Sparring

[Stai-Nyce]

I was just wondering how much sparring you guys do.
I know that you can practice all the Forms, Standing, Qi Gong and drills but how much time do most of you devote to sparring.
Me I try to spar/play with anybody that will throw their hands up.
The more I "play" (i use play because were not trying to kill people here)the more I see my strong and weak points.

Let me know whats going on out there

[Kumkuat]

I do 0 sparring. Why? Because I don't have a sparring partner. Also, the other main reason is because I haven't fully repatterend my body to move internally yet. If I can't move my body internally right now, how am I suppose to move it when I'm in a sparring situation?

Right now, by doing just forms, silk reeling, etc., I can concentrate on trying to move internally. But sometimes, I am not succesful because I have no good teacher around my area who can correct me. I haven't even gone to freestyle push hands yet either.

So no sparring for me unless I find a good internal teacher and have spent some time repatterning my body. If I can't find one in a few years, I might as well find an external art to learn.

Also, I am not exactly sure but I have to make certain, that in the Chen villiage, you don't start push hands until after silk reeling and have practiced your Lao Jia Yi Lu a number of times.

[Mr. Nemo]

A lot of internal stylists and teaches worry that sparring before the internal has been grasped will lead to bad habits, but I don't agree with this. I do push hands twice a week and sparring once a week. I'd like to spar more, but I'm pretty busy.

I do think that trying to fight using your style is more important than trying to win (at first) though.

[TheBigToad]

Well, how much and what kind of sparring you do will or should be directed by the usage of your martial arts. Very few of you are warriors. Thats just plain and simple fact.

The reason is that you do not live and work and your environment doesn't place a great need for martial skill.

If you where to work in law enforcement, chase bail, work private security, do mercenary type e-vac in Mexico or Maritime security in international waters and coming in conflict with modern day piracy (see statistics for the human slave trade and cruise ship attacks if you have a hard time imagining modern pirates). Well, that could constitute a need for sharper martial skill because it is dictated by simple need.

The majority of you, while the martial side is cool and useful, I don't really see much use for it outside of making the health applications stronger and simple self defense, you aren't training to kill or be killed and you shouldn't delude yourselves into thinking so.

Sparring shouldn't be all that important, once or twice a week and limited contact is really all you need.

For those of you who have by choice or fate find yourselves leading a lifestyle of a modern warrior sparring sessions should be highly frequent, long in duration, full contact or as close to without seriously injury and with people as good or better then you, it can't get more simple then that.

-Kevin

I am the big toad and this is my pond.