Poison of "Sparring"

Discussion in 'Karate' started by Griffin, Aug 19, 2009.

  1. Griffin

    Griffin Valued Member

    If your in Martial Arts for sporting endeaver like TKD for olympics or kyokushin for the full contact etc. this doesnt concern you :)

    However, if your interested in self defense and all else karate-do offers, how can people ignore the founders words about this "sparring"...
    I know what it produces becouse ive practised karate for years and have some timing tricks etc but thats my point, they are "Ring or tournament" tactics not the life/death mindset of explosion into action that Kata and the resulting bunkai produce when taught correctly, the origional intent, before the creation of the JKA and therefore attempt at olympics like judo etc
    Also the younger students show the stupidity of sparring pretty quickly yes? As it soon turns into a "competition" and your producing fight mindset not a peacefull yet extremely powerfull person due to kata/bunkai training, once again the origional intention of G.Funakoshi's great art...

    Dont get me wrong, ive had my sparring ups n downs and its taught me this and that, but especially with the new guys coming up its become way too important the outcome of this sparring rubbish versus their performance at kata and bunkai, which when lost your left with a kickboxing school or whatever fancy name sounds cool lately LOL

    To each their own i suppose :)
     
  2. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    Before I respond, I have to better understand your position. Do you:

    (1) Believe in pressure-testing against an uncooperative opponent, but just not want to "keep score" or "declare a winner"?

    or

    (2) Shun all non-cooperative kumite, and believe that martial ability should be fostered through solely kihon, kata, and bunkai?
     
  3. Griffin

    Griffin Valued Member

    1) Exactly, pressure to perform, not to save your life....

    As soon as your sparring you are untraining your ability to explode in combat. And replacing it with a tippety tappety turnstyle game :)

    Try this, test your skills against a real athletic martial artist....

    At what point do you realise you are competing against anothers skills, which has nothing to do with your performance during an "OH ****" moment in the real world where a guy asks for a light of his smoke then when he bends forward to accept it hes close in for a headram and punch onslought followed by knee and so on....

    If youve been in these situations you know what i mean, theres a question of what to do as he approaches and your getting sus.. heavy influence of sparring as a meter of skill is poison at these moments, however, a strong reliance on kata bunkai has a completely different effect. A usable energy/confidence that has no relation to sparring achievements comes about...
    This is my experience, im not pushing my view just putting it out there :)
     
  4. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    I agree with one thing, and only one thing, that you wrote: "To each their own I suppose." However, given what you've said this evening about people who value sparring differently than you do, I really question whether you yourself believe in "to each their own." In the thread about a mentally disabled man being assaulted without provocation and against his will and beaten within an inch of his life, you wrote:

    I don't see much "to each their own" there...at least not much of the sincere kind as opposed to the condescending kind.

    Now, I'm not sure exactly what the kumite at your dojo looks like--your response didn't really fill in many details--but I respectfully disagree that kata and bunkai alone would be able to teach most people how to aggressively fight back full-force against an unexpected assault. I never felt confident about the ability to take a punch and keep fighting until I experienced it. I never knew how to keep fighting when nothing was going my way until I was facing an opponent who was doing everything they could to hit me hard and not get hit himself. I think sparring does an admirable job of pressure-testing someone in that manner. You say you've been on both sides of the coin; so have I. On the "involves competitive sparring" side, I've trained in FIE fencing, taekwondo, and JKA Shotokan. On the "doesn't involve competitive sparring" side, I've trained in Yang tai chi chuan and Wing Chun kung fu. Personally, I found the arts which incorporated competitive sparring a lot more useful to me than those that don't.

    As for "now you see why G. Funakoshi RIP would X, Y, and Z"...frankly speaking, I don't care. I don't agree with him on everything. He was just a man--a man who did some things I like when starting up Shotokan but also did some things I don't like. So I have no problem training in an art that takes some of its substance, but not all of its substance, from Gichin Funakoshi.

    As for your statement about unexpected violence, "heavy influence of sparring as a meter of skill is poison at these moments, however, a strong reliance on kata bunkai has a completely different effect," if I found myself in an ugly situation, and I had a choice between the following two people watching my back--(1) a strong athletic individual with ten years of Kyokushin and judo competitions under his belt, and (2) a strong athletic individual with ten years of kata and bunkai under his belt--I'd choose the first guy ten times out of ten. No question in my mind, based on roughly 14 years in various martial arts and sports and the people I've met in that time.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2009
  5. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    Here is an interesting blog post on this subject by Sgt. Rory Miller:

    http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2009/08/commitment.html

     
  6. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    Rory Miller's Meditations on Violence should be required reading for all martial artists.

    Mitch

    You can get it through Amazon and help raise money for MAP, look!
     
  7. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

  8. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Tell that to Mike Tyson
     
  9. Griffin

    Griffin Valued Member

    Thankyou for proving my point further... Mike Tyson is a Boxer not a self-defense expert, he allows for rounds and the streetfight is over real quick.........................
     
