No Contact Sparring?

[TJS]

bottome line is It's ok sometimes and for beginers maybe..we do it as a warmup sometimes even.

 

But if you want ot know how to fight/react in a real fight then you need to spar full or heavy contact.

[Kirves]

If on your first night of sparring, you received a broken rib and were spitting blood, would you come back for another class?

Another problem. How often can you spar full contact? Without equipment? Can you do it every class?

 

There is some grey between black and white. No-contact and Full-contact are not the only options.

[Kirves]

Full contact is street fighting. Full contact means anything goes.

 

Hmmm... Where did you get that idea. Full contact means nothing but 100% contact. There are lots of full contact tournaments with different rules. Shootfighting is full contact. Boxing is full contact. K1 is full contact. UFC is full contact. Kyokushin knockdown tournaments are full contact. They just have different rule sets.

 

Full contact does not equal fight without any rules. It only means you use full contact (= you won't restrict your power).

The closest thing in sport I have seen to a real fight is the UFC. Fighting is a brawl, sparring is not fighting.

 

UFC is nothing more than Vale Tudo sparring with some added rules.

[tommarker]

There is some grey between black and white. No-contact and Full-contact are not the only options.

 

I didn't say they were. But the question was "why no contact?" in comparison to say... "full contact."

 

We address several in-between levels in our class. I will stand by the opinion that people should be be allowed to spar at the level they request, and the person wanting the lowest amount of contact should get their way. I can think of several instances in which someone should be allowed to say "no contact" and not be subject to chastising, eye-rolling or thoughts that they are unworthy of studying martial arts, blah blah blah.

[tommarker]

bottome line is It's ok sometimes and for beginers maybe..we do it as a warmup sometimes even.

 

But if you want ot know how to fight/react in a real fight then you need to spar full or heavy contact.

 

Says who?

 

How often?

 

How hard is "heavy" or "full"?

 

Have you performed longitudinal studies between people who spar light/no contact versus full/heavy and determined how good a fighter they are? By what standards?

 

At what level of frequency does sparring full contact improve fighting ability? Once a week? Every month? Daily?

 

Do marathoners run 30 miles in practice so they can do 26.2 faster on race day? (no.)

 

Do football players always practice full contact? (no.)

 

Now mind you, I've never said sparring full contact was wrong. And I've never said that light contact was the only way to go. Our class takes a conservative approach to teaching sparring, and students who have gotten into fights have all walked away intact.

 

I'm just curious as to how everyone has reached their conclusions, and perhaps to get a few people to ask some questions of their methodologies. Just because some bruisers train full contact doesn't mean that made them excellent fighters. Corelation does not imply causation.

 

Different people train and learn to different outcomes. What worked for Oyama and Kubota may not work for everyone. Those folks earned their stripes the hard way, proving themselves outside of a ring. I also imagine both of them would be pretty tough without the benefit of karate.

[delta1]

If any one is looking for the perfect training for a full out, anything goes fight to the death, you're in for a rude awakening. Ain't no such animal, unless you're willing to regularly engage in a full out, anything goes fight to the death. Even in "full contact" training, we all use control so we don't seriously injure each other. There are various methods to train to fight, but each has some compromise. For example, I have boxing gloves and can hit full force with them. But we wear protective gear, and the gloves themselves can teach you bad habbits. They also limmit your hand strikes and techniques to punches only, pretty much. Another example is the Arnisidores I work out with. They use sticks, and sometimes the seniors spar with unpadded sticks. But they wear full head and face protection, and they use a LOT of control. They raise some nasty welts, but don't break anything. And their blocks go to the sticks. But in reality those blocks go to the hand or arm and are capable of breaking bones. Most of us use padded sticks or no contact. Even in contact sparing we don't throw potentially crippling shots like kicks to the knees. Doesn't mean we don't know they aren't there.

 

Sparing is good to learn timeing, teach you to pick openings, developes reaction time, and teaches you to react to the unexpected. Also teaches range and control. And if your target is 1/16th inch in front of his nose, and that's where you 'hit', then you havn't trained to miss. You were accurate. There are a lot of bennifits to sparing, no matter what the level of contact or intensity. And there are better ways to train to punch through something or someone than to bash your partners face in.

 

The big difference in how much dammage you do in any fight, from sparing or playing, angry skirmeshis, fights for domminance, fights to dissuade or control someone, or an all out fight for survival, is simple. Intent. You have to understand what it is, that willingness and desire to do seriouse harm to another person when necessary. And you have to have it. If you have intent, you will throw your strikes for maximum effect in the serious fight. If your intent is to match a lesser level of threat, you will use control- a real plus if you land in court. Without intent, it doesn't matter how many people you've whipped up in your school, you're just another grease spot on the sidewalk when it's over. But my guess is the guy that has spared a lot, as opposed to spending a lot of time recovering from the last class room brawl, will be able to use his intent to better effect.

[tommarker]

The big difference in how much dammage you do in any fight, from sparing or playing, angry skirmeshis, fights for domminance, fights to dissuade or control someone, or an all out fight for survival, is simple. Intent. You have to understand what it is, that willingness and desire to do seriouse harm to another person when necessary. And you have to have it. If you have intent, you will throw your strikes for maximum effect in the serious fight. If your intent is to match a lesser level of threat, you will use control- a real plus if you land in court. Without intent, it doesn't matter how many people you've whipped up in your school, you're just another grease spot on the sidewalk when it's over. But my guess is the guy that has spared a lot, as opposed to spending a lot of time recovering from the last class room brawl, will be able to use his intent to better effect.

 

Excellent post.