Sparring Do's and Dont's

[Twin Fist]

injury?

ok, show me a Black Belt that never bled.........

Daniel? you make it to BB without bleeding?

terry?

anyone?

there is a reason why there didnt used to be kiddy classes

this isnt t-ball, this is KARATE

it is a contact sport, and if you suck, you run the risk of getting hurt.

suck it up or go learn ballet.

in 25 years:
I had my arm pulled out of socket
I have had more bloody noses than I can remember
busted lips
dislocated knuckles
hyper-extended elbow
buddy of mine got his sternum cracked from a side kick
almost everyone I know has had a rib get at least cracked.

it doesnt happen often, but it DOES and SHOULD happen. If you get to BB and you never bled? you need to re-take your test.

Red Menace, this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone, those flippy little WTF kicks? they dont have much power on them.

lose the hogu, no one will die i promise.

 

[Thesemindz]

For those of you who spar without WTF-style rules or hogus, I have to say I'm curious how you avoid serious injury. When allowing punches to the face are they bare-knuckle or with a glove of some kind? Do students have black eyes all the time? Noses aren't getting broken? I know that it isn't easy to punch a trained fighter in the head but it's got to happen with some frequency. Ribs don't get cracked by kicks? Never?

We do WTF sparring at my school, and do not view it as a game of tag, but we acknowledge that it is a game with rules. I often think I might like to engage in more realistic fighting of some kind, and perhaps I'm a "wussie", but I'm not sure how it would work without me or my partner getting a serious beatdown, and hobbling into work the next day. Please enlighten me, and if there is any video of the students at your school sparring (in a full contact way) that you could share, please do.

I spar with my other black belt friends, bare knuckle, no mouth guard, groin guard only. We spar street style, including strikes to vulnerable targets, takedows, groin shots, leg kicks, strikes to the head, ground figting, throws, and joint locks.

And we don't usually get seriously injured. It's called control. Every once in a while someone will get knocked woozy, but usually we just use control to vulnerable targets, such as the face, groin, knees, kidneys, etc. Shots to the body are medium to heavy.

You can train hard, and realistically, with heavy contact and little protective gear, and not get hurt all the time. But it takes a lot of training, and a lot of control. It isn't for white belts. And it isn't for people who don't practice, and aren't used to, and don't know how to defend against, these kinds of attacks.


-Rob

 

[Thesemindz]

this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone.

This is true. People get hurt sometimes on accident, but the human body is surprisingly resiliant.

We had one female student who was getting hurt a lot, so the instructor recommended she see a doctor and it turned out she had a bone condition. Everyone else was able to go pretty hard with little more than bruises, jammed fingers, and the occasional muscle pull.

If you use control, and you train for contact, you can go at a pretty good clip without getting hurt. Look at how much damage the fighters in the UFC can take without even slowing down.

It's all in how you train.


-Rob

 

[searcher]

injury?

ok, show me a Black Belt that never bled.........

Daniel? you make it to BB without bleeding?

terry?

anyone?

there is a reason why there didnt used to be kiddy classes

this isnt t-ball, this is KARATE

it is a contact sport, and if you suck, you run the risk of getting hurt.

suck it up or go learn ballet.

in 25 years:
I had my arm pulled out of socket
I have had more bloody noses than I can remember
busted lips
dislocated knuckles
hyper-extended elbow
buddy of mine got his sternum cracked from a side kick
almost everyone I know has had a rib get at least cracked.

it doesnt happen often, but it DOES and SHOULD happen. If you get to BB and you never bled? you need to re-take your test.

Red Menace, this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone, those flippy little WTF kicks? they dont have much power on them.

lose the hogu, no one will die i promise.

I will throw one out there for you. During my Sho-dan test, I had a shattered nose and there was blood everywhere. Adults are not allowed to wear chest pretection and if they get broken ribs, so be it. I have seen many broken bones, dislocations, concussions, etc in the course of an individual coming up through the ranks. It happens, as has been stated.


Some of you guys may know a Jim Harrison. He heavily influenced one of my instructors and his opinion on the subject is, No Paper Tigers!!!! Meaning if you get a BB and you have not gotten the crap kicked out of you and done likewise to another, you are attending a dance school.

 

[Twin Fist]

Jim harrison is a monster. Back in the day, he was widely considered the hardest hitting guy in karate.

 

[terryl965]

injury?

ok, show me a Black Belt that never bled.........

Daniel? you make it to BB without bleeding?

terry?

anyone?

there is a reason why there didnt used to be kiddy classes

this isnt t-ball, this is KARATE

it is a contact sport, and if you suck, you run the risk of getting hurt.

suck it up or go learn ballet.

in 25 years:
I had my arm pulled out of socket
I have had more bloody noses than I can remember
busted lips
dislocated knuckles
hyper-extended elbow
buddy of mine got his sternum cracked from a side kick
almost everyone I know has had a rib get at least cracked.

it doesnt happen often, but it DOES and SHOULD happen. If you get to BB and you never bled? you need to re-take your test.

Red Menace, this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone, those flippy little WTF kicks? they dont have much power on them.

lose the hogu, no one will die i promise.

Bleed please I bleed and also broke bones that is just part of training. I mean come on people back in the days I had black eye and never gave it a second thought. I also agree about learning control when sparring but sometime it just feels good to let out some godd old fashion *** whooping for the love of god.

