sparring

[masurai]

A friend of mine was telling me today that at his dojo they will sometimes spar where one person will have a weapon(padded of course) and the other will be bare-hand or will have a different weapon.
Was wondering if anyone else does this and their thoughts on it

 

[Big Don]

Sounds like it would be fun once in a while.

 

[masurai]

Sounds like it would be fun once in a while.

That's what i thought to.

 

[Chris Parker]

It's something we do fairly often. Our first grading requirements are arranged around defensive evasions against a knife, initially with pre-set movements, then moving into just evading following the principles set out in those written techniques. As a student progresses, there is more of an emphasis on free-responce training and pressure testing, up to and including groups and weapons. It's not "sparring" as most understand it, instead it is closer to a real situation in that there is a defined attacker and defender, and the tactics are not limited by the conditions of sparring (get away rather than need to stay in the situation, for example).

 

[l_uk3y]

Best one I've heard of during a class is sparring unarmed vs armed with knife.
(Toe to Toe, not random attack from set location, with no face strikes for safety) Keep going until one or the other has clearly been beaten.

Substitute uniform for casual. and substitute knife for a colored texta or whiteboard marker. Now the goal of the unarmed person is not to get any color on them, and to disarm the other and get color on them.

Gives a very clear picture of whether your techniques actually saved you during the situation and if you would have walked away. Odviously minus the adrenalin. But at least your actually getting struck and have to think. Umm. My gut just got slashed. Might need to rethink what im doing. Good way to make the overly confident suddenly rethink themselves at the final results.

Luke

 

[khand50]

while training at the sdma academy in west palm beach in 1991 our instructor had us do the same thing. we used a marker and wore plain white t shirts (that we could throw away) in order to see how easy it was to get cut by getting marked.
our school hosted many filipino seminars that year, one including tuhon chris sayoc. his father bo sayoc was a regular visitor to our school. chris was amazing with the knives. and grandmaster canete came to our school one weekend to conduct a full contact escrima seminar. putting on the protective gear and slamming each other with rattan sticks was a really unique experience for me at that time.
in the early eighties i used to spar with a friend of mine using batons, three section staff, and regular bo staff. we took a few lumps but did better than i expected.
later, in the mid eighties, i created my own safety equipment by using pvc pipe and pvc pipe foam, making a three section staff, nunchaku, and batons, intended to be used in contact training. later that year a guy came out in inside kung fu with basically the same product. the kids in the class i was teaching enjoyed using the safety batons for training.

 

[ap Oweyn]

I think most of the people here with a Filipino MA background will have done this before. I certainly advocate doing it. It's instructive. But, as importantly, it's a lot of fun.

 

[SahBumNimRush]

Best one I've heard of during a class is sparring unarmed vs armed with knife.
(Toe to Toe, not random attack from set location, with no face strikes for safety) Keep going until one or the other has clearly been beaten.

Substitute uniform for casual. and substitute knife for a colored texta or whiteboard marker. Now the goal of the unarmed person is not to get any color on them, and to disarm the other and get color on them.

Gives a very clear picture of whether your techniques actually saved you during the situation and if you would have walked away. Odviously minus the adrenalin. But at least your actually getting struck and have to think. Umm. My gut just got slashed. Might need to rethink what im doing. Good way to make the overly confident suddenly rethink themselves at the final results.

Luke

We occassionally practice a knife vs. unarmed sparring in our black belt classes. I think it gives a clearer indication if you knife SD actually works, and also gives us a chance to practice some knife offense as well. Since our art is for the most part open handed, it is nice to have the opportunity to practice with the knife from time to time.

 

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I think if you are teaching Self defense and do not do some version of this, you are being neglagent to your students.


Die on the mats 10,000 times to survive conflict.

 

[corwin137]

I think most of the people here with a Filipino MA background will have done this before. I certainly advocate doing it. It's instructive. But, as importantly, it's a lot of fun.

Hello ap...

Plus Juan on this idea. Not only should one play with unequal armament, it's important to play with unequal initiative, choices (two on ones, etc), tool access, fouling draws, etc. As someone else said- it's negligent not to consider such.

 

[masurai]

Hello ap...

