Students who hate fighting

[Inubis]

I have a recently graded 3rd kyu in her early 20s. She's very quiet and has always hated free sparring, including no pre-arrangement partner work. She always tries to get out of it.

This was ok at first but when she was like, blue and purple belt and still terified of fighting it became an issue.

Now at 3rd kyu she will fight when I call for sparring but she always tries to partner up with younger students or much lower grades, white belts etc.

I keep telling her she will never improve unless she combats her fear of sparring.

I'm reluctant to grade her any further until she over-comes this barrier.

How would you handle this? has anyone ever experienced this?

[cathal]

Fear is a very strong, very personal emotion. Many are controlled by it. I work through this by using fear & confidence drills. For example have two partner up and one practice punching at their partner's face. Just close enough to feel the air around the fist but just far enough to not make contact. It gets them used to seeing fists & feet coming at them. After enough time they learn to control their own fear. The next step is a simple evasion or block with the same exercise.

For confidence that could be anything from breaking a board to throwing people onto mats. Something else my students are doing is recording the time it takes them to do their push-ups, or their running. They see the steady increase in their personal strength and speed and it boosts their confidence.

There are two ways to look at her fear, I think. First, she is afraid of getting hurt. Second, she is afraid of hurting someone else. Since she selects persons of a lower grade than herself we can safely assume it isn't the latter. When this happened to me my sensei forbade me from sparring with anyone of a lower grade. Perhaps you can consider the same thing as it forced me to begin dealing with it. It is only logical, of course, to make sure she doesn't constantly spar with lower-ranked students. You don't want her to become a bully or over-confident.

I'll suggest you start off from the beginning again. Have her do simple sparring exercises. Build up her confidence from there and get her to go faster. The most confident she is in the simple movements and exercises the faster she will go. Next, go to the next level, do those exercises and go from there. Finally you can get her used to the free-range movement of free-form sparring by taking those same exercises and making them free-range movement exercises. So instead of "3-step sparring" make it 3-steps but they have to use fighting stance and announce each attack. But before they do it they have to dance around a bit with footwork. Maintain distance, etc.

Positive Reinforcement tips:

- You wouldn't be at this level if you weren't ready for it. Let us help you conquer the fear.

- You have proven yourself at the lower levels, it is time to move on. Let's work on it.

my two pennies.

[WireFrame]

I used to hate sparring, now I like it and take it as a challenge. Only practice will get her used to doing it and not see it as such a big thing. I enjoy it more now because I've improved my movement, which came down to one session where the sensei used me to demonstrate how NOT to move, then instructed me to a point where I improved a lot over just 20 minutes. Also, where I train, we normally partner up with equal grades/sizes/sexes. But occasionally it changes and the black belts go with the white belts etc, then everyone rotates parters til everyone has had a quick session with everyone else in the room.

I think practice and getting used to doing it are the only ways to help her break her own fear of it.

[joesteph]

I have a recently graded 3rd kyu in her early 20s. She's very quiet and has always hated free sparring . . .

Now at 3rd kyu she will fight when I call for sparring but she always tries to partner up with younger students or much lower grades, white belts etc.

I keep telling her she will never improve unless she combats her fear of sparring.

I'm reluctant to grade her any further until she over-comes this barrier.

I imagine 3rd kyu is the same as 3rd gup, a red belt level in my art that is below dan, but usually means the person is interested in reaching dan level.

Is she actually there for self-defense, Inubis, or could she have thought of self-defense when she started but, over the time it took to reach 3rd kyu, she would rather do a martial art as a hobby, an activity? Does she actually want more promotions? Is she satisfied where she is? What does she like when in class?

How long has this been going on, since day one? If so, this is the kind of person that she is. She may not want anyone's well-intentioned help with the fighting aspect. The more she's pressed, could you simply lose her as a student, one who became uncomfortable in the training hall?

[RichardZ]

In actuality, the hate is hot in the sparring as it lies upon one of two factors:

The fear of getting hurt.

The fear of hurting others.

[tonydee]

Both psychological and technical elements can contribute to such problems. I see the solution being through the latter: systematically building her knowledge of techniques, and experience with them, so that she trusts they'll work and knows when and how to apply them. This means engendering a thorough understanding of:

- stances and body mechanics

- correct arm positioning so the powers from both the attack and the defender's body mechanics are connected without the arms become a weak link in the chain...

- deflection

- footwork, distancing and timing

- maintaining a guard that's hard to penetrate

- maintaining threats towards the opponent, ready to take the initiative to prevent attacks

etc.

You can explain potential pros and cons of alternatives even if nobody's doing them, so students understand they're not just doing something arbitrary, but something thought through and trustworthy.

