Sparring in your dojo

[Luther unleashed]

I thought it would be fun to have a place where all of us from different backgrounds and different though Joe's post videos or even just have conversations about the style of sparring they do.

I have only done a small amount of point sparring, most of my sparring has been something called " continuous " sparring. Basically, you should spar for a certain amount of time without stopping, it is based on more of a self-defense type of situation and less of a sport, although sports can be fun and work to help students with self-defense aspects as well so I'm not knocking point sparring. The general rule of thumb is you can go light or medium contact, depending on what your partner and you agree on. Here is a video of me and my 13-year-old stepdaughter. It was a fun session and pretty much just playing around.

http://youtu.be/aWtewmS6938

[Kyonovice]

Only ever done points sparring before so not much experience at anything else.

I will let you know how the points knockdown stuff goes once I've done some.

[Montana]

We do point sparring, continuous sparring and full contact using Okinawan Bogu gear. All have their merits IMO, and their shortcomings.

Point sparring teaches you speed and to look for openings. Continuous teaches you to not stop and to use multiple techniques and followups. Full cobntact teaches you to defense, and what really will rock an opponent.

[Kanku65]

About 95% of the time we train continuous sparring. Maybe 5% point sparring in preparation for gradings and tournaments. This is very light contact.

Generally we go 2 minutes per partner then switch, going through roughly 5 partners a session. That's like a short 5-10 second break between partners so it's technically not continuous, but continuous enough.

Sparring outside of the dojo my partners and I tend to implement solid contact, but never full contact.

I remember this one time my father and previous sensei went full contact with full taekwondo gear on, including body padding(not sure of the proper term) and my father later had bruises around his entire torso. The only thing he gained from full contact sparring was the knowledge that it does in fact hurt lots when you allow a trained martial artist to hit you. He didn't complain during it, but I don't believe he preached the session as "worth it".

[Luther unleashed]

Montana I hear you. The video of me and my youngan is NOT a good example as I was not very aggressive with her, for obvious reasons although it does show a more "real fight" energy, I find the fact that many students tend to get overly aggressive. It helps some to understand the pressure of a fight, although it's "shortcoming" as you stated is that sometimes students don't slow down enough to practice solid learned technuiqe. I literally have thought about making them do some point sparring to get them in a different state of mind, and to learn technuiqe more effectively.

My kid in the video DOES show more of this though. She's very used to being tough and aggressive, I try to spar with my students to show them the rythme that I'd like to see, some defense, some moving away and blocking and so on, not just attack mode. I'll update if I change things up lol.

[Luther unleashed]

About 95% of the time we train continuous sparring. Maybe 5% point sparring in preparation for gradings and tournaments. This is very light contact.

Generally we go 2 minutes per partner then switch, going through roughly 5 partners a session. That's like a short 5-10 second break between partners so it's technically not continuous, but continuous enough.

Sparring outside of the dojo my partners and I tend to implement solid contact, but never full contact.

I remember this one time my father and previous sensei went full contact with full taekwondo gear on, including body padding(not sure of the proper term) and my father later had bruises around his entire torso. The only thing he gained from full contact sparring was the knowledge that it does in fact hurt lots when you allow a trained martial artist to hit you. He didn't complain during it, but I don't believe he preached the session as "worth it".

That's funny, well the thing that is best about full contact is that you don't pull your punches. I often pull punches so I will need serious focus to "unleash" (sorry I had to) on an attacker in a real situation. My first notion is to not fight at all, and I teach this so in my mind I suppose I don't need to be the best fighter to be a great martial artist. If I want to simply be the best fighter I'd pick a direct system like Muai Thai and pound away with fighting drills.

Full contact is with ought a doubt the most street like imho

[JR 137]

IMO people take full contact too far. It definitely has its place, and is highly effective when practiced correctly. My issue is a lot of full contact systems do full contact every time. Pro fighters (including boxers and kick boxers) aren't going full force every time they spar. In fact, the smart ones who've got a career to think about rarely, if ever go full contact in sparring. Do you think guys like Muhammad Ali, Oscar DeLaHoya or other greats who've had a career beyond a few years at best got their heads pounded in day in and day out in training? Would anyone question their training methods, adjusted for modern times and advances in exercise science?

Going full contact periodically keeps you honest, if you will. Everyday or even every week is just absurd IMO. Taking the gloves off once in a while is good enough to see if what you've been doing is effective and make adjustments to it, but day in and day out full contact is just asking for debilitating injuries. Yes, there's people who study full contact for decades. Those are the exceptions, not the norm. I know a ton of guys in their 30s and 40s who've had hip replacements, knee replacements, etc. due to it. These aren't things relatively young normally athletes get. Especially non-professional athletes.

A bit controversial, but that's my take on it.

[DWx]

IMO people take full contact too far. It definitely has its place, and is highly effective when practiced correctly. My issue is a lot of full contact systems do full contact every time. Pro fighters (including boxers and kick boxers) aren't going full force every time they spar. In fact, the smart ones who've got a career to think about rarely, if ever go full contact in sparring. Do you think guys like Muhammad Ali, Oscar DeLaHoya or other greats who've had a career beyond a few years at best got their heads pounded in day in and day out in training? Would anyone question their training methods, adjusted for modern times and advances in exercise science?

Going full contact periodically keeps you honest, if you will. Everyday or even every week is just absurd IMO. Taking the gloves off once in a while is good enough to see if what you've been doing is effective and make adjustments to it, but day in and day out full contact is just asking for debilitating injuries. Yes, there's people who study full contact for decades. Those are the exceptions, not the norm. I know a ton of guys in their 30s and 40s who've had hip replacements, knee replacements, etc. due to it. These aren't things relatively young normally athletes get. Especially non-professional athletes.

A bit controversial, but that's my take on it.

I totally agree JR 137. Full contact is something that's great to work towards and is a real test of your technique when practiced, however it's unreasonable to train like this all the time. Otherwise you run the risk of prematurely wearing your body down.

I find full contact can mask or compensate for bad technique too. Just by reducing the contact level down it makes it easier to concentrate on the technical aspects rather than just powering through the movement.

[Luther unleashed]

Yeah I agree with full contact being the most brutal, that's why I don't do it. I do not agree that it's ineffective for the streets though, which is full contact. Bruce lee used to fight with heavy gear an padding, because he used to say that you train your self to pull punches if you don't go all out... It's true IMHO. You will perform as you practice. In my video I had a good time with my daughter and it was not serious, so not the most fight like situation, but it was fun and karate shouldn't be all about fighting or we have lost some core principles in my opinion as well.

[JR 137]

I don't agree that not practicing full-force trains you to pull punches in a real situation. I used to think this, and it makes all the sense in the world on paper, after all, you play/fight the way you train. However, look at pro fighters - they don't suffer from this. Yes, they're professionals and we're not, so there's a world of difference. I think you definitely have to practice throwing full-force techniques in order to truly be able to use them, but it doesn't have to be at an opponent. That's what heavy bags and the like are for.

Full contact definitely has its place. Personally, I think it's something that should be done by any serious martial artist for a brief period of time in their career to gain the experience of it. There's nothing like it in that regard. Being 39, I view it as something great to do for a few years in your early 20s, then give it a rest. You definitely have to maintain the conditioning of being struck, but that can be done through drills like exchanging a few well placed kicks and punches with some force behind them with a partner, so how the Okinawan instructors repeatedly strike students during kata and kihon; it doesn't have to be done during full-contact free sparring.

If you don't know what I'm referring to, check videos of Okinawan karate training. Their senseis like using a shinai.

Edited September 19, 2015 by JR 137