Sparring in Sword Arts

[Charles Mahan]

Hmm... Did Amtgard actively for about a year. It pretty much amounts to boffers. Did that before finding Iai. Good fun. Outrageously intense cardio. Utterly useless for real training.

Besides, I'm not drawing on my own experience alone. It's very rare to find the kind of "free sparring" your seem to find so necessary within the koryu sword world. Keep in mind that these are traditional schools of swordsmanship which have been passed down instructor to student for generations. Since the time when the arts were used to actually kill people. Since the time when people put their faith in their training to see them through a conflict. Since lives were riding on the line.

Sparring sounds like a great idea, but the stakes are too high to do it with the weapons you would actually be using. The safer you make the training tool the less like real swordsmanship your sparring becomes. The more risks you are willing to take and the harder it becomes to pull off the same techniques that you can use with a real sword. All this stuff is in the other threads on sparring.

Within my art the folks at the top do two man waza with live steel, because shinken are the only things which convey the sense of danger of live steel, and because they are the only training tools that have the same performance characteristics as live steel.

 

[Andrew Green]

So basically begins sounding like a empty handed argument which is very common on these boards. Those that spar, vs those that feel it is too dangerous to do without "softening" their art.

I stand on the same side for both.

I have a lot of respect for the Koryo arts, anyone trying to actively preserve a piece of the past is doing something worth while. But to dismiss other training methods because they do not conform to Koryo traditions is silly, and if you want to go to logic it is a logical fallacy.

Sword work has many forms, sparring is one, Koryo styles are another, flashy acrobatic routines are yet another. All are good, just serve different purposes.

 

[Swordlady]

So basically begins sounding like a empty handed argument which is very common on these boards. Those that spar, vs those that feel it is too dangerous to do without "softening" their art.

I don't think you're completely understanding why there really isn't any sparring in the koryu. The sparring you're talking about is essentially banging sticks together. It simply doesn't make much sense to "bang sticks" in a JSA, when the basic intent in most all of the solo kata and kenjutsu was to kill one's opponent quickly.

I stand on the same side for both.

I have a lot of respect for the Koryo arts, anyone trying to actively preserve a piece of the past is doing something worth while. But to dismiss other training methods because they do not conform to Koryo traditions is silly, and if you want to go to logic it is a logical fallacy.

Just as long as you see the apples and oranges for what they are, there isn't a problem. But the problem exists when you try to fit in a square peg into a round hole, and then turn around and call the round hole "silly" because the square peg doesn't fit.

Those of us who train in a koryu take our art very seriously. And yes, some of us do get offended when an outsider tries to insist that *their* way is "better", even though they don't fully understand the koryu itself. I would also be very careful to pass judgment on something you have little to no knowledge about.

Sword work has many forms, sparring is one, Koryo styles are another, flashy acrobatic routines are yet another. All are good, just serve different purposes.

However...you also have to understand that most serious sword art practioners aren't impressed by a whole lot of flashiness. Personally, my hackles get raised when those "flashy" XMA acrobatics gets lumped together with genuine JSA. Especially because the XMA stuff is often misrepresented as the "real deal".

 

[Andrew Green]

I don't think you're completely understanding why there really isn't any sparring in the koryu. The sparring you're talking about is essentially banging sticks together. It simply doesn't make much sense to "bang sticks" in a JSA, when the basic intent in most all of the solo kata and kenjutsu was to kill one's opponent quickly.

nope, that doesn't fly for me. Doesn't matter what weapon, or lack of weapon I have, my intent is to hit the other person harder and faster.

Those of us who train in a koryu take our art very seriously.

Yes, and the same could be said about practitioners of performance based or sparring based systems.

And yes, some of us do get offended when an outsider tries to insist that *their* way is "better", even though they don't fully understand the koryu itself.

Now, given what I have seen on most sword forums this seems very often to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I don't think any of those other methods would say "Koryo styles are not 'real' swordsmanship", but that does go the other way.

I would also be very careful to pass judgment on something you have little to no knowledge about.

