Point Sparring Useless?

[WhiteBelt]

Heh, my internet connect goes down for a while and everybody jumps on my post. Anyway, that was the first time I've done point sparring. We usually do free sparring (jiyu kumite?). I just found it frustrating to get stopped all the time by weak shots, when in free sparring I was taking much heavier hits.

[Kirves]

Rich, I disagree. If you run into someone who has any full contact training (boxing, kickboxing, knockdown karate, shootfighting, vale tudo...) he rarely drops from the first blow. They take dozens of hard blows daily in the gym so one more from a point fighter won't mean much when they want to rip your head off. Especially in a street encounter, when they may be on drugs or something which often makes them feel less pain anyway. I've seen police officers banging repeatedly a suspect with their nightsticks on the head and neck and the suspect kept going.

[Shiro_RN]

Yeah...tell point sparring pointless to competitors like George Kotaka or Ali Anissipour. George, who's renown for both incredible speed and defensive ability and notorious for breaking ribs and sternums with a normal reverse punch cushioned with WKF Pads, can mostly likely take out anyone we think of in a single shot considering his speed and power. Just because you can't make point sparring work, doesn't mean that it's not an effective tool. Like kata, it must be practiced in order to be able to utilize it's advantages properly.

 

Shiro

 

1st Dan

 

WSKF

[Malkosha]

Point sparring is great for developing timing and learning distance without beating each other to death. After all, if your training your kids for instance, do you really want them to go all out at such a young age? I’d rather see them use point fighting to learn combos, timing, distance, balance and leave the contact stuff for when they are older and grown.

 

As far as one punch one kill goes … while it easy to watch the UFC stuff and try to translate that into real life, most people are not a trained super athletes who can take a banging and come back strong. In many fights, it’s quite possible to win or at least setup the win on the first punch or kick … against a NORMAL person. In fact, once you get out of school, most fights do not go to the ground and the sucker punch usually wins. Forget the TV and pay-for-view events and go find a bar in a ruff neighborhood and see what I mean I know it goes against the mantra of promoters who sanction full contact bouts (and get rich doing it) but most NORMAL people who get into fights can’t take very much damage at all without going down.

 

Of course, every now and then you get the guy/gal who can really take a beating. If that person is a grappler, you better be ready to either hit the ground or have more than one punch or kick ready to go.

[Sasori_Te]

Point sparring is a good tool if it is used correctly. In my experience however, it is hardly ever used correctly. Most of the time style goes completely out the window and it becomes a complicated game of who can tag who first. I also believe that too much point sparring promotes bad habits such as not following through on techniques, pulling punches and depending on the type of point sparring the tendency to pull back after contact is made. It has also been my experience that you will fight the way that you were trained. If all you do in your dojo is point spar or "tournament" spar you need to find a better instructor.

[Goju1]

Never been a fan of point sparring. I suppose any sparring or martial arts exercise has some merit, but for the following reasons, I don't think point sparring has much real world application:

 

1) real fights don't stop after a 'score'

 

2) you learn to focus only on certain areas in point sparring

 

3) learning to pull back punches/kicks is a really bad habit

 

But, I guess if you enjoy it, its better than nothing. I personally think working a bag is better training.