Sparring Goju Ryu

[Kymus]

I will be sparring a friend of mine's boyfriend who is a black belt in Sei Goju Ryu Karate Do. Never sparred against that before; any suggestions?

I fight with a mixture of Jeet Kune Do, Long Fist, Choy Lay Fut, Ba Gua, 5 animals, Praying Mantis, mixed grappling, and general traditional Kung Fu.

[madhusudan]

hey, i started kyokushin a few months back. in karate we seem to spend a lot of time developing power in our punches (especially) and kicks. i would use evasive footwork, some of you long arm stuff he may have never seen before, and defnitely takedowns and grappling as defense in those area will probably be his weakest spot. good luck.

[Oso]

I sparred a 3rd and a 2nd degree in Goju on two different occasions several years ago.

The third spent too much time on kata because he would hit me pretty good in the chest but then didn't retract for squat...so he got throwed. :D

The second was fun, better fighter than the third and walloped me pretty good many times. He still got throwed but I had some sore ribs and face.

pretty linear attacking from both, not a lot of side stepping or feinting.

[Mr Punch]

Same as Oso.

Good Goju has a punch that'll really really f you up. That's about all it has as I remember. Oh, yeah, their stance is very very strong: it'll make regular sweeps and things pretty hard.

[EarthDragon]

depends on the level he has reached. I hold a BB in okinawan Go Ju and the higher the skill the more circular it becomes but only after 1st dan. You wil lknow right away if he is reached this level, see if his attacks and defense are linear and hard or circular and soft.

If the are soft you will have a tougher time against defense. they will hit hard and defend softly redirecting your energy. watch out for the kicks. Go Ju uses the ball of the foot for a roundhouse, very devestating and quick as it uses the snap of the hip more so than a kicker that uses the instep.

absoulty no ground skill. they are good with sweeps and watch the grabs. Please keep us posted on how it goes down.

[Kymus]

I appreciate the feedback guys.

I will start training hard to prepare myself for this. To be honest, I'm not expecting much. I've sparred a few black belts before and I've yet to really be impressed; infact I was rather disappointed at the lack of skill. I'm of course hoping this is a good one as I'd like to show people that not all Karate Dojo's teach americanised crap. I'll probably spar some with my 2 buddies that do TKD and Tang Soo Do. I can handle punches, but I'm not used to high kicks.

Essentially, I've got this rule - and it's mostly for humor - any dude that dates a female friend of mine that's a martial artist has to spar me. Well, my friend let her new b/f know and she fwd'd him my e-mail describing what I've learned and out of that what I generally use to fight with. I mentioned in there that any of my students are bound to be better than most (my level 1 guys shouldn't be able to stand pretty well against advanced karate students....). Well, he responded that I'm "overly confident". To be honest, I find this insulting since he knows nothing about me, my kwoon, or my students. So he did himself a bad blow and has encouraged me to prepare very hard for this so I can show that my confidence has merrit.

I'm going try to make a broad reach and see if he would agree to me video taping the match. Realistically, I want to tape it to learn from any mistakes I make; even *if* I wiped the floor with him, I wouldn't use it to demean or make fun of him or his skill. I also wanted it to share with everyone else. We need some good KF sparring vids out there anyways :P.

I see the match eventually going to the ground, and at that point he's toast. I'm not the best trained grapler, but I know how to grapple and it takes a lot to make me tap; generally long enough for me to get out. I think that the combination of submission (grapling, white crane chin na) and knowledge of vulnerable areas that contain a lot of nerves (I'm studying a 600hr massage course, it's my job to know the no-no areas and what nerves and veins are there), will assure his defeat. We'll see.

To be honest, while I'd love to show him up and be the victor, part of me would also love to recieve a thorough old fashioned a$$ whooping since no one's ever really "beat" me in a sparring match. It'd be a nice experience to learn from.

We're sort of talking out details about what type of sparring match this will be. He's giving me the impression that he wants it to be UFC-NHB-ish, really. He said no to light contact (saying that's pointless. Maybe he and I have different deffinitions of this? I'm not looking to point fight), but said he'd be willing to go with just fingerless gloves. If he were just some dude and doubted my ability, I wouldn't care if I bruised him up, but I'm not gonna get violent with a friend's b/f, most especially when this was a friendly invitation.