 

[jim777]

Our rules are straight forward and few:

No contact is to be made to the Back, Back of the Head, Neck or anywhere below the waist

Students will stop immediately upon the command "Break" given by the instructor
No techniques will be delivered to the joints, especially below the waist.
Students must bow at the beginning and end of each match to show respect to their opponent
Students will shake hands with their opponent and compliment them with the reply "good match" at the end of every match
Senior students will spar to the level of the junior student

 

[Red Menace]

injury?

ok, show me a Black Belt that never bled.........

Daniel? you make it to BB without bleeding?

terry?

anyone?

there is a reason why there didnt used to be kiddy classes

this isnt t-ball, this is KARATE

it is a contact sport, and if you suck, you run the risk of getting hurt.

suck it up or go learn ballet.

in 25 years:
I had my arm pulled out of socket
I have had more bloody noses than I can remember
busted lips
dislocated knuckles
hyper-extended elbow
buddy of mine got his sternum cracked from a side kick
almost everyone I know has had a rib get at least cracked.

it doesnt happen often, but it DOES and SHOULD happen. If you get to BB and you never bled? you need to re-take your test.

Red Menace, this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone, those flippy little WTF kicks? they dont have much power on them.

lose the hogu, no one will die i promise.

Twin Fist, I appreciate you responding to my question but I kind of feel like you are insulting me. I wasn't criticizing your style of training, I was asking a sincere question. I apologize if you took my questions as some kind of antagonism. I have a black belt and I also have been injured many times (not just bleeding, but breaks and a concussion) but that's also part of what made me ask for more info. We train in self-defense as well as WTF sparring, but we don't really do full-contact-anything-goes sparing per se. From Empty Hands and TheseMindz's posts it seems like control is often being used, so the participants are not "going all out" against each other.

At your school do black belts "go all out" against each other on a regular basis, Twin Fist? Or is some level of holding back the norm?

I'm not saying this would be the case at anyone's school who has posted here, but I know one of my instructors traveled to some schools where they routinely spar without hogus and he obliterated everyone there because conscious of it or not, they were actually holding back the full force of their kicks and punches when they trained, whereas we kick as hard as possible much of the time. I just thought I'd add that anectdote as a possible defense of using the chest protector.

 

[Twin Fist]

Red, i wasnt referring to you in particular, except for the part where i was.

"Red Menace, this is gonna come as a shock to you i am sure, but it is actually HARD to injure someone, those flippy little WTF kicks? they dont have much power on them.

lose the hogu, no one will die i promise."

that was to you, the rest was directed to all the wimped out,wussified,no contact, no one gets hurt, everyone passes tests, 9 yr old BB's strip mall belt factories out there.

now, that being said:

It is a well known fact that i dont think highly of WTF style tkd.

nothing will change my mind on that. Hogu's are for wusses as far as I am concerned. Will you have one on the street? then you better not wear one when you train. I often fight without a cup. I NEVER fight with a mouth piece or headgear. My students have to wear it, but I wont.

That said, I am not trying to diss you, so no worries.

now, for me, when sparring another Black belt, he or she had better bring it, cuz I am. maybe not 100%, but close to it. I show my respect for thier belt by bringing them a good fight. They had better do the same, or they will get wacked around me.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

For those of you who spar without WTF-style rules or hogus, I have to say I'm curious how you avoid serious injury. When allowing punches to the face are they bare-knuckle or with a glove of some kind? Do students have black eyes all the time? Noses aren't getting broken? I know that it isn't easy to punch a trained fighter in the head but it's got to happen with some frequency. Ribs don't get cracked by kicks? Never?

We do WTF sparring at my school, and do not view it as a game of tag, but we acknowledge that it is a game with rules. I often think I might like to engage in more realistic fighting of some kind, and perhaps I'm a "wussie", but I'm not sure how it would work without me or my partner getting a serious beatdown, and hobbling into work the next day. Please enlighten me, and if there is any video of the students at your school sparring (in a full contact way) that you could share, please do.

Injuries happen. Even with hogu. One student at our school sat our most of January with a broken wrist from trying to block a kick and catching it with his wrist and not his forearm. This is with hogu and arm pads.

When I trained in the days before hogu, we got a serious beatdown and went hobbling into work the next day. It was the nature of the beast. Still is at hardcore schools.

Daniel

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

injury?

ok, show me a Black Belt that never bled.........

Daniel? you make it to BB without bleeding?

I definitely bled over the years.

I've had cracked ribs, a couple of broken toes, jammed fingers, bruises that didn't go away for weeks, more cuts over the years than I can add up, and pulled muscles. I have a permanent dip in each of my shins from being blocked on two separate occasions by someone's elbow (the shins happened at my current school, and it was through the pads), and my knuckles are starting to look weird.

And that's just taekwondo.

Throw in the kendo: lots of bruises, the beginnings of a pernanent knot on my right wrist from years of being motodachi, long welts on my neck from tsuki's that missed the mark and rode up under the men, and my feet are a callous.

Some side effects from that kind of training.

Whenever I block, my padded up opponents get ouchies. I've been told that my shins are like a pair of steel rods (I don't think so, but that is how my classmates feel). I have been told that my blocks "hurt too much. When I perform the stomping strikes in kendo, it resonates through the building like a gunshot. Needless to say, my back kicks and side kicks benefit from the kind of toughening that the bottoms of one's feet receive in kendo.

Are there black belts that have never bled?

Come on TF; you know the answer to that. There are tons of them. Pay the fee, get the belt and certificate.

The sad truth.

Daniel