If your TCMA teacher doesn’t teach sparring, you will need to form your own sparring group and accumulate sparring experience yourself. Many people may say that sparring without instructor may develop bad habit such as
but IMO, the worse habit is not spar at all.
What’s your opinion on this?
Sparring without an instructor is much better than not sparring at all. If you do this, you will have bad habits, but if your half-way willing to listen to one of your sparring partners, who is observing you spar someone else, then you should be able to correct a lot of mistakes on your own. You don’t need to be a Shifu to tell someone to stop flinching, don’t turn your back, keep your hands up, don’t back peddle, ect…
This kind of advice can be given by anyone with a basic MA background, who is observing things you may not notice yourself doing in the heat of sparring.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1258602]If your TCMA teacher doesn’t teach sparring, you will need to form your own sparring group and accumulate sparring experience yourself. Many people may say that sparring without instructor may develop bad habit such as
but IMO, the worse habit is not spar at all.
What’s your opinion on this?[/QUOTE]
If at least one person in the group is more seasoned than the rest this could help prevent the development of too many bad habits. That effectively makes them an instructor but presumably this individual would work in the same as everyone else.
sparring without an instructor
I knew a MMA practitioner years ago that was doing unsupervised training with a bunch of other aspiring fighters. They did not have a teacher or a coach. When he was sparring, his opponent struck him with an elbow strike to the temple three times. He could not see or think clearly for six months and his neurologist was not sure if he would ever have normal brain function again. Fortunately, he regained his faculties and was doing well the last time I heard from him. It was quite a scare.
Two students of a teacher I knew were at the school, unsupervised, and sparring. One student hit the other in the heart and he immediately felt faint. They stopped sparring and the student who was struck was taken home by his mother. As he sat on his bed, he said he felt funny and fell over dead from cardiac tamponade.
[QUOTE=SKM;1258628]I knew a MMA practitioner years ago that was doing unsupervised training with a bunch of other aspiring fighters. They did not have a teacher or a coach. When he was sparring, his opponent struck him with an elbow strike to the temple three times. He could not see or think clearly for six months and his neurologist was not sure if he would ever have normal brain function again. Fortunately, he regained his faculties and was doing well the last time I heard from him. It was quite a scare.
Two students of a teacher I knew were at the school, unsupervised, and sparring. One student hit the other in the heart and he immediately felt faint. They stopped sparring and the student who was struck was taken home by his mother. As he sat on his bed, he said he felt funny and fell over dead from cardiac tamponade.[/QUOTE]
As to the first story, not training with morons would solve that problem. For the second, I’m not sure having a trainer would have made a difference. Sounds like a freak occurrence.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1258634]As to the first story, not training with morons would solve that problem.[/QUOTE]
You would think not training with fucking psychopaths would go without saying.
A referee or a supervisor is always needed.
Both sparring parties are advised about safety and mutually agreed rules before spar.
A third party to ref or supervise so that both sparring persons will stick with saftey and rules.
No strike, elbow or knee to unpadded areas etc.
Our sparring partner is our teacher. We want to learn without seriously hurting one another.
sparring is the best teacher. you can become the number one fighter in the world just by sparring.
easier said than done
[QUOTE=wenshu;1258635]You would think not training with fucking psychopaths would go without saying.[/QUOTE] This is the martial world. It’s lousy with f-ing psychopaths. :rolleyes:
You definitely need some kind of monitor when sparring, whether it be a coach, an instructor, or more training buddies. Some one has to break it up when things get nasty.
Mixing it up
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1258602]If your TCMA teacher doesn’t teach sparring, you will need to form your own sparring group and accumulate sparring experience yourself. Many people may say that sparring without instructor may develop bad habit such as
but IMO, the worse habit is not spar at all.
What’s your opinion on this?[/QUOTE]
When I was a kid ( young ) we all use to slap fight with our friends and wrestle a lot. It paid off , that was long ago. With all the video and internet stuff around today practicing marital arts without a teacher especially sparring is unwise in my opinion. If one must , I would recommend protective equipment.
my best to all
[QUOTE=bawang;1258652]sparring is the best teacher. you can become the number one fighter in the world just by sparring.[/QUOTE]
Well that’s not true. If it was, professional fighters would just spar. But they don’t just spar, do they?
Anyone remember the old karate fighter Joe Lewis (not the boxer of ****nymic name)? He said that he won the world championship by training solely on his own. I recognise that someone would be unlikely to achieve that feat against today’s standard… but is interesting as a historical curiosity nevertheless.
Three golden rules
1 rules: 10 to 30 second contact and break or --That is if you can not hit the other in close range in 10 second, disengage. You cannot throw the other in 30 second contact, disengage etc.
2 safety: no elbow, no knee, no groin, no temple strike etc
3 end points. thrown down 3 times (shuai jiao). reach face 3 times, reach chest 3 times (point sparring) etc
Communicate well beforehand
then spar away.
[QUOTE=SPJ;1258804]Three golden rules
1 rules: 10 to 30 second contact and break or --That is if you can not hit the other in close range in 10 second, disengage. You cannot throw the other in 30 second contact, disengage etc.
