# Sparring with No Head Contact



## Gwai Lo Dan (May 9, 2015)

I hate sparring with no head contact.  It's not that I want to kick a guy hard in the head, it's that without head kicks there is such a limited amount of possibilities.  I used to joke to my Master that you might as well just hug yourself and you have all your targets blocked; then sure enough I saw at a tournament one school doing this!

I sparred a lower colour belt this week, and now my toes, knee and thigh are all sore from getting kicked.  My opponent would kick full power as I started a kick and inevitably I got hit all over my leg.  Had head shots been allowed, I would have gone higher.

So in brief...I hate sparring with no head shots!


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## Tony Dismukes (May 9, 2015)

What targets _are_ legal in your school's style of sparring?


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## Gwai Lo Dan (May 9, 2015)

For colour belts and people over 30 years old, the legal strikes are kicks and straight punches to the front and side of the body.


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## TrueJim (May 9, 2015)

Gwai Lo Dan said:


> For colour belts and people over 30 years old, the legal strikes are kicks and straight punches to the front and side of the body.



That's so silly! People over 30 have already lived a rich, full life. They have nothing left to live for except kicking people in the head!


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## Buka (May 9, 2015)

I've often wondered where the whole no head contact thing started and how it stuck.


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## jks9199 (May 9, 2015)

Buka said:


> I've often wondered where the whole no head contact thing started and how it stuck.


In a lot of cases ...  Insurance.


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## Tez3 (May 9, 2015)

I like kicking people in the head when sparring, I don't like getting kicked in the head  though! 

Low kicks are more useful for self defence so it's never wasted time training them.


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## Tony Dismukes (May 9, 2015)

Gwai Lo Dan said:


> For colour belts and people over 30 years old, the legal strikes are kicks and straight punches to the front and side of the body.



So - less than 30% of your opponent is considered a legal target? You don't have to defend any of the targets that an assailant would most likely aim for in a real fight?

Seems like a pretty pointless exercise to me.


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## Tony Dismukes (May 9, 2015)

Gwai Lo Dan said:


> For colour belts and people over 30 years old, the legal strikes are kicks and straight punches to the front and side of the body.



So - less than 30% of your opponent is considered a legal target? You don't have to defend any of the targets that an assailant would most likely aim for in a real fight?

Seems like a pretty pointless exercise to me.


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## drop bear (May 9, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> So - less than 30% of your opponent is considered a legal target? You don't have to defend any of the targets that an assailant would most likely aim for in a real fight?
> 
> Seems like a pretty pointless exercise to me.



I have done some kk sparring it is a different game. Tough though.


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## Gwai Lo Dan (May 9, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Seems like a pretty pointless exercise to me.


Like I said, if it's low level and kicks are light, just hug yourself to defend.  Seeing this at a tournament really made me wonder "what's the point".


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## Gwai Lo Dan (May 9, 2015)

jks9199 said:


> In a lot of cases ...  Insurance.


I prefer no contact or very light contact to the head.  By no contact, I mean do a turning kick to the head but don't connect.  At least this way the other person has to pretend to defend.  It only backfired on me once when my opponent slid to the side INTO my turning kick that I was pulling, and he went down. Only once and I felt pretty bad seeing the lump on his face.


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## TrueJim (May 10, 2015)

Coincidentally, this just appeared on Reddit...

Ban Kids Kicking To The Head taekwondo


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## Gwai Lo Dan (May 10, 2015)

I read the above article.  I think the important thing is to know how good or how bad you are, and only go into competitive tournaments if you are good.  One kid from my school was ok and went into a competitive tournament, and got kicked hard in the head such that he was almost out.  

"Full contact" head shots are not worth it IMO, when most of the competitors will never be truly "competitive".  

In tournaments, I don't think you can trust that the other person will try not to hurt you.  But you should be able to have that trust in your school, and should be able to do tapping (or almost tapping) kicks to the head without too much worry.


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## TrueJim (May 10, 2015)

Some things to keep in mind about children sparring:

Compared to their bodies, kid's *heads* are proportionally larger than adult's heads. I think most people know that's true about babies, because the head-size of babies is so obviously exaggerated. But it's also true for children up through puberty. For kids in taekwondo, the head is a bigger target, but also a more fragile target.













One implication of this is that children's *neck* vertebrae are much more vulnerable than an adult's. A relatively thin neck is supporting a relatively large head. Even if a kick to the head doesn't injure the child's cranium, there's a higher chance of the kick injuring the child's neck.


Another thing to consider is that a child's skeleton is not entirely *bone* yet - this is true even for older children. Children's skeletons have a tough cartilage that ossifies into bone as they become adults. When you look at an x-ray of a child, you'll see all sorts of bones that look like they're not connected with one another as they would be in an adult. That tough cartilage is holding kids together, not their bones. Here's what the skeleton of a newborn looks like, for example. You'll notice that it looks like a bunch of disconnected bones. That persists to a decreasing extent until puberty.







