Suggestions Please

[BLueDevil]

Recently due to some problems at home the guy at my school that used to teach the sparring class has had to leave and my Sifu has asked me and a friend of mine if we would be interested in taking it over and we both agree to it. What I was wanting was some suggestions on what kind of drills would be benificial(sp?) to beginners. The last guy just basically did free sparring which I know has its place but it also turned some people off that weren't ready for that(lower ranks etc.) What I want to do is a progression through drills and realistic situations to eventually free sparring. Ive got my own ideas and so does my friend and we seem to be on the same page. Any thoughts on something I could use, all views are welcome Thanks

PS. Im trying to stay away from point sparring

[Gen_Tora]

Devil,

I don't know what style you teach but here is the format for my ninjitsu class.

5th Kyu (white belt)----------------------------------------

Basic Meditation & mental exercises

Fittness & physical exercise

falling & rolling

balance & movement exercises

blocking & trapping exercises

4th Kyu (yellow belt)---------------------------------------

pressure points

striking techiques including some sweeps

application of bocking & trapping combined with striking

light or no contact sparring w/ focus on using blocking/trapping skills with strikes in a continous & sucessive free from.

3rd Kyu (Green Belt)--------------------------------------

sweeps throws & takedowns

Grappling (stand up & ground)

Using strikes, blocks & traps as set ups to grappling, throws & takedowns.

Focus on none resistance to exercise, partial resistance & full contact sparring. (supervised & video tape)

Using the Video to examine strengths & weakness in class

Basic Stealth Principles

2nd Kyu (Orange belt)---------------------------------------

Stick & staff techniques

Knife Fighting techniques

Chain techniques

Shuriken techniques

1st Kyu (brown belt)----------------------------------------

sparring drilld with weapons (padded)

basic first aid

herbal medicines

Advance Evasion skills

Shodan (black belt)-------------------------------------------

Adavnced striking & grappling methods (koroshi-waza Killing techniques)

Advanced Stick, chain, knife & shuriken skills

1st Chosen weapon: student picks

2nd Chosen weapon: student picks

Training Exercises--------------------------------------------

Repition drills

partial resiatance sparring

full resistance half force sparring

full force/full contact

dodging tennis balls

Striking Dumby blindfolded

sparring blind folded (both)

sparring blind folded (only one)

Russian Circle

Capture the flag 1 against 10 with a 5 min head start: only 3rd kyu & up, limited on certain techniques.

hope that helps you...

I should mention two important things here 1) my school is know as a fighting school. We don't get invited to most tournys cause we train for effect. 2) I start sparring a free from no resistant, light impact striking & grappling.

Basicly so my students can feel out how the form is suppost to work. I let them apply a little resistance to show them how it's not so easy & then let them go at it full force. I video tape the sparring sessions & the whole classes watches it. We discuss what worked, what didn't, why, how to improve & what was done right. You'd be surprised how a this crawl, walk, run method of free style produces compitant martial artist. My green belts can drop most Black belts, but enough bragging. Do what seems right to you.

later,

Ron

[AndrewGreen]

Isolate something and develop it in sparring.

Beginers - Only allow a jab and focus on footwork, later add a cross, build other things in as they go.

Coincedentally that is also how I would reccomend training skilled fighters, isolate what you want to work on, spar with it, then toss in everything else...

[BLueDevil]

Great suggestions, thats quite an extensive list Gen_Tora, I appreciate you taking the time to type all that

Keep em comin guys

[gheinisch]

We do some sparring drills that everyone seems to like pretty well. Take turns making one person an attacker and the other person can only defend, no countering or striking back. You can switch it around to where the attacker can only use hands or feet. For the more advanced you can make the defender put one hand in the back of thier obi and defend with only one hand. This will help with their focus as well as speed. Switch it up and make it fun. Lots of different combos you can do. Hope this helps.

[elbows_and_knees]

use your forms. take a technique from a form they know and have students drill applications from it. for example, you are in a kung fu school... are you familiar with the technique "shoot the bow"? One application of it is a throw - it's a fireman's carry. you can have one student throw a punch, then have the other student apply "shoot the bow".

This gives them a chance to work their timing, and at the same time teaches them to fight using their forms.

you can also have them glove up and work a single technique. One person jabs, the other parries and immediately jabs back, for example.

then there is always the idea of slow sparring.

[BLueDevil]

use your forms. take a technique from a form they know and have students drill applications from it. for example, you are in a kung fu school... are you familiar with the technique "shoot the bow"? One application of it is a throw - it's a fireman's carry. you can have one student throw a punch, then have the other student apply "shoot the bow".

This gives them a chance to work their timing, and at the same time teaches them to fight using their forms.

you can also have them glove up and work a single technique. One person jabs, the other parries and immediately jabs back, for example.

then there is always the idea of slow sparring.

For some reason I knew Elbows_and_Knees would have some good suggestions Thanks

[Grimslade]

I would suggest call sparring, then slow sparring, but when you move to free sparring I have found that if you take two lower ranked inexpierenced people and tell them to have at each other. Sometimes people get hurt, get mad, and leave. I think YOU should be the first to spar with the students, go as hard as you think they are ready for. Then when thay are good enough... let them have at each other.

[cleung]

Beginners often like self defense. So I would concentrate on those aspects first and then gradually get into sparring with lots of safety in mind.

[Grimslade]

Beginners often like self defense. So I would concentrate on those aspects first and then gradually get into sparring with lots of safety in mind.

I agree completelly with cleung... themajority of starting martial artists are interested in the self defense aspects of MA.