what do you guys think about this,it is now part of our rules that it is allowed,i for 1 am not to happy about teaching ppl to spar,then say oh by the way if you get hit in the face it counts think alot of ppl are going to be put of from sparring to start with if they think this will happen. example,sat night 1 of our guys got a broken nose,1st time he has competed,nervous kind of guy but sooooooooo willing to learn[he is a older guy & has only trained for about 8 months but comes 4 nights a week :love: ] now he is very nervous about sparring because of this. what would you do?
i think its ok, as long as both students are fully aware of the rules of sparring before they begin. As its light sparring , there shouldn't be too many hard hits, but as you know, people tend to get carried away. I would let those who want to use headguards. and those that don't ...teach em to dodge better
i am talking about semi contact,we never allowed hits to the face before but we are now. we have head/hands/shins & feet on so thats fine,i mean when the person your fighting means to punch you in the face.
You need to learn how to move quicker in that case. It'll help in the long run, and if you ever need it for real.
Theres nothing wrong with a bit of contact even to the head so long as your training is training and not about winning. If you allow hits to the head in sparring then you shouldnt be trying to KO your opponents all the time, however in the run up to an event you can raise the intensity to suit the situation
I guess it surprises me somewhat that you haven't been allowing hits to the face. Are you wearing boxing gloves? I could perhaps understand for the newbies not being hit in the face if you aren't wearing a decent boxing glove. But frankly, kickboxing involves being hit in the face - it took me a while to get used to it. Not so much being hit but actually hitting someone else in the face. Had to overcome years of being taught to "play nice" before I could actually do it. To this day there is only one person I ever enjoyed actually hitting in the face!
IMHO Semi-contact competition should never be called "Kickboxing" for this very reason. It just isn't. Call it semi-contact freestyle karate/Kung Fu or similar.
it is getting changes to modern sport karate :bang: as we are looking to add some orginisation that had not been considered before. we have semi contact gloves,i have no probs getting hit in the face but i have with someone who only trys to hit your face rather than spar :bang:
why is this in the kickboxing forum then? kickboxing involves being hit in the face. this is not a revelation. semi contact body shot only stuff should go in... well we dont have a pansy section anyway face shots are very important. in a real fight, chances are they are going to be aiming for your face. you have to know how to defend and what its like to get hit in the face. first time i got punched in the nose it was horrible, but now its not so bad.
I spar a few big guys whose worst fear is, quite literally, hitting me in the face too hard. While I definitely don't want to be doomed in all pictures for a year from having my nose broken, I do want to know when I'm getting hit in the face... no use knowing how to defend everything on your body but your head.
And there we have it. If you don't want to get hit in the face, don't leave our face in the path of an oncoming lead straight! Just tell the guy it was an accident. I've done semi-contact for years and accidents happen. Blood should not really be drawn in that sort of environent and it should be a decent build up toward heavy/full contact. Anyway I think everyone should acknowledge that even if they are doing a semi contact art, they are bound to get a few bloody noses over time. It just happens.
Here semi contact kickboxing includes punches to the face, but I would be surprised If i saw a broken nose that's against the hole "semi contact" thing. Normal kickboxing doesn't only allows punches to the face. It promotes them too . I've only seen punches to the face be illegal in karate competitions, but they compete barehanded and want too keep their teeth where they are, so I understand them
If the guys are training for competition then they'd better be practicing for and be expecting punches/kicks to the face because if they don't they're in for a rude awakening and a competition is not the place you'd want that to happen. Bloody noses can happen at anytime, we've got a guy in our club who'd bleed on you if tap him but broken noses while semi-contact sparring in the club !!! Where was the control on the part of the puncher? If I had my nose broken by my sparring partner while doing SC sparring in a club situation I'd be *ever* so annoyed. Seriously though, if you don't want to be hit in the face then you should say it to your sparring partner before you spar. Personally I don't see the point in not punching to the face but it's horses for courses!
Tne way it works at my club is that you start off with only body shots. This gets you used to fighting abit, learn your range, how to judge your opponents range and what sort of power to hit with. But that only lasts, fo a normal student, between months 3-4. After this its head punches are allowed, and encouraged. By 8 months i'd have expected him to be use tofull-target sparring. For the first 2 months we, typical student, just learn technique and how to apply it to the street and a bit of shadow boxing very light sparring.
