Sparring

[Johnny Hot Shot]

How often do you spar?

How hard do you spar?

How do you fight when you spar?

I have been sparring (Kick Boxing/Boxing) 3- 4 times a week and I roll twice a week.

I find that the range of power I like to spar at is about 35%- 55% anything harder and it hurts a bit too much. And I hate nothing more that being unable to train because of a stupid sparring mishap. Although I think that about 80% is good once and a while and even full on but only every short while.

What are your thoughts?

[Dark Knight]

Sparring is an important part of training. Depending on the level of the person I go from light contact to heavy.

I try to combine it with grappling, but not always, some days we just standup spar some days its with grappling. And depending on the level of the student depends on how hard.

I try to get it in with a few privates every day or the class itself.

But not all my time is spent on sparring, just as important are drills, technique practice, ....

[KC Elbows]

I'm slowly building up in my sparring schedule. The reason for this is that, though a lot of the instruction in my art starts out as external, the core art is internal, and the external stuff is just to help beginners. So I didn't spar a lot throughout learning the external stuuf because I intended to be a pure internal fighter.

Now that I'm learning the internal side, my sparring has improved a lot, but as I learn new movements, I see areas where my fighting is not yet developed, and those are slowly being filled.

I probably spar a week and a half out of the month now. I used to do more, but I am trying to incorporate the internal stuff into my repertoire, and so I need to practice it quite a bit before it begins to make its way into my fighting. Over the next year, I will be increasing my sparring more and more as I learn more of the core of my style.

[Shaolindynasty]

Sparring is VERY important in our school. We try to progress from light to heavy over time. When you star there isn't any contact at all, then you move to light contact(like going in fast and touching the target), then medium, then hard. It takes awhile before sombody can spar all out cause we allow alot of stuff, most targets are used in sparring to. We try to use every thing except eye jabs. We use all the punches, kicks, throws and joint locks we know during most all sparring sessions but it really gives a higher level student the responsibility to be careful with his junior. We also use little to no protective equipment cause it forces you to rely on your skill to defend yourself, the only equipment we use is those little cloth hand protectors you get at century for $5, I prefer going barehanded though. I haven't seen to many schools that train like that so that's why I chose my school. I forgot to mention that we don't mess with rounds either and our endurance get's really taxed cause somtimes we may go for 20 min at a time, usually only between 5 and 10 though.