Slow Sparring=bad entry

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

I’ve noticed lately a tendency people who slow spar a lot seem to pick up, even when they are working technique crisply and effectively. The problem stems from slow sparring being too slow to emulate any real entry into close range from an outside range.<------an example of what I’m saying would be the shuffle. A shuffle at speed and one slow covers entirely different distances, so doing this slow trains the wrong speed at the wrong distance.

What seems to happen is that they may get okay at close range provided they and their opponent make contact at this range with roughly equal positioning. The catch is that someone with real entry skills will almost always have the better position once that point occurs, because they will have decisive entries.

Just a basic observation and excuse to post.

2

Hi Elbows, been a long time.

Now your mistake was… posting about kungfu! :rolleyes: :smiley:

But here, in response:

Baaaaaaah, your style is made up, you have no root, and flat footwork, and your groundwork is a joke and you’d be owned by old Granma Gracie in close to six seconds.

3

Oh OK then…

yes you’re right.

I do think it’s useful working slower sometimes if you are then prepared to work the same moves up to full speed. This would require a set drill rather than sparring at slow speed.

When I do chi sao slowly, I try to keep the structure and the relative position slow and careful but still strike quickly to give my opponent something to work from in a realistic time frame. I do not see how that could work in sparring.

Again, if we are doing a ‘sparring drill’ which involves one person stepping in and starting with a certain combo or something then again we might start slowly and work up to full speed…

I’ve just realized, I don’t actually know what you mean by slow sparring! How do you spar slowly?!
:confused: :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Last time I read your post.

I think you were going to China.

Welcome back.

:smiley:

5

Haven’t been to China yet. That will probably be a year or two away, if all goes well. In the process of going back to school, I discovered that working full time at my normal rate made all financial aid dissappear, except loans, of course, so China had to be put off until later.

And yes, Mat, slow sparring is a strange concept, simply something I noted to be common among kung fu schools, including one I’d been in in the past.

However, I must disagree with you. My style was not made up at all. It simply is. I call it “the art of fighting without a clear idea how to staunch the bleeding”. In mandarin, it sounds vera cool. The basic premise is to deter any attack by bleeding uncontrollably. I’m sure you see the advantage.

6

for me sparring slowly wasn’t really intended to do much for entry skills… it was more about listening to my body and making my body listen to me.
i learned a lot of structure which helped my power immensely.

i never really seemed to have to much of a problem with entry or dealing with entry, but then we specifically worked this with drills and hard contact sparring. im not sure why you wouldn’t.

7

slow sparring is good for beginers who dont liek fighting or have never been in a fight. it helps them slowly stimulate something that will be up to real speed. but by no means should you just shove a person with no experience in sparring into a ring.

8

bleh … i have went on and on about slow moving/sparring many times before and im too lazy to go into it again. its not just good for beginers, but it’s obviously not working the same goals as full contact sparring.

9

I think I see where you are going with this. I have to agree with GDA about slow sparring not realy teaching a person squat about fighting. But then again, none of the good teachers I have known have ever claimed it would. Slow sparring is good for getting a feel for how to use combos and a bit for how to block. But you need to go full speed to train timing, closing, and entry.

Just as driving 500 laps around Bandimeire Speed way at 55 mph will not get you ready for a race, sparring slow will not get you ready for a fight.

10

slow sparring is good when both people work towards improvement, not winning the match.

11

that’s true and thats probably the hardest thing about doing it right.

if you’re just going to speed up cause there is no other way to catch the guys strike then his next one’s going to be faster and pretty soon your going all out. happens to the best of us.

it’d difficult because you have to have intent if you want to get anything out of it, but at the same time you can’t be trying to win.

12

I have to agree with GDA about slow sparring not realy teaching a person squat about fighting.

meh … i didnt say squat, but its not working the same goals. slow sparring can really improve spacing, foot work, angles, leverage, root, what to do with the space your trying to take, keepin the noggin empty, and dare i say power. your taking the time to feel what every last little inch of your body should be doing during every part of every movement. i would have never believed it if i hadn’t been forced to do it, but practicing my strikes slowly improved them tremendously.

all of these have to do with fighting, but you got to be able to put them all together to fight well and theres only one way to do that.

