The Art of Sparring & Its Many Forms

[Martial_Kumite]

I like limited sparring (no kicks or no punches, for instance) and 1 to many opponents is also a great alternative to 1 to 1, if self defence in mind.

We have "senerio" sparring where we are given a situation that we have to fight our way out of. This can range from having a broken arm (one arm sparring) to being knocked flat on our butts by a sucker punch (one person standing, the other on their backs) it is really fun.

 

[marques]

We have "senerio" sparring where we are given a situation that we have to fight our way out of. This can range from having a broken arm (one arm sparring) to being knocked flat on our butts by a sucker punch (one person standing, the other on their backs) it is really fun.

Yes, I did it for a while with a friend. And in a seminair with a Rory Miller. As it was quite exceptional, I just forgot to mention. Anyway it is great for self defence training. Techniques, tactiques and strategies depend clearly more on the "scenario" than on the kind of aggression (the usual training).

 

[marques]

Have you ever practiced free-for-all sparring, with three or four partners sparring all at once against each other? That's fun too.

If 5 min matters, yes. Otherwise, no. But I did a few more times 1 vs 2 or 1 vs all. Actually, my warm up was for long time a form of a chaotic 1 (the 1 with the ball... ) vs the other team. Both teams dressed the same, so we relied on memory.

 

[Mou Meng Gung Fu]

If 5 min matters, yes. Otherwise, no. But I did a few more times 1 vs 2 or 1 vs all. Actually, my warm up was for long time a form of a chaotic 1 (the 1 with the ball... ) vs the other team. Both teams dressed the same, so we relied on memory.

That sounds like a good way for students to enhance their memorization skills.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Both teams dressed the same, so we relied on memory

A while back a couple of the guys from our gym were preparing for a team MMA competition - 2 vs 2, taking place in a sort of playground of elevated platforms and obstacles. (The promotion was run by a Russian company, of course.) Our coach set up a platform in the middle of one of our mats and was running 2 vs 2 sparring sessions.

I looked over from the class I was teaching and noticed that no one was wearing anything to mark which team they were on and wondered how long it would be before someone got mixed up and went after the wrong person. About ten minutes later I hear "What are you doing!??" "Sorry, sorry, I got confused."

 

[Druid11]

In my Dojo we do light contact continuous sparring with no head contact most of the time. Sometimes we'll do points sparring. We usually do it a couple times a week. It seems to me that we spar more when my head instructor is teaching then when the other instructors are. My guess is he likes to spar himself. Sometimes he gives us specific things to use or incorporate as a class (last night it was spinning back kicks in one round) or he might tell a specific student to do or not do something. Last night I got caught in the corner for part of the round, the next round he told me to stay out of corner at all costs and told my partner to try their darnedest to get me caught again.

Despite the warning against hard contact, he'll also usually let the higher ranked belts go pretty hard as long as they're both healthy. I actually enjoy this sparring more than I did when I sparred boxing or Mauy Thai. The school I trained those at always sparred full contact (and honestly I know some of the guys even went a little lighter on me but it still hurt). With the light (er) contact I feel like I can try more things without worrying about get tagged hard.

And not to high jack the thread or anything, but does anyone else have the problem of their opponent running away from them during a sparring match? This only really happens when I'm sparring teens (I usually take the adults only class but the Saturday class is mixed teens/adults). It seems like every time I spar a teenager they spend the whole round trying to put half the room between us. I'm a woman of average height and weight, far from intimidating. I don't get it. I haven't really noticed when they spar other adults but they all seem to engage their opponent when they're sparring other teens, so I'm not sure why they won't do it with me. In any case, I'm not going to chase them around the room.

 

[drop bear]

I take it your current student group is still mostly beginners? How long have you been running the school? Do you expect to make some significant changes once your student base matures?

I was thinking about useful sparring formats for Aikido which could focus on developing of core principles but still allow more genuine testing and resistance. I came up with the following idea and was wondering what you would think of it:

Based on the theory that much of the "grab my wrist" setups in Aikido go back to the idea of ambush attacks where the attacker would restrain the defender from drawing his sword before the attacker could deploy his own weapon, the drill would go like this...

Partners start out relatively close, in grabbing range. Defender starts with a sheathed training weapon. (Sword if you want to be traditional, gun or knife is you want to inject more of a modern feel.) Attacker wins if he can prevent the defender from drawing his weapon (for a specified length of time? until he can land 3 clean punches? until he can deploy his own sheathed weapon? - you can experiment to see what produces the best results) Defender wins if he can disengage and draw his weapon or if he can use the attacker's commitment to hanging on to execute an Aikido lock or throw.

