Sparring quirks

[Tez3]

Having a Maori stick their tongue out at me would rather intimidate me! Having them do the full Haka would probably have me running for the hills lol! Couldn't say it was disrespectful though!

 

[bookworm_cn317]

The only thing I can think of would be: sometimes I get into a 'rut' when sparring (I get into a pattern, 'kick, kick, punch'), and the only reason I can tell you this is my instructor teased me about in class one time (I was only mildly embarrassed. He was talking about what you should/should NOT do when sparring and he used me as an example of what NOT to do. Apparently I got this UBER-innocent look on my face as he was talking. That's when he knew that I knew.).

That's my 'sparring quirk'!

 

[Thesemindz]

During a recent grading I had this guy stick his tongue out at me Maori style every time he got a shot in on me while sparring. It was really quite distracting and I got a few punches in the stomach as I stood there with my mouth open thinking "What is this guy doing?". I am pretty inexperienced as far as sparring goes but thought this was quite funny. I've also heard this other guy make a hissing sound every time he strikes and another girl makes her own little sound effects. Has anyone else come across some funny sparring quirks or better yet, do you have any?

Man, we used to have some real fun. Just for fun, I liked to sing "Lady in Red" while I sparred. It really threw people off, and it's a great song. I used to play around alot with the guys in my sparring class. We'd mock the fighters who celebrate every point by raising our fists into the air and cheering for ourselves. I'd turn towards the mirror and pantomime fixing my hair after being awarded a point. Once while grappling, I actually took my hair down, fixed it, and then put it back up while maintaining the mount position.

The thing is, there was no disrespect. There was huge mutual respect, and that allowed us to have fun. When it was time, for instance during testing, we were all business, but during training, we liked to have some fun.

Some things I did to gain a tactical advantage were kicks and strikes fired away from the opp. to cause them to flinch into a follow up strike. Fixing my eyes off angle from my opp. so they couldn't predict the target of my strikes. Dropping my weight suddenly to "stomp" the floor, or clapping to distract my opp. "Accidently" stepping on my opp. foot, and then leaning in to strike, causing him to attemp to retreat, only to be stuck by my foot. Feinting towards my opp. in ways I know he'll block, so I can hook his block in and return a strike.

I had a roomate who would follow every inward block with a blind spinning backnuckle. The first one almost knocked me out, and the second one might have for just a second, but after that, I fed him punches to his open side all night so he'd block, spin, and jam on my prepositioned blocking arm and take a cross to the jaw. All night.


-Rob

 

[CityChicken]

During a recent grading I had this guy stick his tongue out at me Maori style every time he got a shot in on me while sparring. It was really quite distracting and I got a few punches in the stomach as I stood there with my mouth open thinking "What is this guy doing?". I am pretty inexperienced as far as sparring goes but thought this was quite funny. I've also heard this other guy make a hissing sound every time he strikes and another girl makes her own little sound effects. Has anyone else come across some funny sparring quirks or better yet, do you have any?

When I first started sparing, I held my tounge between my lips and teeth. Some kind of nervous thing I guess. My master nipped that in the bud quickly, telling me i'm going to bite my tounge off when I get kicked/punched in the head or fall down. Really good point. I would not adopt this tounge technique you're seeing.