Then, partner exercises where one side delivers a particular attack - not rushing but firmly, gradually ramping up the speed and power as they see the other side's coping. The other side practices the defense until it's 100% reliable, boring even, and then they should deliver that block with just enough power and commitment while preparing/delivering a counter-attack. (If a student can't get good enough to block a similar grade's single attack when they know what's coming and they're walked through what to do, then their technical flaws must run deep, and you know you've got to set the clock back and probably help them outside class or put them in a holding pattern grade wise.)

Still working one attack, allow the attacker to move around and attack from either side when they're ready, so the defender gets used to picking the attack coming and the footwork, timing, distancing needed.

Work your way through half a dozen basic attacks, then do semi-free sparring where one side is attacking with only those techniques - still with that deliberate "here's one you can see coming for you to block" feeling, while the other side just defends.

Then, gradually allow free-form techniques, either side attacking when they see the chance.

This kind of matched defense/attack cooperative, junior-friendly sparring is

. Notice that the senior side isn't relying on strength or speed to outclass the junior... everything's clearly controlled, with neglegible risk, and freedom to experiment and learn. It's a good stepping stone to fast sparring.

Gradually ramp up the intensity until both sides know they can go hammer and tongs and throw anything they can think of.

It may or not be an approach your style/art is interested in using, but I believe it works and gets good results... .

Cheers,

Tony

[Scott Bolinger]

I have a recently graded 3rd kyu in her early 20s. She's very quiet and has always hated free sparring, including no pre-arrangement partner work. She always tries to get out of it.

This was ok at first but when she was like, blue and purple belt and still terified of fighting it became an issue.

Now at 3rd kyu she will fight when I call for sparring but she always tries to partner up with younger students or much lower grades, white belts etc.

I keep telling her she will never improve unless she combats her fear of sparring.

I'm reluctant to grade her any further until she over-comes this barrier.

How would you handle this? has anyone ever experienced this?

Every student is gonna be different and have different reasons to train. Some for fun, some just for the exercise, some for sport or some just for some sort of self defense. If she doesn't want to spar, I wouldn't push the issue. That maybe something that she just doesn't want to do. But if she's a higher belt and just want to spar the yunger kids or lower belts, mabye she could be a big help in training the new kids. That maybe her nich and thats were you need to show the support in that. Maybe give her a technique or area of defense or offense to work on, with different students to help there abilities.

[Toptomcat]

Take her aside and ask her what she wants out of martial arts. If she sees it primarily as a cultural, social, or exercise activity and is unconcerned with her ability to defend herself, then leave it at that and reach an understanding with her that she will be coming to class and paying full dues, but not continuing to climb the ranks of your system.

If she is there because she wants to learn how to defend herself, then calmly explain to her that sparring and partner drills are essential to developing many aspects of karate that are essential to self-defense, such as a proper sense of distance and timing. Explain that the purpose of such exercises is not to 'fight' or maliciously injure others, but to simulate the act of fighting as accurately as possible with as little injury as possible for the improvement of both partners. If she agrees with this in principle, but her problem is a frightened gut reaction to partner work more than a philosophical objection to it, then work out a program of progressively more resistant partner drills designed to ease her gently into sparring. I've found

particularly useful in that reguard.

[joesteph]

Take her aside and ask her what she wants out of martial arts. If she sees it primarily as a cultural, social, or exercise activity and is unconcerned with her ability to defend herself, then leave it at that and reach an understanding with her that she will be coming to class and paying full dues, but not continuing to climb the ranks of your system.

In a sense, she's the opposite of the student who wants applications, contact sparring, and other self-defense facets of a martial art, and finds kata/hyungs, and the cultural/historical unwelcome. Her direct opposites are likely studying RBSD.

There's room for both in the martial arts world, and she reminds me of when I took Tae Kwon Do when I was younger. White belts couldn't spar; you had to have that one-up promotion to do it, even though it was non-contact. One of the women in the class who was a fellow yellow belt told me that she hated sparring despite the non-contact rule, but loved the exercise portion of the class, which she saw as a way to keep in shape. Today, people can sign up for cardio kickboxing and enjoy that activity without concerns about belt rank.

[Tiger1962]

I have no words of wisdom or advice to add here except to say I can totally understand the situation.

Sparring was never my favorite activity in martial arts class. I've always preferred doing forms. The reason was that in sparring one is expected to "keep it real" without actually hurting your classmate.

In a real situation, if I felt that my life was in danger, I feel confident that I could do my best to defend myself regardless of the outcome. One goes into survival mode, I suppose. But that would involve hurting the attacker. If I do not feel my life is threatened, I could not hurt an innocent person.

That's the reason I found it extremely difficult, even at Dan level, to find a middle ground in sparring class - keeping it realistic - while not hurting my fellow student and avoiding getting myself hurt as well. "It's real, but it's not real"....does that make sense?

So that's why sparring was never my favorite exercise in class.