This format could hopefully avoid both the issue of uke delivering overcommitted attacks just because they are expected to enable tori to execute a technique and also the issue of a boxing style sparring partner hanging back and feeding only quick, balanced, deceptive attacks which give no opportunity for applying aiki. The need to prevent the defender from drawing his weapon gives the attacker a legitimate reason to commit to the attack and also a legitimate reason to hang on longer than you would normally expect a skilled grappler to do if the grip starts being used against him.

Obviously this only addresses certain elements of the Aikido curriculum, but it seems like it might be useful. What do you think?

Pumeling,hand fighting,wrestling for the back.

 

[DanT]

Would you be willing to describe what you mean by full contact?
How does full contact relate to power, speed, and desired outcome?

By "full contact" I mean wearing gear:
-helmet, mouthguard, gloves, jock, chest protector, and shin guards, and genuinely trying to punch and kick to the body at least with full power. There has obviously got to be some element of control, that's why I put "full contact" in quotations. For example I might do a spinning hook kick or jumping side kick, but pull back and make it miss on purpose because if I hit my partner in the head with a spinning hook kick I probably will knock them out. So yeah I guess full contact means full contact to the body but obviously within reason. If I get 3-4 shots in consecutively I'll just back up rather than continuously wailing on the guy. With weapons it's more difficult because even with a padded PVC staff if you get it in the head it has so much power even at medium contact so you just have to be careful. Moral of the story: full contact but with common sense.

 

[Mou Meng Gung Fu]

.....not to high jack the thread or anything, but does anyone else have the problem of their opponent running away from them during a sparring match? This only really happens when I'm sparring teens (I usually take the adults only class but the Saturday class is mixed teens/adults). It seems like every time I spar a teenager they spend the whole round trying to put half the room between us. I'm a woman of average height and weight, far from intimidating. I don't get it. I haven't really noticed when they spar other adults but they all seem to engage their opponent when they're sparring other teens, so I'm not sure why they won't do it with me. In any case, I'm not going to chase them around the room.

We used to have several instances during our sparring sessions that happened like this. In the old days, it would eat up a lot of our time, giving us less time to train in other things. So we started using a stop-watch or timer when sparring to prevent it from dragging on and taking up too much time. Sparring is like a game of chess. By adding a timer, it helps to really level it up a bit. Either that or you're hitting too hard. I hope this helps.

Speaking of chess games, it might interest some people to know that boardgame chess is actually a part of Wumingquan training. I'm not sure how many martial artists here learned how to play chess, but in my system it's actually a requirement. Every practitioner in Wumingquan is also an active chess player. Every one of them.

 

[DanT]

That sounds very much like what we do sometimes in Wumingquan, with the full-contact sparring and switching it up. It sounds very fluid, going from one style to another. You are getting the feel for different things when sparring. I like that a lot. That's kind of what we do in my system. May I ask you to elaborate on some of the weapons sparring in your system? Do you wear protective gear?

In terms of weapons sparring it depends. If we're using real staffs we avoid contact as much as possible and work more on blocking. For full contact weapons sparring we use a PVC pipe wrapped in swimming noodles on one end (the end you hit the opponent with). Same thing for broadsword sparring and double broadsword sparring. We often do staff vs staff or staff vs broadsword or spear or anything you want really. In terms of gear for full contact weapons sparring we just wear a helmet, mouthpiece and jock. At my school we train in well over 40 weapons because of the many various styles available to study. (Staff, broadsword, spear, straight sword, cane, hook swords, butterfly swords, Kwan do, etc...) We also make visits to china to train in the various temples there, and when people are there they bring back a weapon they learned during there stay and teach it to others. Im fortunate to have a Sifu who's knowledge is very broad and deep, so weapons like the chain whip and three section staff are on my bucket list next I hope. Oh yeah and in terms of chain whip people spar using skipping ropes. It's so cool.