Again, that goes both ways.

However...you also have to understand that most serious sword art practioners aren't impressed by a whole lot of flashiness.

And you should realise that there are many very serious practitioners who train in other methods then the Koryo style training. Just because it is different doesn't mean people are not serious about it.

Personally, my hackles get raised when those "flashy" XMA acrobatics gets lumped together with genuine JSA. Especially because the XMA stuff is often misrepresented as the "real deal".

Don't worry, they probably get offended when they get lumped in with classical styles some times too

 

[Chris deMonch]

Being a koryu kenshi, I can only speak as to the JSA aspect. I heartell that WMA guys spar every now and again, and if that works for them, that's great. Chinese, Filipino, and Korean sword arts I'm also largely ignorant of, and don't intend to speak for them. As to the rest, I don't know what the theatrical martial arts feel about themselves and admittedly I don't stay awake at night worrying about it. As I mentioned earlier, they're acrobatics, not swordsmanship.
Within the context of JSA however, it seems to come down to people having their view of what swordsmanship is and how it should be trained clashing against what it actually is and how it's trained. Folks can go off till their blue in the face about how sparring is necessary and anything that doesn't do it is falling short, but the koryu bugei styles don't do it and haven't for 4-500 years. It wasn't seen as necessary then, and to date I have yet to encounter some aspect sparring supposedly has that falls short in properly trained kenjutsu kata.
To clarify for myself, I have sparred with bokuto and fukuro shinai, quite a bit for ***** and giggles. However, in my experience you always have to sacrifice too much accuracy for safety. Whether it's using bokuto but engaging in the practice of tsumeru (stopping just short), using fukuro shinai but losing the dimensions of a sword, etc, everything comes up short.
For proper training of timing, distancing, intensity, unpredictability, etc, there's kenjutsu waza. That's how it's been done for 400 years back to the days when guys were using these techniques to kill eachother, and it's how it'll be done after I'm gone. As someone who comes from a background of a few other arts and has done his share of sparring in the past, that sits fine with me and I've never found it to be a poorer art for not finding it to be important.
Chambara on the other hand, is a sword based activity, but I'd say calling it any kind of swordsmanship is a stretch.

 

[Charles Mahan]

We are hopelessly off topic. The topic is about chanbara. I would encourage a moderator to spin all this sparring stuff off into a new thread.

That said. I can't resist a parting shot. Andrew there is a very big distinction between sparring unarmed and sparring armed. We don't bang sticks together. Ideally I cut you before you can get your sword out. Barring that I cut you before you can do anything to stop me. Barring that I cut you while you're trying to cut me. Barring that I evade your attack altogether and cut you. A swordfight works on very different principles from unarmed work. Unarmed fights do not necessarily have as their core operating principle the goal of killing one's opponent. In JSA, anything that does not lead quickly to the death of your opponent is a waste. Anything you do to move away from the death of your opponent takes you away from the real style. Anything you do to make sparring safe enough to not kill or maim students is corruptive in nature. In unarmed combat you can take it pretty darn close to the limit without worrying about killing your opponent. The same cannot be said for sword arts.

Ok sparring genius. I would like to know what sparring rules would you propose for me to use in sparring with a sword? Keep in mind that many of the techniques I am trained to use cannot be accomplished without a sword and a saya. And a bokuto and saya just don't really cut it. Do you propose we spar with iaito? Or do we do away with a fair number of the key principles of my style so I can train with a bokuto? Of course a bokuto is too light and will have the negative affect of having less force during impact making cuts easier to block and leading to a corruption of technique. Also many of the cuts I might try would prove fatal if they landed even with a bokuto. A strong cut to the temple can kill. So can a good tsuki to the throat. A kirioroshi to the shoulder can break your collar bone. A kesagiri to the ribs will almost certainly break one. Even with a bokuto. For that matter they could be extremely dangerous even with a shinai or fukuo shinai and tsuki's to the throat can still be deadly.