Plus Juan on this idea. Not only should one play with unequal armament, it's important to play with unequal initiative, choices (two on ones, etc), tool access, fouling draws, etc. As someone else said- it's negligent not to consider such.

You make a good point, however i feel that you have missed an important one and that is the addition of unlevel ground

 

[Aiki Lee]

It's something we do fairly often. Our first grading requirements are arranged around defensive evasions against a knife, initially with pre-set movements, then moving into just evading following the principles set out in those written techniques. As a student progresses, there is more of an emphasis on free-responce training and pressure testing, up to and including groups and weapons. It's not "sparring" as most understand it, instead it is closer to a real situation in that there is a defined attacker and defender, and the tactics are not limited by the conditions of sparring (get away rather than need to stay in the situation, for example).

This sounds a lot like what we do. We did use padded weapons, and occassionally we still do, but something strange happens with foam swords and bo. Since the padded weapons are ultra-light and kinda floppy, the attacker often ends up performing rather poor attacks. One ends up slapping someone with a foam sword as if it were a wet noodle, because it doesn't have the weight of something that could actually damage you.

So we mostly do it with boken and actual bo and either wooden or metal training knives, and pellet guns for gun defense. Sometimes we have to slow down a bit, but it gives us the feeling of a real fight IMO. Higher level guys can go at higher speeds so long as they aren't out of control that is.

 

[Draven]

A friend of mine was telling me today that at his dojo they will sometimes spar where one person will have a weapon(padded of course) and the other will be bare-hand or will have a different weapon.
Was wondering if anyone else does this and their thoughts on it

How else are you gonna see if a disarm will work on a living, breathing, moving & thinking human being? Sounds like good practice to me...

 

[corwin137]

You make a good point, however i feel that you have missed an important one and that is the addition of unlevel ground

That one and more. Types of terrain. Size of space. All kinds of stuff... just didn't wanna post too much- I'm windy to begin with.

 

[ap Oweyn]

That one and more. Types of terrain. Size of space. All kinds of stuff... just didn't wanna post too much- I'm windy to begin with.

Hey pal, good to see you here!

Guro Dan Inosanto mentions, in his book on FMA, that Guro Leo Giron was a big advocate of this sort of environmental training. I couldn't agree more that it's important. Like to do more of it myself.


Stuart

 

[prokarateshop]

we do it often, we use this carry out self defense training..

Its a pretty good idea

 

[shihansmurf]

We do this a lot in my class. I find it does a great deal to teach students how to effectively apply their disarms in an alive manner. All of the pre-set techniques do a great job of teaching a student the mechanics but untill they do it, well not for real exactly, but as close to it as safely possible they won't have internalized the skill in a way that makes it usefull.

Just my view,
Mark

 

[sgtmac_46]

A friend of mine was telling me today that at his dojo they will sometimes spar where one person will have a weapon(padded of course) and the other will be bare-hand or will have a different weapon.
Was wondering if anyone else does this and their thoughts on it

If you're training for weapons defense, that's kind of important.

 

[xfighter88]

First of all that's a really fun drill to do with advance students. Not too sure on the practicality of it though. From my experience (especially with knives) they don't come out until somone is losing. That's when the person getting beaten pulls the knife. We do drills that use this concept. Sometimes you know it is a possiblity sometimes it is a complete surprise. The only time I can see the standoff with a weapon happening is in a mugging situation. Even then it is usually when they have ambushed the victim. It never looks like "sparring." At least not in the USA.

Just my 2 cents. Feel free to differ.

 

[sgtmac_46]

First of all that's a really fun drill to do with advance students. Not too sure on the practicality of it though. From my experience (especially with knives) they don't come out until somone is losing. That's when the person getting beaten pulls the knife. We do drills that use this concept. Sometimes you know it is a possiblity sometimes it is a complete surprise. The only time I can see the standoff with a weapon happening is in a mugging situation. Even then it is usually when they have ambushed the victim. It never looks like "sparring." At least not in the USA.

Just my 2 cents. Feel free to differ.

Yeah, it's usually like a sucker punch......with a knife. A lot of guys don't know they're even is a knife until they realize they are cut.