 

[CB Jones]

By "full contact" I mean wearing gear:
-helmet, mouthguard, gloves, jock, chest protector, and shin guards, and genuinely trying to punch and kick to the body at least with full power. There has obviously got to be some element of control, that's why I put "full contact" in quotations. For example I might do a spinning hook kick or jumping side kick, but pull back and make it miss on purpose because if I hit my partner in the head with a spinning hook kick I probably will knock them out. So yeah I guess full contact means full contact to the body but obviously within reason. If I get 3-4 shots in consecutively I'll just back up rather than continuously wailing on the guy. With weapons it's more difficult because even with a padded PVC staff if you get it in the head it has so much power even at medium contact so you just have to be careful. Moral of the story: full contact but with common sense.

I think the term you are looking for is...Controlled contact. The amount of power is controlled based on technique used, target area, and opponent.

 

[CB Jones]

3 vs 1 sparring is required during Black Belt tests.

So we also do that usually 1-2 a month.

 

[drop bear]

We used to have several instances during our sparring sessions that happened like this. In the old days, it would eat up a lot of our time, giving us less time to train in other things. So we started using a stop-watch or timer when sparring to prevent it from dragging on and taking up too much time. Sparring is like a game of chess. By adding a timer, it helps to really level it up a bit. Either that or you're hitting too hard. I hope this helps.

Speaking of chess games, it might interest some people to know that boardgame chess is actually a part of Wumingquan training. I'm not sure how many martial artists here learned how to play chess, but in my system it's actually a requirement. Every practitioner in Wumingquan is also an active chess player. Every one

 

[Druid11]

We used to have several instances during our sparring sessions that happened like this. In the old days, it would eat up a lot of our time, giving us less time to train in other things. So we started using a stop-watch or timer when sparring to prevent it from dragging on and taking up too much time. Sparring is like a game of chess. By adding a timer, it helps to really level it up a bit. Either that or you're hitting too hard. I hope this helps.

Speaking of chess games, it might interest some people to know that boardgame chess is actually a part of Wumingquan training. I'm not sure how many martial artists here learned how to play chess, but in my system it's actually a requirement. Every practitioner in Wumingquan is also an active chess player. Every one of them.

Sparring is timed at our Dojo. Usually we do a few rounds, sometimes the instructor will have switch partners between each round, sometimes will just spar the same person for however long we spar. I don't think I'm hitting too hard. I'm ok with going harder with the higher ranked adults (and they're ok with going harder with me) because I've had other martial arts training in the past, but I go for just contact with the white belt adults and all the teens regardless of rank (and 9 times out of 10 these teens are of a higher rank than me). They certainly don't act like I hit them too hard when I can actually touch them (and no one adult or teen has asked me not to hit as hard), they just spend the whole round skipping back like a jackrabbit. Actually when the instructor notices (he's usually keeping an eye on quite a few pairs sparring so he doesn't always notice) he yells at them to stop running away like that and they'll stop for a bit and actually stand and fight. It's just that lasts until he looks away. It's not really a big deal, I only usually take one class a week with the teens and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't much matter. I just find it really odd. Maybe I'm just really scary looking when I spar, lol.

 

[marques]

In my Dojo we do light contact continuous sparring with no head contact most of the time.

I have found it is quite common, but I don't like. The most important (for me) is head defence and it is omitted here. Also, strategies and tactiques are largely perturbed by this rule.

Sometimes he gives us specific things to use or incorporate as a class (last night it was spinning back kicks in one round) or he might tell a specific student to do or not do something.

This is great. We may become lost when given too much freedom and/or start repeating the same again and again. Focus on "the technique of the day" or another personal objective helps progressing.

 

[Druid11]

I have found it is quite common, but I don't like. The most important (for me) is head defence and it is omitted here. Also, strategies and tactiques are largely perturbed by this rule.


This is great. We may become lost when given too much freedom and/or start repeating the same again and again. Focus on "the technique of the day" or another personal objective helps progressing.

We can target the head, we just can't actually make contact, in theory. In practice the lower ranks and kids don't have enough control to come close but not contact the head, so they tend to avoid the head altogether. The higher rank can usually get away with it. You're expected to block if someone throws something near your head, whether they make contact or not.