So what we're down to, assuming we wish to go full force, intent and proper maai is boffers. Unfortunately being as big, light and floppy as they are they are useless for most techniques as well. Plus there is a big loss in the sense of danger that is projected by boffers leading to sloppy and risky behavior. Not exactly things you want to reenforce in students.

There are other potential paths you can take to make things a little safer and yet stay away from boffers. You could practice with bokuto and pull your cuts up short. This would tend to reenforce bad habbits. You will fight as you train. If you become used to stopping short, you might stop short at exactly the wrong moment when the adrenaline is pumping.

Another way is to adjust the distance so that cuts don't quite reach the target. This would allow full force in the swing without actually making contact, but again it reenforces a bad habbit of keeping your distance too great.

Or you could elect to work on all the things which you say sparring should give you, but do so in the more or less controlled enviornment of kumitachi, which is the way most ryu-ha choose to handle the problem. It is a comprimise true. Even when doing kumitachi with shinken there are still inherent flaws, but it is the method that has been passed down. And it has been passed down that way for a reason. It is the lesser of all evils. The JSA's evolved in a very Darwinian enviornment during a time when swordsmen with kooky training ideas were struck down by swordsmen who knew their stuff. Those swordsmen survived to teach what they knew to others who were tested by Darwin and so on. What we have now are the results of several centuries of evolution.

I know you think your way is the best way, but you have to understand, you are asking us to put your very limited experience up against not our experience, but the experience of generations of JSA folks. You're gonna need to make a stronger arguement than "because it's intuitively obvious!"

BTW, has it occurred to you to wonder why you aren't getting a lot of support from people who train in sword arts? Might just be that there aren't many sword people here. I encourage you to take this arguement of yours over to http://www.e-budo.com or http://www.swordforum.com and try your luck in the JSA forums there. Perhaps you'll find some support.

 

[Andrew Green]

BTW, has it occurred to you to wonder why you aren't getting a lot of support from people who train in sword arts? Might just be that there aren't many sword people here.

Japanese Koryo styles are not the only methods of using a sword, nor are they the only "good" ones.

Try suggesting that sparring isn't neccessary on a fencing forum, or a kendo forum, bet you don't get much support there. So what benefit is there in pointing me to forums heavy on koryo stylists?

Where this a Koryo Kenjutsu forum you might have a point, but it is not. It is a general sword arts forum, and a thread on Chinbara, which btw, involves a good deal of sparring from what I can tell.

 

[Charles Mahan]

That's very true. But your comments were not limited to other styles. You asserted that sparring was required in all styles. So are you now changing that to be all styles outside of Japanese styles?

And E-budo and Swordforum both have a fair number of kendo practitioners as well. The kendo folks are definitely big on sparring. All of the same complaints I made against sparring apply to kendo shiai as well.

 

[shesulsa]

Moderator Note:

Please keep the discussion polite and respectful, and return to the original topic of discussion.

G Ketchmark / shesulsa
MT Super Moderator

 

[Andrew Green]

actually I stated:

Sparring in weapons is IMO, absolutely neccessary to get effective. Same as in empty hand fighting. Every Boxer, Wrestler, Submission grappler, kickboxer, No rules fighter, etc. Everyone of them that is any good spars, it is definately neccessary.

That is my opinion, and I stand by it. You are free to disagree, but if I ever take up a Koryo style it will not be for it's effectiveness.

 

[Don Roley]

actually I stated:

Sparring in weapons is IMO, absolutely neccessary to get effective. Same as in empty hand fighting. Every Boxer, Wrestler, Submission grappler, kickboxer, No rules fighter, etc. Everyone of them that is any good spars, it is definately neccessary.

That is my opinion, and I stand by it. You are free to disagree, but if I ever take up a Koryo style it will not be for it's effectiveness.

The thing with your opinion is that it fails to acknowledge that there is any other way of being effective. But we know that the samurai who did not spar were indeed effective. The natural conclusion would be that there is more than one way to train and do martial arts that still reach the goal of being an effective way of fighting.