2 safety: no elbow, no knee, no groin, no temple strike etc
3 end points. thrown down 3 times (shuai jiao). reach face 3 times, reach chest 3 times (point sparring) etc
Communicate well beforehand
then spar away.
:)[/QUOTE]
10 to 30 seconds isn’t much time, you want to work so you can push your cardio a bit, I think anywhere from 90 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the conditioning level.
I don’t see any problem with the knee, as long as you don’t go to the face…If your doing an art that incorporates knees you need to learn how to use them live.
[QUOTE=SPJ;1258804]Three golden rules
1 rules: 10 to 30 second contact and break or --That is if you can not hit the other in close range in 10 second, disengage. You cannot throw the other in 30 second contact, disengage etc.
2 safety: no elbow, no knee, no groin, no temple strike etc
3 end points. thrown down 3 times (shuai jiao). reach face 3 times, reach chest 3 times (point sparring) etc
Communicate well beforehand
then spar away.
:)[/QUOTE]
I disagree with all these three golden rules.
Engagement and disengagement should be naturalistic. Each fight has its rhythm and you should learn to feel it. Also you should push your endurance in sparring practice.
This is all well and good if it is what the parties sparring agree on. Some may prefer to include some or all of these in the allowed strikes - particularly elbows and knees which are bread and butter for close-fighting.
End point again should be arrived at through two factors - the limits of endurance and the mutual agreement of participants. I disagree with this less than points one and two.
I agree entirely with “communicate well beforehand” that is a MUST.
Some of my best memories are of throwing down at the park. No instructor, just wraps, gloves, mouthpiece, cup and a whole lot of bloody noses. Peer review was always an important factor. Everyone had diff backgrounds and everyone pitched in. I enjoyed sparring at the gym, but it was never as fun as those summer days outside.
[QUOTE=Syn7;1259096]Some of my best memories are of throwing down at the park. No instructor, just wraps, gloves, mouthpiece, cup and a whole lot of bloody noses. Peer review was always an important factor. Everyone had diff backgrounds and everyone pitched in. I enjoyed sparring at the gym, but it was never as fun as those summer days outside.[/QUOTE]
Word. 1234
Actually, one thing was more fun than that. When I was like 16, we had a small group of us who enjoyed certain hallucinogens. I lived close to a driving range that was well lit at night. We would go box on the putting green. It was so much fun. A non level, irregular shaped, but soft area to throw down. Good times. Nothing like getting swung on while tweeking on an 1/8th of shrooms.
[QUOTE=SPJ;1258804]Three golden rules
1 rules: 10 to 30 second contact and break or --That is if you can not hit the other in close range in 10 second, disengage. You cannot throw the other in 30 second contact, disengage etc.
2 safety: no elbow, no knee, no groin, no temple strike etc
3 end points. thrown down 3 times (shuai jiao). reach face 3 times, reach chest 3 times (point sparring) etc
Communicate well beforehand
then spar away.
:)[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1258821]10 to 30 seconds isn’t much time, you want to work so you can push your cardio a bit, I think anywhere from 90 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the conditioning level.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=SimonM;1259075]I disagree with all these three golden rules.
[…]
Also you should push your endurance in sparring practice.
[/QUOTE]
Depends on what you are trying to develop.
Are you sparring for conditioning and endurance? Or are you sparring for ability to end the fight decisively?
I have students do both. Continuous sparring for conditioning.
Then “3 second death match” for explosive aggression to end the fight quickly and cleanly.
In the “kill or be killed” context, 10-30 seconds can be too long. Originally, I gave students only 5 seconds to take out the other guy, and even that was too long and allowed for hesitation. 3 seconds worked out about right.
The result from combination of continuous sparring and also 3 second time limit worked pretty well, and it showed when they went to spar people outside of our group.
[QUOTE=-N-;1259099]Depends on what you are trying to develop.
Are you sparring for conditioning and endurance? Or are you sparring for ability to end the fight decisively?
I have students do both. Continuous sparring for conditioning.
Then “3 second death match” for explosive aggression to end the fight quickly and cleanly.
In the “kill or be killed” context, 10-30 seconds can be too long. Originally, I gave students only 5 seconds to take out the other guy, and even that was too long and allowed for hesitation. 3 seconds worked out about right.
The result from combination of continuous sparring and also 3 second time limit worked pretty well, and it showed when they went to spar people outside of our group.[/QUOTE]
Unless you’re fighting with weapons the truth is that you’re not going to be ending a fight in three seconds. If there’s such a gross difference in skill level and size that you can, with bare hands, take somebody down with, well, with one punch basically, you probably shouldn’t be fighting them to begin with.
Either you are fighting in the ring, in which case shame on you for going after people who can’t stand a chance against you.
Or you’re fighting for real in which case, if the person you are facing is at all sane / sober you can probably intimidate them into backing down without throwing one punch. Or you’re fighting for real against a nutcase or somebody who is blind falling down drunk in which case you should probably be restraining them rather than beating them down - and a restraint of an irrational attacker isn’t precisely something you train with three second burst drills.
OTOH, if you’re training with weapons this is a different story - but sparring generally means fist-fighting more than knife fighting.