Sparring

[Excoastie]

perhaps I mispoke when I said "control and technique or power and speed".

I would agree that power and speed are all a part of control and technique, it's hard to have one without the other. What I was referring to was the propensity of some opponents of going all out, close to pull power/ full contact when sparring during training, versus those who will limit the themselves to (for the sake of a measurement) 40%-50% of the maximum they force they can produce through either a punch or kick.

Everyone has made excellent points, and I thank you for your input. I'm sure each and every one of you has vastly more experience than I do, as comparatively I'm very new to MA, but I'm always trying to increase both my overall knowledge of MA, but my skill level as well.

Let me ask another question. Do you think it's effective training if while sparring you're only using 40% of the force you're capable of, while still maintaining proper amounts of speed and technique? Or do you feel that what you practice is how you'll react if you ever find yourself in a real world fight?

Exco

[JiuJitsuNation]

I think an ability to flow and respond helps both you and your partner. Especially in situations where ones experience is greater than anothers. The senior can get a good workout in while playing and the junior can spar at a learning pace. It's rare to see two beginners able to relax and flow. But as you move up you will find that you can and can be of great help to your newbies by allowing a chance to slow the ball down so to speak.

[DWx]

I think control and technique comes before power and speed. No point in hitting hard and fast if you're just wildly swinging, anyone can do that. Once you have the control and technique you should work on getting the power and speed up. As other's have said I let the less experienced person set the pace. Although as JiuJitsuNation mentioned, you have to push and be pushed sometimes. If I think I can get a little more out of my partner, I'll push it slightly out of their comfort zone and up the contact a little.

Let me ask another question. Do you think it's effective training if while sparring you're only using 40% of the force you're capable of, while still maintaining proper amounts of speed and technique? Or do you feel that what you practice is how you'll react if you ever find yourself in a real world fight?

Definitely the latter. If you ever see anyone go from point sparring straight into heavy continuous style sparring they have problems. See the same with our kids where when they're younger they can only tap their opponent for techniques, soon as they start sparring the teens and adults you have to spend months getting them to start actually aiming for you instead of thin air.

[brickshooter]

perhaps I mispoke when I said "control and technique or power and speed".

I would agree that power and speed are all a part of control and technique, it's hard to have one without the other. What I was referring to was the propensity of some opponents of going all out, close to pull power/ full contact when sparring during training, versus those who will limit the themselves to (for the sake of a measurement) 40%-50% of the maximum they force they can produce through either a punch or kick.

Everyone has made excellent points, and I thank you for your input. I'm sure each and every one of you has vastly more experience than I do, as comparatively I'm very new to MA, but I'm always trying to increase both my overall knowledge of MA, but my skill level as well.

Let me ask another question. Do you think it's effective training if while sparring you're only using 40% of the force you're capable of, while still maintaining proper amounts of speed and technique? Or do you feel that what you practice is how you'll react if you ever find yourself in a real world fight?

Exco

IMO, the 40% contact is plenty. You can cultivate power in you techniques when hitting the heavy bag, hitting pads, makiwara...

[ninjanurse]

What you practice does affect how you will react in a "real world" fight but if success was dependent upon how real you can make a match then we would nothing more than a "fight club".

[JiuJitsuNation]

What you practice does affect how you will react in a "real world" fight but if success was dependent upon how real you can make a match then we would nothing more than a "fight club".

This seems like a contradiction.

[JAKEHE3078]

What you practice does affect how you will react in a "real world" fight but if success was dependent upon how real you can make a match then we would nothing more than a "fight club".

This seems like a contradiction.

I am pretty sure he means, practice the way you intend to perform.

[brickshooter]

I think it's a balancing act.

More "real" sparring result in less safety rules. Less safety rules result in more injuries. More injuries result in less sparring. And now we're back at square 1. The student had a great one "real" training session. But he's not training for 3 weeks because he's injured.

So the goal is to adjust the sparring session to lower the risk of injuries to a reasonable level. Yet keep the sparring reasonably realistic. I think we need to start by asking ourselves what we'll learn with sparring. Many people think it's power strikes. Personally, I think it's timing, distancing and range.

Hence I think that power could be develope by other means (heavy punching bags). Because I think that timing, distancing and range is developed with continuous uninterupted training, I'm in the camp that would advocate less contact in sparring in exchange for more sparring time.

Caveat - I think that students can get the most out of their sparring if done under the close supervision of an instructor who gives immediate feedback. Too often, sparring means the instructor says "go!" And the entire class go at it while the instructor takes a break from teaching.

[tonydee]

You can have good control and still have power, speed, and all that good stuff.

That's true of almost all techniques. The most extreme/significant exceptions I can think of are axe kick and spinning heel kick (both of which involve a lot of preparatory effort to develop a strong stretch then swing a straight leg - impossible to do absolutely full speed without investing a lot of energy which is then very, very hard to stop).

Do you think it's effective training if while sparring you're only using 40% of the force you're capable of, while still maintaining proper amounts of speed and technique? Or do you feel that what you practice is how you'll react if you ever find yourself in a real world fight?

At the black belt level and beyond, most of the time you can tell whether the opponent is going to be able to defend successfully before you have to decide between pulling a technique, gentle contact and full power. Once you learn to do this, you can attack really hard/fast when safe (your opponent needs to know their defense works), but pull it when the opponent's overwhelmed or outclassed. Sparring your own rank and seniors, you'll get in lots of hard and fast sparring (therefore realistic, useful, good-habit forming) without needless injuries.

By attacking hard/fast, you also incorporate get a taste for issues with over-commitment and recovery times. For example: weak/slow kicks thrown vaguely towards the target can be easy to grab in ways that just don't work against solid, fast kicks thrown through the target... so by kicking realistically it cuts out a lot of useless nonsense that the defender might otherwise mistake for useful. Separately, a hard attack might necessarily require a block that affects the defender's balance and momentum, giving the attacker more recovery time, but that's not something you experience at 40%.

[bushido_man96]

Tony pretty well summed up my thoughts. If spar at 40% all the time, you don't do yourself or your partners any favors. You can spar with power and speed, and still not hurt anyone. That's where the control comes in.

Control doesn't refer to throwing all your techniques at 40%. Control refers to being able to throw your techniques hard and fast, yet being able to not hurt somebody by using distance, timing, etc. Perhaps you won't be giving it all you've got, and trying to bury a technique into someone's spine, but there should be an urgency felt by the defender that defense is a good thing.