You may have found that sparring is a good way to be effective. But please keep an open mind and not fall into the trap that there are no other ways. If you knew more about Japanese training, you might find that the skills you get from your way of sparring are indeed learned through a variety of other drills and training methods.

You freely admit that you do not have any real knowledge of JSA. So your insistance that JSA must have sparring to be effective is kind of like those guys that say you must do their form of martial art or you suck. The fact remains that samurai who never sparred still did very well- they must have been doing something right.

 

[Andrew Green]

The thing with your opinion is that it fails to acknowledge that there is any other way of being effective. But we know that the samurai who did not spar were indeed effective. The natural conclusion would be that there is more than one way to train and do martial arts that still reach the goal of being an effective way of fighting.

More then one way? Imagine that...

Anyways, apart from some serious doubts about the Samurai never sparring bit, I need it. No sparring doesn't do it for me, to become effective I need to spar.

Which, BTW is what I stated. If others can become effective without it then good for them, unfortunately since no one actually goes into battle with a sword anymore we will never know. But to write off Chinbara because it is sparring based and only JSA do it proper is silly.

 

[arnisador]

nope, that doesn't fly for me. Doesn't matter what weapon, or lack of weapon I have, my intent is to hit the other person harder and faster.

Harder? With a sword? But, a sword cuts....and edged weapons cut when they're drawn across something. Yes, you can hack, and some swords are intended for that type of technique (think medieval knights; see discussion here), but principally a sword is a cutting and/or stabbing weapon. For cuts, harder is not usually the right idea, at least for the first cut when both people have swords drawn (as in the chanbara situation). Often one wants the finesse to stay at the furthest possible distance and just barely catch the opponent's hand with the tip of one's blade--not harder, but more precise.

Sparring is great. But I think what people are suggesting is that when you box, for example, you learn what works and what doesn't. A jab only does so much damage, and trading a jab for a hook is a bad deal because the hook will knock you out. But when you spar with fake swords, what happens? In a similarl way, touch-for-point sparring with the dulled sword, or chanbara sparring--like the stick in place of sword training so common in the FMA--let's you know who gets a touch in first, but not who gets an effective cut in first. I saw this again this morning at JKD, where we were knife sparring with plastic knives. Someone would trade a weak cut to the arm for a stab to the stomach. Those aren't equal! That's what you lose by sparring, and what is preserved in arts that have battlefield knowledge amounting to "Joe did this and lost his right hand, but the other guy lost his head." You can't learn that by hitting one another with Nerf baseball bats.

Chanbara is its own thing. It may have some value for swordfighters, but it must be viewed very carefully. I'd be wary of anyone afraid to try it, and of anyone who confused it with effective swordwork.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Sounds to me (once I get past dug in feet, and seemingly out of joint, whatevers) that the real argument is about the differences between real combat arts, self-defense arts, and sport arts. All are what they are, and the training is sometimes similar, but the 'end' is different.
* In a combat art, you train to take out your enemy. Period. Dead means, they can't counter attack, and you train to do that in as fast, accurate and efficient way possible. Training to kill is a part of it.
* In a self defense art, you are aiming to disable, evade, avoid, and have to worry about the law. You do not train to kill, in most cases.
* In a sport art, you do not train to kill. You train to win, in 1 on 1 situations. You rarely need to train for weapon awareness.

My biggest complaint for example, while doing FMA stick sparing is that when you put on all the safety gear, it turns into who can land the most shots, and often sounds like a hailstorm on a tin roof. Or, using padded sticks, that you accept shots that would have done damage in reality to land sloppy strikes that look cool. Having looked at the JSA, I've had a similar complaint. The alternate however, risks disability, and death. And a webgeek with a missing mouse hand is not a good thing.

I think you've all made some good points (and the split of the sparring stuff's being discussed), but some of the tempers seem to be rising. Take a few minutes to relax, k?

Please, discuss or debate your points, but leave the shots and digs out of it. Also, a request. When pointing folks towards other sites, please point at something specific. Just saying "go here" tends to run up against our forum promotion policies, and we and I prefer not to have to use them, especially when it's good people and good sites in the crosshairs. K? Much appreciated folks.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Jeff,
What was it Remy used to say? "You are already cut" right? Why did he say that?