  10. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    Also, you gotta consider that Tyson was not sparing, he was pretty much trying to annihilate his opponents.. a different mindset from most people sparing in class or what have you i.e. unless your a psycho, it is very unlikely you are willing or trying to take your sparring partner out, and if you are, then most hobbyist MA'ers wont wanna spar you.
     
  11. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Don't see many people lasting more than a couple of seconds in a streetfight with him in his prime. Think you'd have beaten him then?
     
  12. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Sparring is practising fighting. Of course you have to fight to become a fighter. Get in a cage with one of our guys and if your not at 0-100% straight away you're knocked /tapping out. Sparring is just a tool.
     
  13. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    Indeed... I am not at all saying sparring is bad, in fact, its great. For most, its as close as we will ever get to anything resembling a real confrontation, but, its definitely not the be all and end all...
     
  14. Hiroji

    Hiroji laugh often, love much

    you cant just say 'sparring'.

    There are many different types of sparring all can help improve different things in a fighter.

    I happen to agree with the OP to some degree when it comes to karate and the usual type of sparring done nowadays. No real contact is used, its done at a distance and doesnt really teach the karateka to put together a flurry of powerfull strikes as your always just looking of the 'one' hit to score.

    Now this is probably comes from the japanese culture/mindest in the way its similar to kendo/sword fighting.

    However other elements of fighting that are in karate have become useless now as this type of sparring seems to dictate everything else.
     
  15. Griffin

    Griffin Valued Member

    As for learning to take a punch.

    Pfffwahahaha, was the guy intent on f'ing u up was he??? No, he was your training partner LOLOL
    Good luck with thinking your prepared with that :) Becouse only a moron will attack you with what you expect. Even an idiot fakes and throws combo's...........
    You either explode with intent or your what..... S P A R R I N G. You know, you should be in controll within 3 seconds or your likely to lose.
    Obviously this is about training for reality, not for becoming the flashiest "Playfighter" LOL
     
  16. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    I think an important distinction to consider is "mindset". Now I am no soldier, but if you are in a situation where you have to kill the other person before they kill you, its definitely different from that of someone sparring, no matter how intense it is, cage or no cage. Their aint gonna be a ref jumping in or an ambulance standing by.

    Anyway, I think we all realise this distinction to a certain extent. But how do you incorporate it in your training, is it even possible?
     
  17. Griffin

    Griffin Valued Member

    I simply dont spar anymore except for gradings,
    Considering we promote "non-contact" to gain business lol its getting close to the line at times.. During a sparring session not too long ago we were just doing a single point competition where the "winner" lol stays the rest rotate etc
    End result, an over eager teen boy "accidently" dished out a blackeye to a younger female.. Now apart from it being not monitored properly obviously, to my amazement the kid looked around as if he did nothing wrong.... I know he has and others have built up this stupidity through sparring, perhaps youve seen this degradation of karate-do also.

    I'll stick with Mr.Funakoshi on this one, but hey like i said, each to their own :)
    Peace :)
     
  18. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    Personally, I quite enjoy sparing, but I dont take it too seriously, I consider it more as a game. Not to say one cant learn in a game, in fact I would say, one learns more when having fun as opposed to trying to learn. Maybe thats just me though.

    Not sure how one would train to deal with a "killer" type scenario, or whether it is really possible to replicate this at all. But, I like to think there are aspects/characteristics which can be useful. Such as breath for one, i.e. stress causes a change in breath, which reinforces stress and so on. If you have control over one, you have a greater chance of controlling the other. On top of that, excess stress can disintegrate your structure and stamina, in turn affecting your ability to effectively move, breathe, take and give strikes or what have you. I guess sparring may be useful for testing this to some extent, but its still just a game.

    I guess another interesting avenue would be to work with "fear" and adrenal response. But how effectively you can simulate this to a "real situation" I have no idea. I have read some interesting Systema stuff about things like this, but my knowledge/experience here is very limited. maybe RobP can tell us something about it.

    Also, from a philosophical point of view, if you can convince yourself that death is irrelevant, I guess that may work to your advantage. But, will it really work under pressure? who knows...

    I guess in the end, it all comes down to how much control you have over yourself, and "fighting spirit" as Koyo says... so yeah... I dont really know.. :)
     
  19. spidersfrommars

    spidersfrommars Valued Member

    What you have in mind when you say sparring must be very different than what I'm thinking of. What you seem to describe is non contact point sparring which I agree is BS that gives a false sense of confidence. However decent contact sparring in a variety of rulesets/situations is an ABSOLUTELY vital part of both the physical and "spiritual" (I hate using that word) aspects of the martial arts. You are throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak. Also kata as the primary means of training for a real unpredictable confrontation? Please explain that reasoning again.
     
  20. spidersfrommars

    spidersfrommars Valued Member

    You've just done something very very silly
     

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