haven't done that in a while, though.

In jujitsu, I learn the "down and dirty" self defense hehehehehe (elbows, knees, biting, whatever works to get out alive). My sensei is bigger than me and he and my boyfriend don't go easy on me while training. I think that is good.

[hammer]

- We also do co-ed sparring, although when we're praticing point sparring in preparing for our tournament, we tend to do more segregated sparring.

- I have no preference, and I also like to spar people of different sizes (I've come to realize that bigger isn't always better)

- I actually think it's good for men to spar women...overall, they tend to be more "strategic" fighters than men (maybe the lower testosterone levels have something to do with it...). It's also good for the women, since they need to know that they can effectively fight someone bigger and/or more agressive than they are (although I've seen women who are plenty aggressive when they spar as well).

- Our club is basically ITF, no to light contact. Pads are optional but recommended (accidents can and do happen). Sparring is usually done in rings, and the black belts tend to stay in the rings while the students rotate in, so I'd say that we have a lot of supervision. If there are two students sparring, then the instructor tends to watch them more closely (especially if it's two male yellow belts...).

[niel0092]

1) Our sparring is co-ed

2) It doesn't matter to me either way if I spar men of women. Some of the gals will rock your world if you slip up -that's a lesson I think we guys need to keep in mind

3) Yes, different opponents will give you different situations.

4) WTF rules. Contact must be a shocking blow to score -however we never keep score durring practice. We usually do two 2min rounds of continious action before switching partners.

I think that more than a gender issue it is important to spar to the level of your opponent, man or woman. I've never seen the point of completely pasting the hapless green belt man just because I could. I also know that if I spar Katie, one of our BB's, I better watch my head and try as hard as I can. My teeth may depend on it...

[h2whoa]

We fight women, we fight hard, we grapple and pull their hair, control them using locks and chokes, we send them home with bloddy noses and a sore body, and teh women, in my dojang at least, come back again for more next session!! Go the ladies!!

[frightmaster]

1) We do co-ed sparring. Me being a big guy will not hit a female with all power but enough to help her understand contact.

2) I will fight anyone but my daughter. I just can not hit her. Wish it was the same the other way.

3) If training for a tourny then it is advantage to fight the same size person.

4) WTF for me. We use all olympic rules for all age groups.

[MasterH]

1. Does your dojang have coed sparring? Or do you segregate by sex?

2. Which do you prefer?

3. Are there advantages to women fighting men? To men fighting women? To fighting with someone basically your own size and strength?

4. Is your dojang ITF or WTF? What does sparring look like in class?

My answers:

1. Coed sparring.

2. I prefer when I fight women, or at least people basically my size.

3. I think it's useful to fight people of different sizes, but I don't like ALWAYS having to fight people who are way bigger than I am (often happens in class). I like to be more evenly matched because I feel like I can just practice the techniques without "stretching" to reach.

4. Our dojang is ITF, so sparring is "light to no contact" We use mitts, legpads, and helments (sometimes) but no hogu. Sparring in class is usually done in long lines, randomly mixed men, women, children, with little supervision.

1- Yes we have coed sparring

2- I do not like to fight females. I have given one a concussion, and one a broken nose. It's not that I don't have control, they can not block as well as males so I need to adjust my sparring style to my partner - I don't like doing that. (unless I'm teaching)

3- see answer #2

4- ATA rules. Full gear, light to moderate contact for black belts. No hands to the head, no sweeps, nothing below the belt or to the back, no neck shots or blind tech.

[Ottman]

1. Does your dojang have coed sparring? Or do you segregate by sex?

2. Which do you prefer?

3. Are there advantages to women fighting men? To men fighting women? To fighting with someone basically your own size and strength?

4. Is your dojang ITF or WTF? What does sparring look like in class?

1. Coed

2. I prefer sparring anyone I can learn something from, or teach something to.

3. The advantage lies in fighting as many different types of opponents as possible so that you'll be ready for as many situations as possible. I don't think this is a gender question at all. Women fighting men, or men fighting women, even bigger fighting smaller and vice versa is irrelevant. There are so many different types of fighters within each gender, and/or size that you can't break it down to a male or female way of sparring. There is only what your opponent does, regardless of what he/she looks like on the outside, and how you react to it. Psychologically, fighting outside of your gender might make a difference, but to me, if someone attacks me out on the street with malicious intent, I don't care who they are, what gender they are, or how big they are, I'm going to defend myself accordingly. In training, well, see my answer to #2, which about sums it all up.

4. Officially: WTF, but we spar using both olympic and point sparring rules. We usually start out with olympic and move to point later on in the class. We try to mix up the matches so that everyone in the class gets to spar as many different opponents as possible, and my instructor supervises the whole thing. Black belts and red belts are responsible for ensuring controlled contact, but the level of contact is generally decided amongst the two people who are sparring. I used to teach a tournament sparring class, where we'd go full contact all the time, but we still sparred co-ed, and the atmosphere was still to better our skills while fighting any opponent, regardless of who the opponent is and what they look like.

[Ottman]

2- I do not like to fight females. I have given one a concussion, and one a broken nose. It's not that I don't have control, they can not block as well as males . . .

I know a few women who can totally destroy this notion. If you're underestimating a person's blocking skill (or any skill) simply because of their gender, beware.