Against sparring

[SavvySavage]

An intersting mini-discussion sprang up in another thread. The topic was about teachers, who sparred and other kinds of training, but then turned around years later and told students that sparring was bad. One of the reasons these guys were good is because they sparred a lot mostly without gear in those days. I've heard stories of bareknuckled tournaments. Instead of pushing sparring forms are pushed. I think one of the reasons is that many martial art teachers prove their skills but have since aged. These teachers don't want to deal with their students asking to spar with them. This is completely understandable. I agree that older people should be more careful when training. I'm wondering why teachers forsake harder training, including sparring, for easier types of training.

This also has to do with so-called internal training. I've had experience with internal teachers teaching a lot of slow form and esoteric exercises while foresaking harder types of conditining. I read that Sun Lu Tang's teacher, while riding a horse everywhere, made Sun run behind for conditioning. Sun also engaged in a lot of conditining on his own including punching statinary cannons. What do modern "soft" teachers think when they read stories like this one?

[Drake]

I know Army combatives is notorious for injuries. It's even become a trackable event for the medical clinics. I was a victim of this at Ft. Benning, where a guy rolled with my hand latched to his collar, smushing my finger. I was hurt again at Ft. Sill, where an overeager opponent dropped his knee onto mine. I was once agan hurt at Ft. Huachuca, where my arm was overextended during an arm bar drill.

I'm fine now, but each injury cost me a bit of training time. I can see how sparring might make an instructor nervous. I am conflicted, however, because unless you train your applications in a practical, realistic manner, how can you gauge your own effectiveness?

[SanHeChuan]

Money <Insurance and >student enrollment

Insurance for schools that fight cost more. Not to mention the possibility of lawsuits.

Fighting, bruises, pain scares students way.

so you can....

Train 200 $tudents lightly at your school, and 10 hard core students in the back.

Or you can just train 5 hard core students in the park.

Your choice.

[SavvySavage]

Very good points, Drake. I hate getting injured. My fingers to to get jammed during sparring and the funny thing is that it always happens by accident. There are some unstable people out there which is why I like to remind my training bros that it's about getting better and not winning.

Two guys I know were demonstrating technique in a cooperative you punch I demonstrate mode. Guy A punched slow. Guy B deflected and hit him in the ballz with his knee. This happened twice

[SavvySavage]

San,
these teacher's are purporting to be teaching deadly fighting skills. How can it b so deadly if insurance is a factor? Can it be deadly training without hard training? Maybe deadly for the student.

Full contact insurance is a lot more expensive than light contact insurance.

[Drake]

See... I don't agree with the slow demo, because you can show the same slo-mo, canned attack all you like, and it does NOTHING for practical application. The only way you'll imrpvoe is by someone attacking you with the same speed and ferocity as someone would in real life. That way you'll KNOW if it works, and you'll KNOW that you can apply the technique in a high stress, real time conflict. For example, during combatives, everyone figured out the slo-mo, closely supervised practical drills. However, once we started sparring, form and technique began to suffer. But the more we did it at combat speed, the better we became, and the more natural the techniques began to feel.

[SavvySavage]

I agree to a certain extent. I think two-man forms and forms are good for new people especially if they haven't had training in that system.

Slo-mo technique demonstrating is important to learn new skills. The problem comes when a teacher, 5 years later, tells students to keep training the same way.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Somehow none of that applies to boxing, judo, MT, etc, etc...
Sorry, don't buy it.

[Ray Pina]

I think guys who've fought have learned the lessons and for the most part want to spare their students and just pass the knowledge on... telling folks not to do it is sort of an insurance. Makes everybody feel good and the ones that really want to will anyway... telling someone who fights not to is like telling someone not to ****. It just happens.

I busted my hand almost two months ago. I can hit the bag with medium intention now, feel it, but not critical pain. Maybe next week I can start kick boxing again but I'm focused on internal right now.... internal provides a lot of value that can be installed into any program. The structure, the power generation and principle of flow vs opposition can be applied to jiu-jitsu easily, its the same principle. Taking it to fisticuffs is harder. Still working on that:)

[SavvySavage]

When I said slo-mo I meant cooperative training. A student has to learn how to do a throw and then he has to do it on someone cooperative to learn proper body mechanics. Then he does it in randori. That's the progression I experienced in shuai jiao. Actually I wasn't around long enough to do any randori. We dis cooperative throwing and striking

[uki]

I busted my hand almost two months ago.on a heavy bag...


I can hit the bag with medium intention now, feel it, but not critical pain. critical... as in the "you might be dying" kinda pain??


