Well, considering I haven't gotten far enough along to do any sort of sparring or combat training, I guess I can't really make a choice. I think others have brought up some good points though. Namely that both have their place. The forms help you practice your skills and you can look into them to find different ways to use each technique. You can practice them as if you had imaginary opponents around you attacking you and you were fighting them. Forms were designed with that intention anyway, right? The sparring and combat training helps prepare you for real fighting. That's where you learn things like distance and timing skills which our teacher recently pointed out are very important. He said that if you train only for tournaments (sport) and constantly pull your punches, when it comes to real fighting, you'll end up doing the same thing and always missing the target. This sort of stuff also gets you used to the actual contact you have in fighting, hitting another person. And of course, certain things can only really be done with another person. So I'd say both are important and each has its place in training.