 

[arnisador]

What was it Remy used to say? "You are already cut" right? Why did he say that?

Great point. I think my answer would be similar to what Charles Mahan has already said in post #33:

Ideally I cut you before you can get your sword out. Barring that I cut you before you can do anything to stop me. Barring that I cut you while you're trying to cut me. Barring that I evade your attack altogether and cut you. A swordfight works on very different principles from unarmed work. Unarmed fights do not necessarily have as their core operating principle the goal of killing one's opponent. In JSA, anything that does not lead quickly to the death of your opponent is a waste.

Often we see a 'trade' along the lines of this: Person A gets in, stabs person B in the heart while controlling his knife arm, then shoves person B away while jumping back. As person A does so, person B swings and cuts him on the bicep. But he was 'already cut' and would have been unlikely to be able to do this. If I train as though this is a trade, I'm training bad habits, or failing to train good ones! Prof. Presas would cut the person quickly and show that he could quickly and efficiently get in a cut before the other person realized he was in danger, and that this meant the other person was disabled (though he might still be a danger, of course).

The question is absolutely on-point. In sparring, there are often 'trades' that in practice would be 'kills'. Chanbara-style sparring is great fun. Mr. Hubbard and I did it last month (was it only last month?), and he did the same with my son. They had great fun sparring sword-and-shield. But as he suggests, that's sport-style. Like Olympic fencing--so different from Renaissance dueling--it's great, but one must know the difference.

 

[Blindside]

Ok sparring genius. I would like to know what sparring rules would you propose for me to use in sparring with a sword? Keep in mind that many of the techniques I am trained to use cannot be accomplished without a sword and a saya. And a bokuto and saya just don't really cut it. Do you propose we spar with iaito? Or do we do away with a fair number of the key principles of my style so I can train with a bokuto? Of course a bokuto is too light and will have the negative affect of having less force during impact making cuts easier to block and leading to a corruption of technique. Also many of the cuts I might try would prove fatal if they landed even with a bokuto. A strong cut to the temple can kill. So can a good tsuki to the throat. A kirioroshi to the shoulder can break your collar bone. A kesagiri to the ribs will almost certainly break one. Even with a bokuto. For that matter they could be extremely dangerous even with a shinai or fukuo shinai and tsuki's to the throat can still be deadly.

Do you ever practice in armor, as in armor appropriate to the period of your art? If you do not, then do you feel you are missing a huge chunk of the experience that the samurai would have had that you do not? If you do, then the answer seems easy enough, slap on an additonal grill for the eyes, add additional lightweight modern armors to potential target locations, get an aluminum iaito (with the tip rounded down and a wider edge) and have at it. The worst you are going to get is a bruises that get past the armor as it is supposed to, at the very worst you will get something broken, but you are studying a martial art after all. In your sparring use the honor system for what you think is a valid shot.

You'll have saya, you don't have to pull blows (much), you'd have to be pickier about your targets since many of them would be covered in armor. Besides it sounds like a heck of alot of fun to get decked out in kikou (sp?) and have at it.

What do you think?

Lamont

 

[Ninjamom]

There is a Hong Kong-based company called 'Realistic Sparring Weapons' that manufactures period weapons for all forms of sword and pole arm sparring situations. The 'swords' they produce represent everything from Japanese katanas to Chinese daos to Scottish Claymores and European hand-and-a-halfs. The weapons have sufficent padding in the design to allow full-contact sparring with head gear (and I recommend hand/lower arm protection), but they are correctly weighted to represent the balance and 'feel' of the period swords. The finish on them is also designed to bind in a parry, and they are stiff enough to allow real blocks (or to show where real blocks would have missed).

We have been using these as a secondary training method in our school. I know several experienced swordsmen in the Korean arts who are now using them. The founder of the company that makes them offers lessons and invites representatives from other sword arts to spar and exchange ideas and techniques. Many of these sparring sessions have resulted in video clips that are available on the company's website at www.rsw.com.hk .