Maybe next week I can start kick boxing againbecause you have a broken finger... *scratches head*

but I'm focused on internal right now....*scratches head*


internal provides a lot of value that can be installed into any program. can it heal fingers broken on the heavybag??


The structure, the power generation and principle of flow vs opposition can be applied to jiu-jitsu easily, its the same principle.whoa ray, you sound like a delusional TMA'er... you're freaking me out dude.


Taking it to fisticuffs is harder. Still working on that.it might begin to make sense after you win a few matches???? :p

[Drake]

When I said slo-mo I meant cooperative training. A student has to learn how to do a throw and then he has to do it on someone cooperative to learn proper body mechanics. Then he does it in randori. That's the progression I experienced in shuai jiao. Actually I wasn't around long enough to do any randori. We dis cooperative throwing and striking

Well, combatives does it as... Explain, Demo, Practical Exercise, then Combat Speed. They allowed strikes at Huachuca (open hand strikes, no restrictions on how hard) in order to see if you could still do the techniques while being slapped senseless, and preferably, not be slapped at all.

[dimethylsea]

I know Army combatives is notorious for injuries. It's even become a trackable event for the medical clinics. I was a victim of this at Ft. Benning, where a guy rolled with my hand latched to his collar, smushing my finger. I was hurt again at Ft. Sill, where an overeager opponent dropped his knee onto mine. I was once agan hurt at Ft. Huachuca, where my arm was overextended during an arm bar drill.



This is an aside, but is a bit relevant. There is this extremely annoying myrmidon facist of a military scifi author called Tom Kratman (can you tell I don't like his politics?).

Anyway he has a book which is saved from greatness by his relentless slamming of his political enemies (otherwise it might have been a truly good book with lots of nods to Starship Troopers). The book is "A Desert Called Peace". The title is a classical reference to Tacitus "solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant" (they make a desert and call it peace).

Anyway in this book the protagonist has his family killed by terrorists and basically starts his own quasi-mercenary army to get revenge etc.

The relevant part to our discussion is that this army has an unusual idea about training.

Injuries and fatalities in training are accepted, and all those injured or killed in training are treated as if they were given those injuries while under hostile fire.

I.e. you get hurt in training by friendly fire.. you get a purple heart. Die in training and you are a hero.

These mercenaries don't believe in saving lives in training where it would cost them lives (especially more lives) in actual battle.

Of all the things in Kratman's book I tend to give this a bit more credence. He is (IMO) a political idiot, but he is a former Army officer with alot of experience running unit training and whatnot.

Something to think about in terms of martial arts. The less and less likely we are to encounter actual life-and-death battle.. the more rational sense it makes to minimize the injury risk of training.

[SavvySavage]

Sanjuro,

how else would you teach skill sets?

Give everyone gear...and then let them beat each other? The winner gets promoted to assistant instructor?

My friend took judo for years. According to him they did cooperative throwing after warm ups and break falling rolling. The last part of class was dedicates to randori. Do you not agree with cooperative drilling of that sort? Please explain

[SavvySavage]

Dysm,

how do you build real skill sets with this non-injurous training? Are you saying to walk the circle instead in favor of hitting to build skill?

[sanjuro_ronin]

Sanjuro,

how else would you teach skill sets?

Give everyone gear...and then let them beat each other? The winner gets promoted to assistant instructor?

My friend took judo for years. According to him they did cooperative throwing after warm ups and break falling rolling. The last part of class was dedicates to randori. Do you not agree with cooperative drilling of that sort? Please explain

You said that:

I think one of the reasons is that many martial art teachers prove their skills but have since aged. These teachers don't want to deal with their students asking to spar with them.

and this was also stated:

Money <Insurance and >student enrollment

Insurance for schools that fight cost more. Not to mention the possibility of lawsuits.

Fighting, bruises, pain scares students way.

I disagreed with these points, sorry I should have been more clear.

[uki]

This is an aside, but is a bit relevant. There is this extremely annoying myrmidon facist of a military scifi author called Tom Kratman (can you tell I don't like his politics?).

Anyway he has a book which is saved from greatness by his relentless slamming of his political enemies (otherwise it might have been a truly good book with lots of nods to Starship Troopers). The book is "A Desert Called Peace". The title is a classical reference to Tacitus "solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant" (they make a desert and call it peace).

Anyway in this book the protagonist has his family killed by terrorists and basically starts his own quasi-mercenary army to get revenge etc.

The relevant part to our discussion is that this army has an unusual idea about training.

