How hard do you spar? I think I am hitting a little too had when I spar, but I can't work out how to throw the punches quickly with the correct form without them being heavy, I also find that my 14 oz sparring gloves make my form a littl loose r a lot loose really. Anyone got any advise?
Not as hard as I used too! I think you’ve got to differentiate between different types of sparring. Do the light semi contact sparring to work on technique keeping good form etc, gloves and padding aren’t needed and you know you can make bad mistakes without being punished for it. Heavy sparring with as much padding and gloves as possible. This will be very different from the light sparring, maybe less of a learning exercise in one sense, but you’ll learn because your pressure testing what you know. A lot of people blend the types of sparring together, I believe they miss out because of this, neither doing one or the other properly.
True. There are people who beleive in the tooth fairy too Sparring is essential IMHO. We spar in one form or another in maybe 90% of our classes.
<There are people who beleive in the tooth fairy too > u mean.... u mean ... aint' that truth...??? i wonder how the hell did i collected 100 bucks then ??? -TkdWarrior-
Yoda said "Sparring is essential IMHO." I agree - as a transitional thing. I don't agree with the people that dismiss sparring having never done it (actually, that goes for anything in martial arts) as it does help with some very important elements but after a certain point I believe it acts against your development if you're training for real fighting. Of course, as they say, "different strokes for different folks"
Essential for what........ You can get something out of whatever you do, including the people that train without sparring. On the other hand you only get out, what you put in! You even beleive heavy sparring will work against you? I think its close enough to fighting to avoid that. Drills are fine, but they often don't teach the spontanious un coreographed stuff.
By practising your drills you can test your weapons By sparring you can test your mind and your weapons under pressure For me if you are not sparring then it's like winning a fighting video game assuming you are doing the real thing, but you'd get knocked out in 3 secs in a real fight |Cain|
Sparring we do tonnes of it, ranging from light contact with lots of rules, to hard contact with very little rules. Sparring is good, but not to everyones tastes.
pgm316 said " You even beleive heavy sparring will work against you? I think its close enough to fighting to avoid that. " Even heavy. The mindset with sparring is one of exchanging blows. Are you willing to take even one hit on the street? Are you willing to break your hand hitting the wrong part of your opponts head? Of course, it all depends on your definition of sparring....
I agree with what you say Andy, but what else can we do. I still think the benefits far outweigh the negatives. It’s the closest we’ll get to practising our skills, what else can we do…… I agree with this SpongeBob! Pretty much the way I use sparring.
Sparring is the closest possible you can get to training realastically. *Hiding under the bed and hoping he has'nt opened a can of worms* |Cain|
An old sensei of mine said 'If you want to fight with a knife you have to expect to get cut'. The same goes for empty hand. If you intend to hit someone, you inevitably will get hit back. Sparring gets you used to this situation and conditions your mind and body to being hit. To say that you train to never ever get hit in a street fight has to be a little risky? Though I would never like to get hit in a street fight, I do expect it to happen, due to the radom nature of a street fight. In club sparring you know what your opponents style is and as such can predict his or her fighting style. In the street you have no idea what someones strengths and weakness are. You have to find them and in doing so, may get struck in the process. Learning where to hit someone so as not to break your hand is all part of sparring. If you can't hit them there during a sparring match when they are moving and resisting, how will you do it on the street? To say that hitting them there is dangerous as you'll KO so you don't spar it, is a poor response and one I've heard often. People who say this should go to the local boxing club and say this. I'm sure these guys will give you the oppotunity to try your thoughts out. Again these are only my theories and I do wholely understand why people wouldn't want to spar, but the facts do stand that sparring is a valuable part of training. Where you use it or not is upto you.
Excellent points Bob, hmm.....maybe we should'nt discuss this too heavily, see wat happend to CKD thread |Cain|
My lips are sealed. But I will say that I did Aikido for two years, and we never sparred in that and to be honest it didn't need to. Aikido is a good example of a martial art that doesn't need sparring in it's Art
Yeah good post Bob! You've got to expect to get hit and train hard enough to get hit! Someone once said on here, "why use a pre-emptive strike when your blocks will be effective 99% of the time!" They've obviously not sparred hard, and thinking you'll get through a street fight unhurt is the wrong mindset! I think your more likely to get hurt this way and then you'd probably go to pieces! Sorry for the excessive use of the exclamation mark!
I remember during my early sparring days I used to jump around, chase opponents, use big steps to evade attacks. As you can guess I got tired pretty quickly but as time got on I learnt to be more economical in my movement, how to hit and be hit hand how to evade and stay in range. Once I got to this level I believe that my extra stamina/endurance came from a number areas that I had trained through sparring: 1. Economical movement. 2. Staying calm under pressure from attacks. 3. aerobic workout. Without sparring you will not be able to train aspects 1 & 2 to any great level. Thats why I think sparrings important to me.
The mindset required for sparring is not the same as that required for a real fight. Many years ago I held sparring in high regard and for several years, a couple of times a week I did it. Naturally there were people who relished it and became very good at it, there were others who didn't do so well (for whatever reason) and prefered more drill oriented training where rather than an exchange of the blows the training would involve disposing of an attacker quickly and decisively. The interesting thing is what occurred when these people were involved in real fights. The people who preferred the sparring tended to end up 'slugging it out' and taking a lot of knocks themselves while the guys who trained drills more tended to have very quick and decisive fights with very little damage to themselves. My belief is that this is not because of the physical training but because the guys that drilled had developed the correct mindset - one of getting in and making the quick kill.
