Why we should not do control sparring?

[YouKnowWho]

Yesterday in our class, we worked on "run your opponent down". After 2 hours of training, we all felt as if we were punched on the body with full power for 2 hours.

If

- you move in toward your opponent with full speed, and
- your body is well connected (your opponent's body contact will not force your shoulder joint or elbow joint to bend),

when your hand push on your opponent's neck (safer than punch to the face), he will feel a lot of power behind it. He can't tell you to take easy on him because the only thing that you can reduce your power is to "disconnect your body" such as collapse either your shoulder joint or elbow joint. By using either approaches, you will develop bad habit.

A XingYi Pao Chuan should be performed as

"the upward blocking arm is like to raise the curtain, you then walk underneath it with your punch".

The "walk underneath it" is important. You are punching with your body weight and not with your arm. How can you do "light contact sparring" if you train this way?

What's your thought?

[MightyB]

I think you're describing something that is inherent in TCMA and that creates a flaw in perception.

It's a dilemma. In order to perform TCMA correctly in application, you have to be willing to perform in correctly in application. Problem arises in a "moral" society. Throat chopping, eye jabs, joint breaking, face ripping etc - how do you apply those techniques? There's no suitable environment for them unless you're some type of commando, and in that case - a commando's MA all revolve around weapon retention and accurate shooting under pressure. Not fisticuffs - so it's a dilemma. If you had no inhibition and there were no chance for repercussion - what would be the best MA, what would be the best way to train?

One thing's probably for certain, you wouldn't have people like me saying we should do basic San Da training to develop a student's base because they wouldn't need to. The game changes when you have to worry about having your groin or throat ripped out.

[YouKnowWho]

If your hand can reach to your opponent's throat, you can punch on his body, face, or push on his chin. When you take your opponent down with throat control, you can smash the back of his head on the hard ground. The throat pushing is still much safer than a face punch.

My guys all treat this kind of training as "free body massage". Even I felt good about it after the work out.

[David Jamieson]

Why not use gear?

Head gear? Cup? Mouth guard? Even chest armour? Then you could go a little harder with the technique of attack and not get so much injury from training?

[Syn7]

I agree with YKW.

And of course, I agree with using gear. But even with gear you can't go all out. You can't stomp out knees, do any small joint manipulation, tear a throat out, poke an eye, cave in an adams apple etc etc etc.. You can basically kick box with gear on. And don't get me wrong, that's great. But it's still not going full out in a rounded way. You still have to tailor your game so you don't hurt your friends.

[-N-]

when your hand push on your opponent's neck (safer than punch to the face), he will feel a lot of power behind it. He can't tell you to take easy on him because the only thing that you can reduce your power is to "disconnect your body" such as collapse either your shoulder joint or elbow joint. By using either approaches, you will develop bad habit.

A XingYi Pao Chuan should be performed as

"the upward blocking arm is like to raise the curtain, you then walk underneath it with your punch".

The "walk underneath it" is important. You are punching with your body weight and not with your arm. How can you do "light contact sparring" if you train this way?

What's your thought?

Train structure and power on heavy bag and on partners wearing gear to reinforce the good habits.

But also spend time training sensitivity and control so that you have ability to relax and disconnect the power when you make contact. Also the partner should be training his sensitivity so that he can yield if he feels you connect.

Not every partner training should be full contact. If you injure or kill your partner, your kung fu will never get a chance to improve.

The sensitivity training is an important part of changeability and being able to lead your opponent. You can't train power to the exclusion of control and everything else. And you can't train just control without ever training power. Conditioning is in there somewhere too.

Just make sure you spend time training all aspects of your kung fu to have well rounded integrated skill. Power, speed, timing, agility, sensitivity, guts. Not to say you cannot have a specialty. But make sure your training isn't one dimensional.

[Kellen Bassette]

Light contact develops a lot of bad habits...point style sparring is even worse...in my opinion making you a worse fighter than not training it...

That being said, there has to be control...I don't think you should hit 100% to the head when sparring. You never want to break a nose or knock someone out during sparring...You have to be able to rock, them...sort of pulling the punch without fully pulling it...go harder to the body to develop good technique and habits.

As to the neck chopping, throat tearing and eye gouging...you really can't employ those techniques with power and intent in a sparring match. You can, however condition and develop them....there's countless training methods for this. If you are accustomed to correct, full contact, punching techniques on a resisting partner; and your other..."dirty fighting" techniques are well conditioned, it stands to reason that you may be able to substitute them for a punch in a street fight situation. Not perfect, but better then abandoning them, or training them poorly.

I would suggest mixing in the occasional knife hand, ridge hand to the body, or head, if your partner has head gear...won't be as effective as punching, but it may be a good set up for a punch and it's get's you used to applying those techniques; so long as you can understand that you'll want to use them to the throat/vital areas in a real situation.

As to spear hands, tiger claws ect...all you can really do is condition for them and hope they'll be there for you. Not perfect, but you can't maim your sparring partners.

[David Jamieson]

It's not that difficult to set up a rule set.

You could agree to particular levels of force and speed, loose and relaxed with no power punches for instance. You can include throws if you have a good floor for it. Or exclude them if you don't. You can exclude joint kicks, or deliberate debilitating kicks. No ball shots etc.

A key thing is: Be ready to be hit in the face and don't be a baby about it when you get hit.

Try not to be idiots to each other either. Power shots to the head. elbows and other assorted dirty pool moves shouldn't be in sparring at all. Do that in drills with pads etc.

Be safe and recycle your sparring partners. Make sure everyone agrees on what's happening and everyone is aware of what's going on. Ramp it up as everyone's skill improves.

[YouKnowWho]

Not every partner training should be full contact.

During skill development (partner drill), your training partner should "yield" into your full contact. As long as you can use your structure to collapse your opponent's structure and not the other way around.

The simple example is the "front cut (Osoto Gari)".

http://cdn2.judoinfo.com/images/anim.../osotogari.htm

When you use it on your opponent, your elbow joint and shoulder joint should not be collapsed. You should use your structure to bend your opponent's spine backward and collapse his structure.