Full contact?

[evergrey]

Hi there!

So, who here does full contact sparring?

How about medium contact?

I am in Kyokushin, so there is contact. I get plenty of bruises in class, but people don't hit me very hard yet on account of me being a white belt, and female. In time, I'll no longer be a white belt, and hopefully in time people will realize that I am a female who WANTS harder contact.

Outside of the dojo, Sensei hits a lot harder when we spar. :}

So if you do it, why do you do it?

I do it because "you fight how you train," and because I love it!

OSU

[ps1]

I believe it's important to practice at full go from time to time. Otherwise, there is no way to know if what you're doing actually works.

[evergrey]

I agree!

[Nevinyrral]

we mostly do light contact, so its like hit and run but when I spar with my friends we go harder to test our self.

[honoluludesktop]

To me, full contact implies only one thing. KO to the ground. Everything else is control, or inadequate ability.

[evergrey]

OSU

I'll get to that point honoluludesktop- someday. When I am more trained and higher rank. I've been told that full contact training starts at brown belt in my dojo. I have a goal!

[brickshooter]

I only did full contact when I later moved on to boxing. And even then, it was really semi-contact. In other words, you hit the other guy just hard enough so that the both of you know what it could feel like.

Apparantly, this is how people train in boxing gyms. And I heard that this is how they train in MT gyms too. People don't go 100% full contact unless they're being paid money.

I think that the biggest challenge is controlling one's own fears about getting hit. But in reality, it's not all that bad. It's more about the fear factor than pain factor.

I believe that this is also the training under Kyokushin. It's not full 100% full contact that one sees in tournaments. After all, it is a difficult thing to actually try to harm one's friends in the same class.

[evergrey]

OSU,

We don't try to injure our sparring partners- we'd all run out of sparring partners pretty quickly!

But then in the tournaments, yeah...

For me, my biggest fear is harming someone unintentionally. I already know what it feels like to be injured and in pain. I've been in a hospital soaked in blood. It kind of gives you a new perspective on what "pain" really means, hah!

[phoenixzion]

I'm new here but definitely not new to martial arts. I just turned 28 and I started when I was 13ish. Unfortunately, I fell out of love with my Goju dojo and I left for a few years. I dabbled in a few other styles of Karate that never really set with me.

I've done a good share of sparring and in the latter years of my Goju days (I was a brown belt) I was doing some heavy contact sparring. As I look back now, I realize that since I was never really taught the body dynamics of making power I never knew how to make power. No matter how many times I would spar. I was focusing on the wrong thing. Technique and "good karate" won't come from endless sparring matches. Speed, conditioning and a faster reaction time come from sparring matches.

Now I train in a very traditional style of Shorin Ryu. More roundness to your limbs, more connectedness throughout your body equals more power. Not constant sparring. Training your body to know the motions in your kata as second nature need to be the focus, not sizing yourself up to someone else.

I've been training with my Shorin Ryu instructor for three years now and I've learned more from kata, kumite and some light sparring then I ever did from a class that gave me 80% sparring and 20% kata. Kata hold everything that a martial art has. If you ignore that and want to skip to the "good part" aka sparring, then you are completely missing the point.

Not trying to bash anyone's thinking here. Just offering my own perspective from a traditional and non competition point of view.

Bruce Lee said it himself, "At the beginning competition is healthy, but in the end it only breeds contempt and resentment."

EDIT: I also want to add, that the goal of kumite and sparring isn't to injure anyone. It's to use the full force and -not- injure the person. Anyone can throw everything they have into a punch, but it's the martial artist who can control that punch until the moment of impact. It takes years of skill to execute a perfect technique or strike with all your power and stop it before it hits. That's what sparring (to me) is really about. Learning control. If you can learn to control your hit to not hurt, then when you need to you can certainly go all the way.

[evergrey]

OSU phoenixzion!

When I was 12 or so I took Shorin Ryu. The instructor was solid! I just couldn't handle, at that time, being the only girl in class.

I agree that kata is important too! I know two at this time (beginner!) and will soon be learning Pinan 2. And probably the other two pre-pinan 1s... There are a couple of different cooks making my stew, training-wise!

I do my kata every day. I do kata, I drill, I work out. I spar every chance I get as well, but of course without good technique and understanding of body dynamics, I won't ever get the power I need. Both my sensei and my shihan understand this well, and train accordingly.

Of course also in Kyokushin the goal of kumite and tournaments is not to permanently injure your opponents! It can happen though...