One of the great things about martial arts, sports, etc. is that practicing martial arts helps accelerate the development of a child's *gross-motor skills* (i.e., the ability to coordinate the movements of large muscles, as opposed to _fine_ motor skills: the ability to coordinate small muscles like finger and toe muscles). But even with martial arts training, as a rule-of-thumb the gross motor skills of children aren't going to be as good yet as those of adults. It's not because children don't have enough practice: it's because children generally don't yet have the right _neurology_ yet to achieve the level of control that they'll have later in life. (Some children are gifted in this area, of course - we can all cite examples of children with amazing gross-motor skills. That'll only improve as they get older.)

The upshot is that children generally don't have as much *control* in sparring as an adult does. Depending on the circumstances, a child aiming at the side of the head is comparatively more likely than an adult to miss the side of the head and hit the face or neck instead.
I'm not suggesting that children shouldn't spar. My young son lives to spar. My only point is that - physiologically - children are not like "smaller versions of adults". They have a unique physiology all their own. They are not built like we are.

*Reference:*

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Skeletal Development - symptoms stages meaning average Definition Description Common problems


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## Laplace_demon (May 10, 2015)

Which sparring is this - WTF, ITF or something else? 

I was told the rules for lower level/amateur ITF competition and it was an incredibly muddy description. We are not allowed to kick/punch the face, although it depends exactly where. Yet it was at first a categorical statement that we can't strike the face.


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## Gwai Lo Dan (May 10, 2015)

I'm referring to WTF.  For non-competitive tournaments (i.e., the ones that don't lead to another tournament, that everyone enters for fun) in my area, there are no head kicks for all colour belts, black belts under 14 or 16 (not sure), and adults over 30.


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## Earl Weiss (May 11, 2015)

Buka said:


> I've often wondered where the whole no head contact thing started and how it stuck.


  Heard a "Story" once how MA training was barred in the military and other places, and if you showed up with face bruises it gave away your secret. Body bruises are easily hidden by clothing.


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## Dirty Dog (May 11, 2015)

We have head strikes at all ages and ranks. But the lower the age and/or rank, the lighter the contact (that actually holds true for body contact as well). And although there are certainly matches with significant contact, none of us ever really go full contact. 
There is little or no benefit to going home bruised every day, nor to suffering serial concussions.

Master Weiss, I've heard stories like that too, but I strongly doubt there is any truth to them. I started training in 1969. I was a military brat. Pretty much every school I attended (at least until college) was on or near a military base and had a large percentage of soldiers in the classes.


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## Tony Dismukes (May 11, 2015)

Earl Weiss said:


> Heard a "Story" once how MA training was barred in the military and other places, and if you showed up with face bruises it gave away your secret. Body bruises are easily hidden by clothing.





Dirty Dog said:


> Master Weiss, I've heard stories like that too, but I strongly doubt there is any truth to them



Yeah, I'm not aware of any period where martial arts training was forbidden for service members. Showing up for work with black eyes and facial bruising would probably be more of a problem for those in white collar professions.


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## TrueJim (May 11, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Showing up for work with black eyes and facial bruising would probably be more of a problem for those in white collar professions.



Shhhhh. We don't talk about Fight Club.


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## Manny (May 11, 2015)

I think a child, a teen or an adult can go for the head with kicks with two conditions: a) Use a full coverage helmet and b)using contoled kicks.

Manny


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## Thousand Kicks (May 12, 2015)

I think the first thing we all have to admit is that regardless of the protection and control we use, it's a contact sport and things happen. It's just an inherent risk of practicing a martial art. How many times have we been a part of or seen a kick to the face or the groin and immediately heard an apology beacuse the person didn't know you were going to step a certain way or duck or whatever happened.

But, the answer can't be to eliminate head contact. How is anybody truly supposed to understand how to defend themselves unless they practice actually defending themselves?

If you want to punch and kick and not spar, just go do cardio kickboxing. As long as you are sparring with soembody the chances of injury are always present.


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## Manny (May 13, 2015)

Thousand Kicks said:


> I think the first thing we all have to admit is that regardless of the protection and control we use, it's a contact sport and things happen. It's just an inherent risk of practicing a martial art. How many times have we been a part of or seen a kick to the face or the groin and immediately heard an apology beacuse the person didn't know you were going to step a certain way or duck or whatever happened.
> 
> But, the answer can't be to eliminate head contact. How is anybody truly supposed to understand how to defend themselves unless they practice actually defending themselves?
> 
> If you want to punch and kick and not spar, just go do cardio kickboxing. As long as you are sparring with soembody the chances of injury are always present.




