" Fight clubs"

[Akronviper]

A couple of the bullshido guys had a "throwdown" in Akron last year. It would have been cool to attend. I'm looking forward to another, which they say is possibly in the works.

[Tingjid]

If you guys do do this then you should drop me an e-mail if you want some more company. I'm in the columbus area and I'm always down for friendly sparring against good people. I'm not into full contact but I never mind taking a few punches in the face, wakes you up I could probably drag along a few of my training buddies, a few would be fodder, but a few can beat some butt. Besides nothing wrong with fodder, they get better fighting better people and makes you look hard.

Out of curiosity how do you guys spar? I'm used to straight point fighting with medium contact, I've started doing more continuous sparring and that's been fun and a better workout. Anyway.... I've gotta get back to work.

[Oso]

Big guys are rather common at my school (its part of teaching at a Gym). Once you get them relaxed and using as little energy as possible they fight really fast.
However they tend to be the nicest guys on the planet.

good gawd...any of those guys coming down?

i taught in a gym for over 2 years and couldn't get any of the muscle heads interested.

[Xiao3 Meng4]

XM, that sounds great.

A good model indeed...people who are willing to pay a little money and abide by some basic conduct rules will be more serious, imo.

The money means they have a vested interest in a) coming, b) being able to come. It's a nominal fee, and really only covers room rental and equipment maintenance.

The conduct rules:

1, Respect others and yourself equally.
2. Use courteous vocabulary and volume.
3. When the supervisor is out of the room, shadow boxing only.
4. Observe proper hygiene (clipped and cleaned nails, washed uniforms)
5. No open wounds
6. Waterbottles only.
7. No jewellery.
8. Approved Shoes (non-marking, soft soled) and uniforms (buttonless, zipperless shorts, buttonless, zipperless short-sleeved shirts) must be worn at all times.
9. All Headgear and gloves must be AIBA approved.
10. All Sparring must take place on the mats, under the supervision of a referee and the supervisor.
11. Poor Sportsmanship will result in suspension from the premises for a period of time proportional to the severity of the infraction. Poor sportsmanship causing bodily harm may result in criminal charges.

We have approved headgear and gloves for people to use, but encourage them to get their own stuff if they decide to stick around and make it a regular thing.

is there a website for this endeavor? I'd like to know more about how exactly you have it set up.

No Website as of yet :P

Our set up is simple; one room, one 4mx4m mat, and 2 pairs of San Shou equipment. The first 15 minutes are a basic group warm-up and stretching. The next 15 minutes are for everyone to do their own preparation. Newbies wanting instruction are taught basic drills and/or shadow boxing.
After that, it's 15 minutes of shadow boxing, and newbies do partner drills.
Next, there's a 15 minute run-down of the rules, including ref signals and how to judge. Newbies start here, regardless of previous skill or experience. Then we spar for the rest of the time. Sparring is, at all times, solely for the purpose of testing one's skill. No official records are kept of wins or losses, although we may start an intramural round robin competition in the spring.

We're looking to include weapons sparring as well - single (short or long) vs. single (short or long,) and double short vs. double short or single long.

I did weapons sparring in Nelson, British Columbia. It was loads of fun and great training, but there weren't any standardized rules. Here's the tentative rule system for weapons sparring that we'll be using:

For all non-weapon contact, San Shou scoring methods will be used.
For all weapon contact, the following list shows how to score:

Any sword strike to the head - end of round.
Sword thrust to the body - end of round.
Disarm - 3 points.
Sword chop to body - 2 points.
Sword strike to limb - 1 point.

We had a tough time deciding on a point system, mainly because some people wanted limb strikes to equate to limb dismemberments or automatic loss of use of that limb. However, it became unclear how to distinguish a skin cut from a chop to the bone, especially in a sparring situation (The dilemma appeared regarding cuts to the chest.) So, judges are instructed to simply count it as a point - maybe it went to the bone, maybe not, but it's a point, and the person can keep using their arm for the rest of the match. There's also been talk of adding grappling w/tapouts to this particular contest - I'm not against it, but we haven't really talked about how to set that up yet.

What other weapons sparring systems are out there?

CSP