I was wondering how everyone out there spars. Do you all put on head gear and gloves and have someone judge? Do you award points? I’m very curious how others schools spar and I’m curious how you avoid serious injury. I know an occasional bloody nose or fat lip goes with the territory but I’m talking about more serious injuries. Please be specific.
Sparring IMNSHO, is an advanced training tool, not necessarily just for the advanced student.
There’s different kinds of sparring - with equip, without. Light to medium to hard or full contact.
Point sparring is training specifically for a point based tournament situation and differs, or so it should, greatly from sparring used to train ‘real’ fighting where ‘points’ have no basis for success.
Any sparring should have a 3rd person referreeing, otherwise the two combatants can not put forth 100% effort and concentration to the matter at hand.
Sparring is also an opportunity for the student to show what they have learned. It allows them to test their skills and abilities againts unrehearsed stimuli.
nospam.
I do not agree that sparring should always have a 3rd person as judge. However I pretty much agree with everything else.
PJO
SEE your thread (NEW WEBSITE!!!)
gloves, mouth gaurds, some rules, but basicaly nothing too big. and what we call sparring is usually more a bunch of matches.
Sparring
I guess what I was looking for was more specifics. Is it mostly just the attacker kicking and punching, you block then counter or are there actual techniques involved? Do you square up and kind of dance around like in boxing until one person attacks. Please humor me. These might sound like stupid questions but I was just curious because I don’t spar and so many of you do.
It is important to spar, regardless of how deadly your art is. The main reason I usually give is this - how many people really know how to handle getting hit?
Most people freeze when they get hit. They get dazed, scared, angry - whatever. Then they get overrun by their opponent. Sparring helps you to learn what it is like to get hit and how to handle that situation. You can train for years in the most deadly of arts, but if you freeze as soon as you get hit then all that training is virtually useless.
PJO
Sorry, we must have posted at the same time 
All of the following is done with at least gloves, head gear if desired and sometimes body padding. No nasty stuff is used (groin strikes, throat strikes etc), nor are the limb breaking techniques.
When we spar, we usually start people just using hand techniques. They can take turns at attacking and defending, or they can go free form and attack and defend as they wish. We usually encourage light contact only. The focus is to get used to having someone attack you, and to learn to use your technique to at least defend.
As you progress, we allow the use of kicks and the contact can come up a little.
Eventually people are allowed to spar full contact if they wish. This means they can attack and defend as they see fit. We encourage the use of the art in this, but if people come up with novel attacks and defences this is OK too.
The basic idea is to attempt to simulate fight conditions as closely as possible without either party getting badly hurt.
Joe Doe
I guess we do some of that. We sometimes have gauntlet type situations where one person goes in the middle, then a random person will attack. The person in the middle has to defend himself but also be able to recover and fight from the last position. This is done quite slow. When I said we do no sparring in my earlier post I was thinking of head gear, gloves, and a judge, also with full speed, full contact. We don’t do any of that but that’s not to say I’ve never had someone attack me hard.
sparring.
Boxing head gear, light gloves.
No rounds or points or anything. My partner and I will box, clinch, takedown, grapple, ground and pound, go for submissions, etc. We go moderate to full contact and we go wherever the fight takes us.
We also work scenario drills with 'aliveness" too. One may wear a motorcycle helmet, and push, shove, cuss, throw a strike (with gloves) and the other will either strike first, de-escalate, headbutt, elbow, etc. All full contact.
Weapon work would be with heavy gloves, wooden knives or sometimes markers, and helmets. This way we can go full contact on the face, arm, hand, etc.
Ryu
Basically, we wear mouth guards, gloves, and boxes if your a guy.
We don’t go full ball, as i doubt anyone sparring actually does. We’re trying to mimick reality as much as possible kind of.
The size of the gloves is up to you really. For a begginer, we start of with the big gloves, and only body shots, just for one or two turns just to get them use having someone hit you. You soon realise, that after a while, with gloves on, if your both reasonably fit, you can sit there hitting away at each others bodies as though it was pillow fighting.