Complety agree, however we don't need to kill or maim each other inside the dojang/dojo to have a very good sparr sesssion. I was in my life caught with three solid kicks to the head/face area during my TKD carrer, one was a a full knock out (jumping/spining hook kick), broken theets with a pining round house and a broken nose with a jumping spining hook kick, plus many times with groing kicks and sometimes with a solar plexus punch.

I can sai with pride that I was some of the old fa... who gave and got all inside TKD but now no one student wants to do full kyorugi without the safety gear!!!! and that's wrong in my humble opinion.

Manny


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## Thousand Kicks (May 13, 2015)

Of course Manny, I never meant to come across like it's a free for all. We should always use control. I have never intentionally tried to hurt anybody while training, but it's happened. I don't think anybody has ever intentionally tried to hurt me while training, but it's happened. It's just the reality of what we're doing.


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## TrueJim (May 13, 2015)

Here's an analogy I used over on the taekwondo subreddit:

Given the fact that children don't have the gross motor skills of an adult, nor the same structural strength as adults in their cranium, spine, and other bones, nor the same neurological development, I suggest that here's an approach we could use to simulate children sparring:

*Have two adults spar...but each adult wears 2 kilogram ankle weights and drinks 4-5 beers first.* 

My other analogy is that we don't let children play full-contact rugby or American football for the same reason; (children normally play flag versions of both sports) -- children don't have the right physiology for full-contact tackles yet.






As an aside, this is the same reason why children shouldn't take up weight-lifting: when children lift, they're not lifting with muscles attached by ligaments to bones (as an adult would be), they're lifting with muscles attached by ligaments to cartilage. Structurally, kids can't lift weights without risking injury to the cartilage. Then as the child ages and the malformed cartilage ossifies, it ossifies into misshapen bone. Kids have to wait until adolescence before they can lift without risking later-in-life problems.

It's not about watering-down the martial art, or overly-pampering children, or not teaching them to defend themselves...it's more like asking two adults to spar when they're each already impaired by skeletal problems and neurological problems. Kids just don't have the same physiology as adults yet.


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## Flatfish (May 18, 2015)

I signed up for my first tournament at the end of May. Colored belts no head kicks, black belts head kicks allowed. Since it's my first tournament and I can only kick at puppy height anyway, it suits me just fine. AFAIK there are no age restrictions though.


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## TSDTexan (Sep 6, 2015)

TrueJim said:


> Shhhhh. We don't talk about Fight Club.


Beat me to it.


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## JowGaWolf (Sep 7, 2015)

Tez3 said:


> I like kicking people in the head when sparring, I don't like getting kicked in the head  though!
> 
> Low kicks are more useful for self defence so it's never wasted time training them.


High kicks to the head puts the kicker in danger. You have to really have a good kick in order to target the head without getting punched in the groin or being swept.  My school thinks the same way.  Low kicks are more useful for self defense.   I think high kicks are a disadvantage to TKD because everyone just assumes a TKD fighter is going to eventually do one.


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## JowGaWolf (Sep 7, 2015)

TrueJim said:


> Coincidentally, this just appeared on Reddit...
> 
> Ban Kids Kicking To The Head taekwondo


Very sad.  The problem isn't kicking to the head.  The problem is not teaching TKD students to keep their hands up and how to use their guard to protect their head.


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## RTKDCMB (Sep 7, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Showing up for work with black eyes and facial bruising would probably be more of a problem for those in white collar professions.


The most annoying thing about that would be having to explain it to people 20 times a day.


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## drop bear (Sep 7, 2015)

TrueJim said:


> My other analogy is that we don't let children play full-contact rugby or American football for the same reason; (children normally play flag versions of both sports) -- children don't have the right physiology for full-contact tackles yet.



Yes we do.


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## drop bear (Sep 7, 2015)

RTKDCMB said:


> The most annoying thing about that would be having to explain it to people 20 times a day.



Tell them  you bruise like a peach. That is our standard.


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## RTKDCMB (Sep 7, 2015)

drop bear said:


> Tell them you bruise like a peach. That is our standard.


One of these days I will get so annoyed when the 20th person asks something like; "what happened to your nose?" I will say "I bit it" and if they then ask; "How did you manage that?"and I will say; "I stood on a chair".


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## skribs (Oct 8, 2015)

At our school, the rule is usually kids under 12 no headshot ever, black belts 12 & up or adult red belts headshot (light contact).  The reason is that we don't want people to get uncontrolled headshots in class, which younger kids and lower belts are likely to do.  Also, in some of our lower belt classes, we have some kids who can kick themselves in the face, but others who struggle to kick over their waist level, so it's not really fair for those who are not as flexible.

However, if someone has their arm too close to their body and takes a good hit to the arm, we call it a point.  If you have a good guard up or you block the technique, we don't call it a point.


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