Standard Kumite - a waste of time!!!!!

Clearly a peeing-for-distance contest is out.

It's very rare to see a single punch end a fight, full stop, unless we're talking about sucker punches. In competitions where the knockout is the goal, rear straights are rarely used after the third punch or so. That, plus the fact that fighters who are looking to finish are closing the range down, thus eliminating the room for a solid rear straight anyway, is the reason you rarely see a straight rear punch from chin level end a fight.

"Kicking distance" is relative. I'm a short guy. I spar with guys who aren't. My concept of "kicking distance" is monumentally different from theirs.

But, any time the guy is close enough to hit me in the head, my hands are going to be up. Not necessarily in a shell (although it does help with my Joe Frazier/Jack Dempsey/Mike Tyson-esque approach), but my rear hand is above chin level and my lead shoulder is rolled forward. I'd think this would be even more important in JKA-style kumite, because the relative range tends to change very quickly.

I also have no clue what you mean by shelling up reducing your mobility. With a tight shell, it's harder to leave your hands behind as you move your head/upper body. And it really has no bearing on what the lower body does.

No, but you contrasted the gloves used in karate kumite with the so-called "pillows" used in boxing by saying that they were there to protect the knuckles, as if boxing gloves had some other function. They really don't.

Weaker men have beaten stronger men in competition using guile, heart, agility, speed, and conditioning. Isn't it conceivable that a woman would be capable of the same? If you believe the legend, that's precisely what Yim Wing Chun did.

Nah, you're not going to get away with making me sound like a poster child for domestic abuse.

I doubt any male competitor, myself included, would request a female opponent. Fighting a woman is generally seen as lose-lose: if you win, you've "only" beaten up a woman, but if you lose, you lost to a "girl". But women are still at the stage where they have to "prove" themselves to some people. If a woman requested a male opponent, I wouldn't object to being that guy. You see, she's allowed to "pound", as you put it, on me as well. Fights generally aren't one-sided. By acquiescing to her request, I'd have allowed a woman an opportunity to prove she was as good as a man in competition. My job is to try to win the fight to the best of my abilities; anything less diminishes her efforts, and disrespects her as a fellow warrior. If she's better than me on that occasion, let her prove it. Everyone deserves an opportunity to prove themselves.

In the first place I trained, two of the best fighters were women. Since then, I've trained with women who could handle themselves quite well. I have learned not to underestimate them based on gender. I hope someday you'll have the same discovery.

 

Hey you got a good point on the relative distance thing but i'm sure you are now able to gauge what is kicking distance and what is punching distance for most people's height.

Holding you hands up past your chin at say kicking distance will telegraph any hand techniques you may want to deliver because to put the mechanics behind it you will have to lower them first or fire of very weak shots that have no allignement to your body weight and are purely arm techniques..

Also from this position try moving around alot using footwork then drop your hands down to shoulder chest level and move around with your hands in this position, which one feels more natural? and which one gives you better balance, mobility and manouvreability?

The boxing glove not only protects the knuckles but it does cushion the blow to the head or body, they are thick enough to do that, that karate mit is only 10mm or (3/8") thick the only thing it does is prevents cuts, but apart from that is closer to receiving a bare knuckle punch than the boxing glove.

LOL a poster child, no comment the only thing i would say here is we are going to agree to disagree.

Women can be great fighters and warriors, it still doesn't mean they should want to infiltrate the mens divisions, what next are we going to have women rugby players in mens teams?

I'm not going respond to any more things about women taking on men, thats my opinion and i stick to it.

 

Yes maybe, but I certainly wouldn't hit a woman with a full-blown front kick in sparring. I find it unbelievable that there are people on here who will go full contact on a woman. Sparring, fine. Make them work, yeah of course. But if you are going full-contact you are aiming to hurt. I mean, the people on here who feel it is right to try and hurt ladies in sparring, how do you feel when you break their ribs or something? And what does it do to your ego's when you hit them and it has no effect. Bet that's a confidence booaster!

While I certainly understand that it is neccessary to understand what it is like to be hit and to hit someone, I don't believe that sparring full-contact day-in-day out is intelligent. If soemone is stronger and better than you in the class you will just be getting hurt all the time. What is the point when you can't get up for work? And if people aren't getting hurt in full-contact, it just means the techniques are obviously not working. There is a lot more to fighting than just being hard. There is always someone bigger and harder. If there was someone in your class who hit like Tyson, I bet you wouldn't all be lining up to fight him!

 

My post was aimed at page 6. Didn't realise there was another page!

 

Hi,

From the way this is written it seems to imply that you are saying...
Boxing = Sport
Karate=Self Defence

I think that from a historical perspective if you are talking about Japanese Karate (as opposed to Okinawan Te) then you could say that originally...
Boxing = Self Defence
Karate=Sport
- well for Karate-do, perhaps a training methodology for fitness and institutionalised control of youngsters.

Would be more accurate...

All the best.

Robert.

 

You treat them just like anyone else and judge the contact that they can take accordingly. I don't think anyone would feel good breaking the ribs of any of their fellow students during class. If you're a beginner you're not going to be struck the same as someone who's a nidan. All you're doing is shorting them good training. Ask a lot of female MAists and you'll see that's actually a common complaint: men baby them too much.

You can adjust the sparring depending on what you did that day and what your current needs are. If you're fairly fresh and eager to get it on, then there will be hard contact. If you've had a rough few days, it was a tough workout, or even if you're working more on skill you can make it moderate to light contact. Training with contact isn't just hard or nothing, there's varying levels in between. Yes, you do get a bit banged up and bruised but most are minor stuff that go away in a day or so. Sparring is quite different from a competition.

 

If you look at active proffessional fighters that step in the ring no matter what discpline be it boxing, muay that mma etc, fight night is where you let it all hang out that is there is no holding back on fight night.

Sparring sessions leading up to fightnight are not 100% full contact like the fight itself, i think you'll find that sparring leading up to a fight is somewhere around 75% that is you never give it your all there is always something in reserve.

If all sparring sessions leading up to fight night where 100% then the fighters would have a very short fighting carrier, and would always step into the ring injured or carrying something.

To spar 100% full contact all the time will definetly slow your whole life down very quickly not to mention what effects it will have on your brain and body as you age.

So when you think of boxing mma or muay thai dont think they spar in the gym at 100% contact like what you see on fight night.

Now if continuous hard contact in sparring sessions can slow men right down, i think it will have an even greater effect on women who as they age are suseptible to things like osteoarthritis and a host of other things.

In my opinion how you treat your body when your young will show as age, and all the effects will slowly start appearing one by one as you creep into middle and old age.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDSKEmpCrHE"]YouTube - Female Striking Match Gina Carano[/ame]

 

Exactly. So as you said, light contact can be beneficial for technique and such. You haven't got to beat the living day lights out of each other every time. Again, some people are giving me he impression that they try to hurt each other each and every session. Whether they mean to or not, I don't know, but that is how it is coming across.

 

I think that depends on the fighter. Some do some don't.

It happens. We've lost 3 fighters to injuries received in sparring for the show on Sunday. brotherinarms (Map member) is one of them.

 

Just light contact though is doing nothing for you. Also, "light" in this case is a relative term. What I consider light could be moderate to hard compared to what someone else might think, for example.

A light to moderate day in the sparring I do in Kyokushin may mean just no head kicks. So your body will take some lumps but you won't be getting rocked with jodan mawashi geri left and right. We'll throw light head kicks but with minimal power. So there you have the light aspect but you're still getting a lot of impact training in.

Your body's the steel and the training's the forge. You gotta fire up the intensity and get beat into shape sometimes, and that's where good solid contact comes into play.

 

Well, I am not sure about that last comment. I mean, can you ever really train to take full shots to the head? Constantly getting hit in the nogging won't toughen you up in my opinion. It will have the opposite effect. Body can be hardened, yeah, but not the head. Fitness and spirit, your way of mind can keep you going, but you can't physically train your head to be tough. Otherwise people would be head-butting walls 50 times a day to toughen them as part of their training! Look at some pro-fighters. They can be proper badass one day, absorbing everything and just keep coming, then one day they just can't take it. And these can be relatively young men. Men of say around 30, who really should be in their prime, but the beatings just take their toll.

So when do you become too old then for full-contact sparring? I would imagine a man of say 60 it would be too much for. But that doesn't mean a man of 60 can't defend himself does it?

 

There is a certain technique you can learn to "roll" with the strikes you take to your head. Definitely a last-ditch manuver but it's better than doing nothing at all.

The main reason why it's so important is people are downright scared of getting hit. That's what it all boils down to. That's why during incidents where two guys are clucking at each other like roosters and puffing up their chests, one of them eventually decides to throw the first punch as he's hoping to end it before he himself gets hit. That is why a good strong shot can take the fight right out of some people, and how others simply freeze when they're attacked regardless of how much training they've had.

If you never take any kind of contact, on game day you're going to have much less of a chance of success. Think of it as football. You may be great at touch football, but the moment it turns to tackle it's a whole different ballgame. So if you're training to get tackled but only play tag, you're in for a rude awakening once you hike the ball.

As for the "too old" thing: Morio Higaonna is 71 this year and from the interview I read in Masters magazine he still spars three times a week. My instructor turns 53 here in a few months and he's still going strong. As a matter of fact, any of the injuries he has now he can attribute back to when he was playing football and none of them from Kyokushin despite training in it for well over 20 years.

 

Isn't it a problem that, essentially, people from entirely different clubs, who have never met each other, are criticizing the way each other spars based on no information but the style of MA each practices?

 

Oooh burn! You gotta remember, we're all aboot the stereotypes here

EDIT: I didn't actually read the most recent posts, so I might also agree with mitch. To be fair the comment came in my head and I felt an urge to share. Not very constructive, I know

 

Surely he isn't sparring full-contact at 71 though?

As I said, there are numerous examples of people that are fit, fighting machines, until one day it just catches up with them. I'm thinking for example, someone like Eric Morales. He can't be much over 30 now can he?

I am not saying there shouldn't be any contact, but again, sparring full-contact all the time would just be damaging, unless you are sparring people who can't hit properly. As for the self-defence aspect, even those used to getting hit may freeze under pressure. It has been known. Sparring won't recreate a reall life situation. In sparring, no matter how hard you hit, you are both prepared for something to be thrown at you. In a real situation anything can happen. I guess a lot of it depends what you are training for.

 

WARNING! Occasional bad language!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ySW_mvNdqo&feature=sub"]YouTube - Delivering your punch: shoulder and hip[/ame]

put this at 0:18

if consterdine can take those punches without even blinking, i find it hard to believe that higaonna can't or doesn't want to indulge in a little bit of mutual clobbering at least every once in a while.

 

Great vid Fish of Doom, its this method that attracted me to E.Montaigue Bagua.