Injuries and fatalities in training are accepted, and all those injured or killed in training are treated as if they were given those injuries while under hostile fire.

I.e. you get hurt in training by friendly fire.. you get a purple heart. Die in training and you are a hero.

These mercenaries don't believe in saving lives in training where it would cost them lives (especially more lives) in actual battle.

Of all the things in Kratman's book I tend to give this a bit more credence. He is (IMO) a political idiot, but he is a former Army officer with alot of experience running unit training and whatnot.

Something to think about in terms of martial arts. The less and less likely we are to encounter actual life-and-death battle.. the more rational sense it makes to minimize the injury risk of training.be all that you can be in the army of one...

[sanjuro_ronin]

A good class should have a balance between teaching - co-operative drills, and learning - free sparring.
The degree of intensity should be controlled based on experience level.

[Drake]

It is an established rule that any fatalities or injuries during training are unacceptable. Leaders get fried over stuff like that.

[uki]

Are you saying to walk the circle instead in favor of hitting to build skill?have you ever walked a circle??

[sanjuro_ronin]

have you ever walked a circle??

Do you know what the term "specificity" means?

[uki]

Do you know what the term "specificity" means?i am asking a specific question...

[sanjuro_ronin]

i am asking a specific question...

Answering a question with a question...what are you? Jewish?
:D

Question:
Who is a better mason? a carpenter or a mason ?

[uki]

Answering a question with a question...what are you? Jewish?omg... the is anti-semitic. :eek:


Question:
Who is a better mason? a carpenter or a mason ?i am not answering because stupid questions get stupid answers... i don't think you can handle my stupid answer. :p

[lkfmdc]

...what are you? Jewish?



teh sound you hear in the background is the collective scream in horror of the entire nation of Israel and of all the Jews around the world

[sanjuro_ronin]

omg... the is anti-semitic. :eek:
i am not answering because stupid questions get stupid answers... i don't think you can handle my stupid answer. :p

You must hate it when I am right !
It shows though, so don't hide it.

[sanjuro_ronin]

teh sound you hear in the background is the collective scream in horror of the entire nation of Israel and of all the Jews around the world

I ask forgiveness of my jewish cousins and prostate myself before YHWH !

[uki]

It shows though, so don't hide it.even if i was hiding you wouldn't see me if i moved. :)

[Drake]

And I foresee this thread being shot to hell too...

[MasterKiller]

teh sound you hear in the background is the collective scream in horror of the entire nation of Israel and of all the Jews around the world
They'll just make another WWII movie to guilt him quiet again.

Happy Hanaka!

[SavvySavage]

uki,
I have walked the circle.

Were you seriously asking or were you kidding

[Sal Canzonieri]

Depends on what is meant by "sparring". If it means two people standing in front of each other and squaring away and punching with some random kicks thrown in once in a while, it teaches nothing really. Ineffective and inefficient. Neither sport nor self defense, just random.

I think that most schools don't know if they are teaching martial arts as a sport or as self defense.

That kind of sparring ultimately is an artificial thing that resembles a useless *******ization of western boxing and kick boxing. People just flail against each other in most places that do this kind of sparring. There's no real meaning or method behind their fighting movements.

Practicing the kind of sparring used for Point Scoring really teaches you how to be doing the wrong thing for self defense, for one example. It gives you bad reactions from the muscle memory that is developed in that kind of sparring rules set up. If you practice something 1,000 times that is only good for point sparring, you are surely going to use it in a suddenly happening self defense situation.

There's better ways to teach timing, closing the gap, bridging, judging distance, evasion, strategy, and so on without these fake punching matches.

For Western Boxing, you follow the rules as it is a sport, you wear the gloves and don't hit where you aren't allowed, and you do learn a hell of a lot fast or risk getting bashed up pretty bad. That's where sparring makes sense, in rehearsal for a fighting sport.

But, as rehearsal for self defense? That kind of boxing / kicking fighting isn't going to teach anything worth doing when suddenly attacked, unless one learned to get the heck out of the way and evade every attack really well until the other person gets tired and gives up. Then. maybe it was good for something useful to know and do.

I've seen some good self defense oriented schools that did full blast self defense training, without having to spar. Aikido, Karate, and KF.
Peter Ralston's schools had amazing full blast training without "sparring".

[xcakid]

Train 200 $tudents lightly at your school, and 10 hard core students in the back.



I've been training off and on since I was 13yrs. old, in a number of kwoons. It's always been like this for me.

You will have a few folks that like to fight, those are the ones my former sifu's and current sifu work with after class with regards to sparring techniques. We don't even spar in beginner classes. Black belt classes are different though. Sparring is must in those classes.

Last CMA tournament we had 3 guys train for Sanda, but sadly only 1 could afford it. They were all college students. We had 10 people compete in forms only.

80% of you student body will just be there for the workout. 15% will compete in forms only and the 5% will actually be into fighting. So far that has been my experience. With a numbe of kwoon I have trained in.

Now to the topic at hand. I have been fortunate enough to have had Sifu's that were in their 30's and loved to spar. :) me personally when I teach, I spar my students and I am in my early 40's. And still compete in continous sparring. Gave up Sanda in my early 30's though. :)

[dimethylsea]

It is an established rule that any fatalities or injuries during training are unacceptable. Leaders get fried over stuff like that.

I know. But Tom Kratman seems to think it should be otherwise.. or at very least that it being otherwise could be workable within the context of his fictional world.

In all fairness the national entity that his mercenary troops in ADCP/Carnifex is basically Latin American, specifically Panama.

It's also a massive neo-con rant against the U.N. and anything left. Basically it's war-porn.

I only read it as research on the influence of neo-conservatism in literature (ahem!). LOL.

[Merryprankster]

You lose students if you actually spar, like, with contact and a risk of injury *shrug*.

I agree that it is possible to learn self-defense without sparring (sort of), but disagree with the idea that sparring only makes sense from a sportive perspective.

Sparring makes you better at FIGHTING in any number of measurable, common sense ways, within the confines of the rules you train under. A wrestler may not punch and kick, but I don't think anybody believes a highly trained wrestler is an easy opponent in a fight. Same for boxers, MT, San Da, whatever. Do you want to FIGHT Pac-man in the street? I don't. The street may not have rules, but seriously, if you think that's going to matter... well, you're an idiot, pure and simple.

Just because you can grab him, or knee him in the ****, is unlikely to solve anything, because there's just so much more to fighting than what techniques are or aren't allowed.

The problem I think for most people is that they conflate fighting and self defense. You can be great at fighting and pretty crappy at self-defense. Similarly, you could be a mediocre or even sub-par fighter and still be pretty good at self-defense.... since that's really more about recognizing danger, bad environments, defusing situations, etc etc.

That's really the only way to talk about this kind of stuff that makes a lick of sense.

[SPJ]

An intersting mini-discussion sprang up in another thread. The topic was about teachers, who sparred and other kinds of training, but then turned around years later and told students that sparring was bad. One of the reasons these guys were good is because they sparred a lot mostly without gear in those days. I've heard stories of bareknuckled tournaments. Instead of pushing sparring forms are pushed. I think one of the reasons is that many martial art teachers prove their skills but have since aged. These teachers don't want to deal with their students asking to spar with them. This is completely understandable. I agree that older people should be more careful when training. I'm wondering why teachers forsake harder training, including sparring, for easier types of training.

This also has to do with so-called internal training. I've had experience with internal teachers teaching a lot of slow form and esoteric exercises while foresaking harder types of conditining. I read that Sun Lu Tang's teacher, while riding a horse everywhere, made Sun run behind for conditioning. Sun also engaged in a lot of conditining on his own including punching statinary cannons. What do modern "soft" teachers think when they read stories like this one?

sparring is fun. just make it safe for everyone involved.

but still injuries are to be expected.

conditioning is always gruelsome. no matter what age.

if not careful, again you may hurt yourself permanently.

what was the questions again?

oh yes, make them safe.

sparring and condtioning at your own risk even with the teacher's guidance.

hell, people may injure themself even with slower forms.

hurting back and knee, sore neck on and on.

everybody is against injury, other than that, have fun sparring and conditioning or slowly doing forms.

:)

[SPJ]

sore neck

since the eyes have to follow the lead hand moving.

some folks are so bent out of shape.

they have sore neck just from turning the neck slowly to the left and right.

OMG.

:eek:

[SPJ]

my point is that

nobody is against sparring.

but everybody is against injury and medical bills/insurances.

:eek:

[dimethylsea]

my point is that

nobody is against sparring.

but everybody is against injury and medical bills/insurances.

:eek:

This is true. I know I did alot more hard sparring (with sticks even) during the arnis days when I was government property, had full medical and basically a guaranteed paycheck even if I was injured.

Come to think of it.. my teacher was a longtime civil servant.. so maybe that explains how we trained LOL.

[Frost]

An intersting mini-discussion sprang up in another thread. The topic was about teachers, who sparred and other kinds of training, but then turned around years later and told students that sparring was bad. One of the reasons these guys were good is because they sparred a lot mostly without gear in those days. I've heard stories of bareknuckled tournaments. Instead of pushing sparring forms are pushed. I think one of the reasons is that many martial art teachers prove their skills but have since aged. These teachers don't want to deal with their students asking to spar with them. This is completely understandable. I agree that older people should be more careful when training. I'm wondering why teachers forsake harder training, including sparring, for easier types of training.

This also has to do with so-called internal training. I've had experience with internal teachers teaching a lot of slow form and esoteric exercises while foresaking harder types of conditining. I read that Sun Lu Tang's teacher, while riding a horse everywhere, made Sun run behind for conditioning. Sun also engaged in a lot of conditining on his own including punching statinary cannons. What do modern "soft" teachers think when they read stories like this one?

I trained directly under a master in the UK who was very when known for producing full contact and semi contact fighters during the 1970’s. By the time I started training under him he was too old to spar hard and the senior students now teaching for him were more interested in teaching forms, pushing hands etc so the club became more geared towards that. (I think the other point worth mentioning is that those who were fighters tended to leave the organisation after a while and do there own thing, and those that stayed around were more interested in the esoteric, the forms the chi kung etc, so he began teaching that)

So I think a combination of growing older, the students leaving and the direction those staying want to move in, or combine to form the direction the club goes in, if you have fewer students wishing to fight you teach less fighting.

I also think that (whatever people might say) that the kind of person now attracted to kung fu are not that interested in hard contact (in the 1970’s people that were interested in kung fu/karate here in the UK, were looking to fight, a lot of the guys back then were big, athletic and into fighting.) Now a days those attracted to it are more interested in forms, chi kung etc. Those guys now who want to fight go to an MMA club; those that have seen the matrix go to the kung fu club.

Before people go off on one, I know this is a gross generalisation, and that some guys still come to kung fu to learn to fight, but I also know that if you walked into a kung fu/karate club in the 70’s you would find a lot of guys hard contact sparring, now you walk into those same clubs and you find them doing forms for the most part, yes some of the clubs still fight, but not as many as did back then

[Iron_Eagle_76]

There are several reason for this, many have already stated injuries-insurance purposes, aging teachers, and so forth. Another idea I will propose is that we as a society are weaker than in the past. My instructor was taught during the 70's and began teaching in the 80's and he has told me of countless stories of Kung Fu and Karate schools who all sparred hard back in the day.

I believe that as a society most have become limp noodle puss**ies who want to dance around in silk pajamas rather than fight, but that's just me.:D

All jokes aside, martial arts has become a leisure activity, a fun, family oriented method of exercise rather than an art of war meant to teach it's practioners to maim and kill. As I said, society has grown weak and it will only get worse, as will a majority of martial arts schools.

[Jimbo]

There is also the popularity of 'kiddie' karate or whatever type classes, whereas when I started MA back in the '70s (kenpo and judo), there was no separation, at least where I trained. There was lots of conditioning, bag/pad work, and sparring.

Small for a 13 year-old, I was put in against adults, many large, young, athletic, and aggressive. There wasn't the over-protectiveness towards children in the martial arts (or even in general) back then that there is now. There were a few other kids in the class, but most never stuck with it very long, and for years I was only one of two persons under 18 there. The format was street-oriented (i.e., zero emphasis on point fighting). The men didn't care if you were a kid, they'd hit, kick you or sweep you as hard as anyone else, and if you got hurt there wasn't a whole lot of sympathy. You had to suck it up and deal with it. Eventually you adapted or you left. I thought that was normal and the only way to learn, and back then I guess it was. I had kind of a love/hate relationship with the MA as a kid, but I knew I was there by choice so I stuck with it. And though I've long since moved onto other arts, I feel those first seven years were invaluable to my development and interest in practical-oriented teachers, whatever the system.

To be honest, though, I did train later for a time under a teacher in Taiwan (the first teacher I had there) who totally de-emphasized fighting or applications. Once I realized I was on a road to nowhere, I switched teachers. That first teacher was an older, well-known teacher, but I'm not really sure why he would only teach forms. It could have been his age, but then again, did he always teach like that? It could also be because it's easy. If lots of people respect a teacher and are satisfied just doing forms, I would imagine the job is very simple and doesn't require a lot of thought or effort on the teacher's part.

[David Jamieson]

This guy has you now skywalker!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v202/kunglek/thaifighter.jpg