Students who hate fighting

[Toptomcat]

One thing that I've found helpful in that reguard is to maintain a clear mental distinction between causing my partner pain- acceptable- and giving my partner a lasting injury- unacceptable.

[Lupin1]

My instructor said when he was younger they did this thing, I forget what it's called, where you hit yourself a lot and then you get with a partner and like, hit each other in the chest and in the stomach and shoulders and stuff in a set pattern so that you get used to getting hit and aren't afraid of getting hit. A lot of times just getting used to it and realizing you won't die if you get hit can help. Like when Coach Bombay tied Goldberg up to the net and had the whole team shoot hockey pucks at him until he stopped being afraid to get hit with the puck.

[Blade96]

Like when Coach Bombay tied Goldberg up to the net and had the whole team shoot hockey pucks at him until he stopped being afraid to get hit with the puck.

LOL that was sosososo funny!

"Coach come on, hey? I want to live long enough to see my Bar Mitzvah"

"Goldberg, this IS your Bar Mitzvah. Today you'll become a man"

[Soheir]

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

I think you are doing the right thing, I know I would do the same thing.

It's not fair for anyone, if somebody gets belts without sparring as it belongs to the style.

[Sigung Chambers]

Progressive sparring through the belt ranks. For beginners white to orange belt- Partner referance shadow (no contact). This consist of sparring with a partner, but with no contact at all. much like shadow boxing with the exception that you are using a partner, but only using the partner for referance. This gives the student the ability to train his or her footwork and ranges as well as finding targets to deliver techniques just short of contact to the desired target. For intermediates- Touch sparring: this consists of sparring with just touch and can be applied by only touching with a punch and or kick as well as implimenting takedowns if desired. For advanced- 25% contact along with grappling if desired. Note: Depending on preferance, you need to encourage your brown and black belts to spar with at least 75% contact some of the time. Also, by conducting progressive sparring, you will give the students steps to progress in their sparring abilities. I will not promote a student to black belt until they can spar with a degree of proficiency that I belive is benafitial to them in that they can also apply their Kajukembo techniques on the street if needed. It is better to have and not need then to need and not have!

[chiliphil1]

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?j

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

perfect sense, in fact I have the same problem, I was never worth a flip at point sparring, I just cannot do light contact" taps" to score points, for one reason or the other I always got beat at sparring because I couldn't make it work with the taps.

I figure if we were having a knockdown match, or if it were a real fight the outcome would be very different, but the whole point sparring thing did not work well for me.

[AikiGuy]

My instructor said when he was younger they did this thing, I forget what it's called, where you hit yourself a lot and then you get with a partner and like, hit each other in the chest and in the stomach and shoulders and stuff in a set pattern so that you get used to getting hit and aren't afraid of getting hit.

This is a great idea.

Another idea you can try is to simply require a minimum amount of sparring time as a test requirement. My instructor had a minimum of 15 or maybe 30 minutes of documented sparring practice for lower kyu ranks and it would increase as your rank went up. We had forms that would be filled in and signed by an instructor after any sparring session.

This was standard for us but it could be an informal thing documented (or simply witnessed) by you or another instructor for those who would normally avoid it. Just let the student know that most students do a certain amount of sparring to go from one rank to the next and he or she needs to shoot for that amount as a goal just like any other test requirement. If the student doesn't do enough, then he/she does not test yet.

[ossemon]

I hated sparring when I was younger. I still can't stand kumite, unless it is freefighting - full contact "street fighting" (jiju-kumite).

Competition fighting ALWAYS put me off.

I have students that are truly scared of fighting. I tend to take extra care of them, and tell them to have fun while sparring. I have myself and a couple of other senior students I truly trust, and I pair them up with my Kumite-haters.

Tell them to have fun, and try their best. Do not counterattack, but rather let them explore. Patience and baby steps are the way to go, I feel.

[Lupin1]

My instructor said when he was younger they did this thing, I forget what it's called, where you hit yourself a lot and then you get with a partner and like, hit each other in the chest and in the stomach and shoulders and stuff in a set pattern so that you get used to getting hit and aren't afraid of getting hit.

This is a great idea.

This is what I was talking about-- took me awhile to find it.

You'd only do that with adults, I'd think. I spar against the kids all the time and 190 pound 25-year-old me going against a 70 pound 10-year-old is awkward. They're afraid to get close to me, so I usually encourage them and leave myself open and let them get me a few times before I start trying to hit them back (and then I usually just barely touch them, if at all and go slow and tell them when to block). We spend so much time nowerdays telling kids to keep their hands and feet to themselves and discouraging any form of physical contact that it's really hard to break kids of that mentality and let them know it's ok to be aggressive and hit each other and get hit in a safe, controlled environment. I just started Judo at the beginning of the week and that's even worse. I'm having a lot of trouble mentally getting myself to feel ok throwing my entire body on top of another human being and pinning them to the mat-- especially with me being bigger than average.

[DWx]

My instructor said when he was younger they did this thing, I forget what it's called, where you hit yourself a lot and then you get with a partner and like, hit each other in the chest and in the stomach and shoulders and stuff in a set pattern so that you get used to getting hit and aren't afraid of getting hit.

This is a great idea.

This is what I was talking about-- took me awhile to find it.

You'd only do that with adults, I'd think. I spar against the kids all the time and 190 pound 25-year-old me going against a 70 pound 10-year-old is awkward. They're afraid to get close to me, so I usually encourage them and leave myself open and let them get me a few times before I start trying to hit them back (and then I usually just barely touch them, if at all and go slow and tell them when to block). We spend so much time nowerdays telling kids to keep their hands and feet to themselves and discouraging any form of physical contact that it's really hard to break kids of that mentality and let them know it's ok to be aggressive and hit each other and get hit in a safe, controlled environment.

You can do it with kids but it's probably best to have parental consent first and only with kids who you can trust to have good control. We do it in class to get used to contact levels and as a conditioning exercise.

A lighter version is to get one person to hold a focus pad over their stomach or chest and the other person throw strikes. The one holding the pad still feels the strikes but at slightly reduced power.