On the one hand I agree that style is less realistic but on the other I have a day job and the last thing I need is a concussion from someone who doesn't know their own strength. So, I'm ok with realism being compromised in this case for safety.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[Mou Meng Gung Fu]

First let me apologize for any mistakes I make in typing. I'm very tired. I'm a security guard so sometimes I work long hours into the night. But anyway, I had three small classes this week. I'll call them "seminars" since they were very short sessions about 1-2 hours long, at three different locations. One seminar involved meeting up with a couple of 3rd generation Poi fire-dancers trained in staff and chain. One of them holds a high rank in TKD (not sure what level, my style doesn't have ranks). We practiced some sweeps and kicks during that session, with a few locks and takedowns. The second seminar I did was with a few guys from the UFC division. We did a lot of freestyle light-contact sparring with boxing gloves (no protective gear) and wrestling drills. The third seminar I did was with a couple buddies of mine from the WCK and FMA circle. For that session we practiced a lot of trapping and locking techniques, then ended it with some freestyle light-contact sparring without gloves (no protective gear). I'm wondering if anyone else here has had similar training sessions with many small groups of people from different styles, or is this not something you generally see often? I spar with a lot of different people in the MA world. Some martial artists tend to frown on "clan hopping" while some martial artists actually promote it. What are your thoughts?

 

[marques]

First let me apologize for any mistakes I make in typing. I'm very tired. I'm a security guard so sometimes I work long hours into the night. But anyway, I had three small classes this week. I'll call them "seminars" since they were very short sessions about 1-2 hours long, at three different locations. One seminar involved meeting up with a couple of 3rd generation Poi fire-dancers trained in staff and chain. One of them holds a high rank in TKD (not sure what level, my style doesn't have ranks). We practiced some sweeps and kicks during that session, with a few locks and takedowns. The second seminar I did was with a few guys from the UFC division. We did a lot of freestyle light-contact sparring with boxing gloves (no protective gear) and wrestling drills. The third seminar I did was with a couple buddies of mine from the WCK and FMA circle. For that session we practiced a lot of trapping and locking techniques, then ended it with some freestyle light-contact sparring without gloves (no protective gear). I'm wondering if anyone else here has had similar training sessions with many small groups of people from different styles, or is this not something you generally see often? I spar with a lot of different people in the MA world. Some martial artists tend to frown on "clan hopping" while some martial artists actually promote it. What are your thoughts?

No, I have not had similar training lately. But it as been my dream. I really appreciate this honest exchange of knowledge and diversity of sparring partners and training methods. Rather than lots of promise, but no delivery...

I think you're a lucky guy.

 

[CB Jones]

First let me apologize for any mistakes I make in typing. I'm very tired. I'm a security guard so sometimes I work long hours into the night. But anyway, I had three small classes this week. I'll call them "seminars" since they were very short sessions about 1-2 hours long, at three different locations. One seminar involved meeting up with a couple of 3rd generation Poi fire-dancers trained in staff and chain. One of them holds a high rank in TKD (not sure what level, my style doesn't have ranks). We practiced some sweeps and kicks during that session, with a few locks and takedowns. The second seminar I did was with a few guys from the UFC division. We did a lot of freestyle light-contact sparring with boxing gloves (no protective gear) and wrestling drills. The third seminar I did was with a couple buddies of mine from the WCK and FMA circle. For that session we practiced a lot of trapping and locking techniques, then ended it with some freestyle light-contact sparring without gloves (no protective gear). I'm wondering if anyone else here has had similar training sessions with many small groups of people from different styles, or is this not something you generally see often? I spar with a lot of different people in the MA world. Some martial artists tend to frown on "clan hopping" while some martial artists actually promote it. What are your thoughts?

Were you teaching these groups your "style" or were they teaching you their style?

Or was this just working out and training together

 

[Mou Meng Gung Fu]

Were you teaching these groups your "style" or were they teaching you their style?

Or was this just working out and training together

Not sure how to answer this exactly, because what I do is so basic that it can be found in a lot of different styles. For example, a roundhouse kick (in my style this is called a hook kick) is basically the same in every style. This isn't true when we're training and doing drills, but it's always true when sparring. I'll try to clarify this. For example, in Wumingquan we train ambidexterity but we favor a southpaw stance with our power hand in front, whereas in a lot of the other styles I see (with the exception of JKD) also train ambidexterity but they favor an orthodox stance with their power hand in back. Most of them do frontleg roundhouses and rearleg roundhouses just like we do. In training, Wumingquan favors the frontleg whereas other styles favor the backleg. Wumingquan aims for precision and timing, whereas other styles favor the raw power of the rearleg. However, whenever it comes to sparring, I find that these minor differences in style no longer really matter. At that point, the only thing really different is our fighting stance. Everything else is really the same or quite similar. The real difference then is not in the delivery of techniques, but the exchange of knowledge and philosophy behind each technique. So I guess the best answer I can give you is "both." I was learning and teaching at the same time. Hope that helps.