I wrote a review of sparring methods for weapons arts (and especially for swordwork, but it aplies to other weapons as well) a while ago. It has been posted on another MA forum (that shall remain anonymous out of respect to the ever-watching administrators ), but if there's interest, I can probably dust off a copy and post it here. When we first looked into adding sparring to our curriculum, we looked at inexpensive methods to pad shinais, options for armor/protection on the students, and different forms of training weapons (including the 'Action Bat' and Chanbara, among others). We ended up adopting two complementary sparring styles - one a 'free-style' sparring with the RSW (with rules to assess first lethal contact), and the other a strict kendo-rules sparring, with some equipment less expensive than the usual bogu. This combination allowed us to train students in a). a sport style that would allow them to compete and interact with other sword students, even if they moved to a new location, and b). a more 'reality-based' sparring method where the actual weight and heft of the weapon affects the timing, accuracy, and effectiveness of techniques greatly.

Lance Chan (the owner/instructor at RSW) has posted some recommended 'rules' for assessing sparring situations on his site. He also has a few video clips of 'pitched battles', with two opposing teams (requires a lot more awareness of what's happening around you, and allows the exploration of more tactics, as opposed to only one-on-one sword sparring).

Anyway, this combination has worked very well for us. We have been able to incorporate the techniques and strikes that we train in kata/poomse into the sparring, rather than have the sparring force people to abandon proper control and technique in order to score a 'point' or a 'win'.

 

[Chris deMonch]

Do you ever practice in armor, as in armor appropriate to the period of your art? If you do not, then do you feel you are missing a huge chunk of the experience that the samurai would have had that you do not? If you do, then the answer seems easy enough, slap on an additonal grill for the eyes, add additional lightweight modern armors to potential target locations, get an aluminum iaito (with the tip rounded down and a wider edge) and have at it. The worst you are going to get is a bruises that get past the armor as it is supposed to, at the very worst you will get something broken, but you are studying a martial art after all. In your sparring use the honor system for what you think is a valid shot.

You'll have saya, you don't have to pull blows (much), you'd have to be pickier about your targets since many of them would be covered in armor. Besides it sounds like a heck of alot of fun to get decked out in kikou (sp?) and have at it.

What do you think?

Lamont

Some styles do still practice in armor. Yagyu Shingan Ryu I know still does, and I think Katori Shinto Ryu still may. However, other styles which matured during the Edo Jidai when large scale warfare basically didn't happen anymore are more geared towards a duelling atmosphere, and train under the understanding of an unarmored or at most lightly armored opponent.
Even for those styles that train in armor, putting it on and going at eachother with habiki wouldn't do too much to save you, as pretty much every style aims to cut for unarmored areas. Doh Armor and Kote gloves aren't going to do me much good if my opponent's target is my latissimus dorsi.
As to the RSW, I came across those guys on another forum a while back. What they're trying to do may be admirable, but I'm inclined to stick with bokuto.

 

[Cryozombie]

I'm certainly not a JSA practitioner, my experience is limited to the swordwork in BBT... but from my perspective and limited training, I cannot understand what the Value in sparring in this environment would be.

When we pick up a sword in our art (or steal our opponents) the object is not to (as swordlady already pointed out) "bang stick stogether..." It is to cut the opponent down with quick ruthless technique. If our blades ever touch, its almost always quick, short and just a "smack" with the blade to move the opponents if he is also armed with a sword. Partner drills work best for thatin my experience... Most of the sword "Sparring" that I have seen tends to lead to a game of grabass like Bob mentioned with sticks... with people overreaching, looking for openings lightly tapping with the tip of their sword or making what would amount to an ineffectual cut with the end of their sword and then crying out in the fashion of a child "I got you, your dead!"

Ya wanna spar with swords, go join the SCA... It's certainly fun. Just be prepared to have them cry when you break the rules of their sport by using real technique... I know that from experience.
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