# Sparred for the first time



## coffeerox (Jul 14, 2010)

Sparred vs a boxer and I'm not gonna lie, I got rocked.  I did chain punch to the best of my ability and I pulled off a tan sao > pak da.  I found it very difficult to fight with boxing gloves so sometimes I get uncomfortable and tried to fight using his style, basic techniques but he beat me in his own game.  

Another thing I noticed was that boxing gloves removed a lot of space and/or made it difficult to judge where to go in.  It could be worked around as demonstrated by the JKD guys but they were used to it, I wasn't.


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## Nabakatsu (Jul 15, 2010)

open palmed mma gloves or nothing!


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## Poor Uke (Jul 15, 2010)

I love sparring with boxers, they have such good timing, speed and power. (well good boxers do anyway)


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## TinTin_57 (Jul 15, 2010)

good practice though. Always worthwhile to try out with someone other than those versed in your own style.

Having in the past studied lau gar and taekwondo for many years and now wing chun, I find that I mix and match the best of each in sessions we have out of class time. Old habits die hard etc etc


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## dosk3n (Jul 15, 2010)

Boxing gloves make it very difficult. Like mentioned use open palmed MMA gloves. 

From what I recall boxing in the olden days, when gloves were not used, the arm positions were very similar to our centerline positions however once gloves were introduced and got bigger and bigger the gloves got in the way when punching straight line so there hand positions changed to stop the gloves hitting.

This is another reason why it is hard to spar with boxing gloves as they would get in the way when chain punching unless you moved your fists further apart when chain punching which would make you slower.

Obviously you cant perform such things as Lap Sau either. 

Im not saying you cant spar with boxing gloves on while using wing chun as you can just slightly limiting yourself. Like playing tennis with a badminton racket.

So get yourself them MMA gloves and try again


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## coffeerox (Jul 15, 2010)

> Im not saying you cant spar with boxing gloves on while using wing chun as you can just slightly limiting yourself. Like playing tennis with a badminton racket.



True that.  I noticed that my Pak was gone, like I tried to use it against a jab but the gloves would just bounce off of each other instead of going onto the outside part of his wrist.  The other time when I did Pak Da was after my left Tan stuck to his left and I was able to get my right arm in there.  I definitely could have benefited from lap sao.  When I wedged in with Tan, I could have changed to Lap to get to medium then changed to get to short.

Overall I think I got some valuable experience but I was definitely handicapped.  The JKD guys have some boxing thrown in there and they regularly do sparring so they had a huge advantage.


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## geezer (Jul 15, 2010)

coffeerox said:


> Overall I think I got some valuable experience but I was definitely handicapped.  The JKD guys have some boxing thrown in there and they regularly do sparring so they had a huge advantage.



Were you guys going all-hands, boxing rules, or did you allow kicks and aggressive legwork? With boxing gloves, grabbing/sticking/trapping would be pretty tough. I ask, becauseWC/WT/VT is a system... as is boxing. Take away a big chunk of any system and the program crashes. _Under boxing rules, with boxing gloves, boxing is the simply the best system_. If it weren't, pro-fighters would change to whatever was better... after all, some big bucks are at stake!


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## coffeerox (Jul 15, 2010)

geezer said:


> Were you guys going all-hands, boxing rules, or did you allow kicks and aggressive legwork? With boxing gloves, grabbing/sticking/trapping would be pretty tough. I ask, becauseWC/WT/VT is a system... as is boxing. Take away a big chunk of any system and the program crashes. _Under boxing rules, with boxing gloves, boxing is the simply the best system_. If it weren't, pro-fighters would change to whatever was better... after all, some big bucks are at stake!



We sparred as close to boxing rules as possible.  None of us used any kicks but we each used legwork we were familiar with.


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## Andy Moynihan (Jul 15, 2010)

That's okay, that's what training is for, make your mistakes where it's safe rather than during Go Time.

That's the only way to learn is to play, especially outside your style.


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