Do You Favor a Side When Sparring?

[joesteph]

Do you find yourself favoring your left side or right side when sparring? When I say "favoring," I don't mean that if you're other than 50-50, you're favoring a side; think greater than 60-40.

You might answer that you used to favor a side, but don't anymore, or that you do favor a side out of comfort, or because of an injury. In another forum, I learned that Bill Wallace had had a knee injury from Judo, causing him to favor his left leg for kicking when he was active in the ring.

For me, I knew I favored my "strong" (right) arm as the lead arm in a stance, but a combination of speaking with my instructor and reading a book by Jack Dempsey changed my stance, and now I even switch back and forth. It also affects kicking, of course.

POLL ABOVE

[tallgeese]

Good question, it should generate some interesting discussion.

I'm definatly a left forward fighter, like a boxers stance. Always have been. I train about 90/10 to favor the left.

I figure that in a high stress situation, my body is going to make every effort to get back to this position. So I do most of my training from there. I do train from negitives to get back, but I don't spend alot of time working proficiency from that side.

[bushido_man96]

I tend to favor my right side forward. When I started out, I was left side forward. Then, I moved to my strong side forward, and tried to balance the two. Now, I have noticed that I have to work more on my weak side forward to get the balance back.

[Tiger1962]

I favor a side due to an injury however I try to "fake out" my partner and let them believe I'm going to use the other. In any case I answered #3.

[aefibird]

I used to be about 50-50 (because we were drilled in my old karate school to train both sides of the body equally) but because of an accident I can't use my left side as much as my right, so I'm now favouring right side forward out of necessity more than anything else.

[Wa-No-Michi]

Like Bushido_man I favor my right side forward (or "Goofy" as it is sometimes called).

I do try to balance it out in my training, but as tg suggests; under pressure you will instinctively resort to what feels strongest anyway, so fighting in left would only be transitional for me.

Interestingly, a lot of Japanese budo has evolved with techniques performed with a heavy bias toward right stance.

Although (I believe) you should always train your pair work in both stances, certainly in wado ryu, many such kata are only "officially" performed with the defender in right.

I think this is probably to do with the sword connection, and thus making for easy transference to weaponless combat as required. Nearly all kenjutsu is initiated in right.

After all, it did appear as there was no such thing as a left handed person in traditional Japanese budo!!

[DWx]

I usually fight right leg leading. Just feel much more comfortable and capable that way. Lately though I've had the opportunity to work on my other side and have progressed pretty well I think. I spar with beginners quite a lot now so to even up the odds and to get me to work for my techniques I go left forward and try to stay that way. Ideally I'd like to be able to fight from both sides just as well but, at the moment my right will nearly always lead.

[ps1]

I'm a righty (left side forward) for most of my fighting. However, I have a number of technique combos that I use. Some are better with my right side back...others are good from a lefty stance.

[the beast]

I fight orthodox, but lately I have been using southpaw.

[pittbullJudoka]

I naturally fight orthidox (right handed) but I tend to switch back and forth to south paw this way I'm comfortable throwing power shots with either hand.