13

I agree with GDA,my main point was merely that people who do too much of it in lieu of full speed sparring will not have entry skills, mostly because slow sparring is not too good for implementing shuffle steps and such.

14

One of the best things ever posted on this forum is “Position is faster than speed and stronger than strength.” Fortunately, footwork is one of those technical categories that can be practiced at full speed and full power with no danger to even the newest students.Back when I was still practicing regularly (sigh…) we’d sometimes do push hands with feet - basically hold your hands behind your back and try to outmanuever and unbalance each other with leg techniques only. Unrealistic in many important senses, but I definitely think it developed many important skills.

15

Why thank you. I think that was RD quoting me badly from a seminar I taught.

Look, soft/slow sparring can be very useful, but should not be practiced exclusively - it works for teaching sensitivity, and helping you to see the mechanics behind the fight. But without full power/full speed training you will have gaps the space shuttle could explode through.

One of the biggest sins commited in most Eastern MA is training almost exclusively (does not apply to many CMA or MT) against a hanging straight punch. This is just stupid. It gives you no sense of the different kinds of force you can encounter, and what that means to your position.

There is a lot of really good CMA out there, but I’m always astounded how the majority of the schools I see train in a way that makes them choreography memorization centers rarther than fighting schools.

Go forth, and free-fight. Remember you can build up to it, you don’t need to be an instant cripple. Me, after 6 months of being injured, I’m going to warm up to fighting again real slow-like :slight_smile:

16

LOL!!!, Yes that was me quoting you!!!

I only plagerize the best! :smiley:

17

You can’t just throw students into a full spar. The easiest way to defend yourself in 'sparring" is to jump around like a kite in a storm and that teaches abysmal habits. The best way to score is to flick little extreme range snappies and that too is a horrific habit to get in to. Students have to learn to do techniques fully and controlledly with good form or else it’s totally pointless and counterproductive.

18

I don’t think anyone has even said this. But many kung fu people I see default to slow sparring when comparing skill, not full contact, so I felt the observation might be useful to some.

The best way to score is to flick little extreme range snappies and that too is a horrific habit to get in to.

“Scoring” is a bad habit all around. Physical Domination is the goal, not statistical domination. Scoring is just an attempt to quantify this for judges, not for fighters. Full contact training is a better ultimate solution to ineffective “point harvesting”, since weak blows generally don’t decide full contact scenarios. Slow sparring can teach body mechanics, but it’s use as a method for avoiding flicking I question from my own experience with others.

As a bridge to full sparring, I agree it has a place, but I think we have a difference of opinion on how long one should tarry on that particular bridge.

I tend to think that pairing slow sparring with higher speed sparring drills earlier on is far superior than working slow sparring for a long time and then trying to implement the faster drills, because everything the student will have learned without the full speed drills will be based on a starting point of either 1) equal and static placement(for example, hands crossed a la classic kung fu pose) that will absolutely never occur at the end of a real entry(i.e. look, we entered, yet our bridges meet with no intent already in motion, no advantage on either side, almost as though we have cancelled each other out in a most un kung fu like way), or 2) Attempted, but again, static superiority(starting from a so-called realistic position where one player is at a disadvantage, but again, totally without the energy a good entry adds to all conflict).

What I lean towards is essentially what it sounds like GDA’s school does, pairing the slow sparring with the missing elements from as close to day one as possible. To slow spar for any extended duration without fuller sparring drills because one wants to avoid bad habits seems(to me) to avoid the issue that slow sparring without faster work trains bad habits in and of itself, because the moment of bridge to bridge contact will be, for lack of a better term, pure LARP.

Students have to learn to do techniques fully and controlledly with good form or else it’s totally pointless and counterproductive.

True, but an overdependence on slow sparring is not the way to achieve good form, either.

19

Sometimes a “crawl, walk, run” approach to sparring is a good one. With people of the same style, who are familiar with each other, you can go directly to run. I like to dialogue with people who practice styles I am not familiar with. I discuss doctrine, strategy, and tactics. When we do get to spar, a “crawl, walk, run” approach leads to some intelligent learning of defense and offense.

As was pointed out before, when someone is not used to sparring, it is definately better to do it slow and build up from there. Going up against a good fighter, can be intimidating to someone who is new, and two beginners who are told to sic each other can cause insurance rates to go up. :slight_smile: