Chris Parker
Grandmaster
what is a better way to develope pain tolerance and expose the student to contact OTHER than sparring?
Yes, free-response scenario training. That can be full impact (if you want it to be), full pace (if you want it to be), realistic attacks (far more than in sparring), contains realistic tactics for self defence (far, far more than sparring does), and has everything you want from sparring without the issues.
Seriously, sparring is far from the only way to achieve such things, and it is also far from the best way to do so either. There is nothing in scenario training that says there is less impact, less pain tolerance, or anything of the like. To imply such tells me that you don't know what scenario training is versus sparring... which is fine, because that's 90+% of martial artists, I'd say.
And, believe it or not, you need water to learn how to swim.
Sure. But if self defense is analogous to swimming, is sparring analogous to water?
No, it's not. It's a common simile applied, but it's also quite a false one. More realistically, is self defence is analogous to swimming, then sparring is a bath, or a paddling pool. A body of water you can immerse yourself in, but not really the same in some very key ways. Tournament fighting being analogous to swimming, though, that's a different story... in that case, sparring is more like swimming laps.