After that we’ll move on to head targets being allowed. The size of the gloves, if any, are up to you and your partner, and once you start feeling comfortable you can put in kicks as well.
The idea is to try and simulate a real fight and get as close to the real thing as possible. Once someone gets in a position where the fight would of been finished on the street (ie, a decent throw, or a hold with a couple of nice strong taps on the back of the head to show you could of put your hand through it 6 times by now if you wanted to), then you seperate and start again. Basically the idea is, if someone’s just connected to you solidly in the head with a a jab, two crosses and hook while sparing, don’t hit them back in the head when they decide to stop, they’re being nice in stopping, and in real life you’d be at their mercy or unconscious on the ground.
We also occasionally wrestle, where the rules are no hits, you can either start standing or both on your knees, and you have to make the other guy tap out.
I find the best practice is to find a few guys who train outside of your own school.
Invest in caged head gear, chest protector, boxing gloves, mouth piece, elbow and shin guards. SOunds like alot, but you are really attacking and being attacked you need it.
I suggest outside of school because soemtimes teachers are worried about liability or seniors loosing face to juniors.
This way also keeps ego out of class. Depends on the school and level of practioner there. If you have experience alreday, class should be a place to go and get new info, a boost, some new theory or way of looking at it. Then its your job to go out and test it, make it work for you.
Some schools will do this in house. Either way, it must be done.
Pretty much the same thing Ryu posted.
It kind of depends on who is there as well. If we have a bunch of new people, we’ll go fairly light. But there are a few people in our school that I’ve known for allot of years and we all have a bit more of an understanding with each other.
Cups, mouthguards, headgear, light gloves, foot pads, shins if you want them. No targets are specifically “off limits”. No specific contact is given. We generally give the rule that the least experienced person sets the pace. So if the new guy wants to go all out, I’m going to take him all out. If he/she is more comfortable starting out light and slow, that’s ok too. It’s all a learning process. With the people that have been around awhile the rule is that we’re all freinds and don’t due any stupid sh!t to change that.
For example, I don’t hit directly into anyones face anymore. I’ll tag their cheek or jaw, or their forehead. Most people don’t do that. Most go right for your nose. After I broke somebody’s nose I decided that it wasn’t neccessary for me to do that anymore.
Moreover, nobody comes in for one match. Maybe 4 couples will be on the mat, all sparring at the same time. I’m a bast@rd, and sometimes I’ll throw a beginner into someone else’s fight. Can’t do that with experienced people. Anyway, you rotate all night. So I know if some jacka$$ is going way too hard on someone who clearly can’t hack, then next round when he comes my way I’ll definatley up the level. The same goes for most of the people there.
The only danger really is with the new people. The advanced people have allot more control. Common injuries are sprains, bruises, bloodied noses and lips. Unfortunately, knee injuries are far too common. I haven’t met anyone advanced who hasn’t had some knee injury. Hand injuries are pretty common as well. So are hernias, which sucks. If you keep doing it you will get a real injury at some point. Price you pay.
The round is over when time is called, or submission. In the event of a submission, the couple is stood back up, and the round begins again.
Sparring lasts about an hour. It is the most tiring thing on the planet. By the end of the night it’s everything I can do to keep my hands up, much less throw a punch.
JWT
Sparring is essential to our style, we do it every class.
Only protective gear is a cup. Targets are light contact to the torso for beginners, moderate to hard contact to anywhere “safe” for advanced on advanced, light contact to head.
The main thing is to be responsible for your partners well being and to use common sense. Then if we had common sense we’d probably wouldn’t be sparring this way.
Same list of injuries as JWT except for hernias.
You know I just found out about the hernia thing. I was telling people at my school that I think I got one during my wreck. And one after the next I heard about their hernias. Turns a guy got one from one of my punches in sparring. Who knew?
JWT
so how does one get a hernia from sparring?
I have always wanted one but the stores always out…Seriously, you get it from gutshots:confused: , what’s the Deal!.
All out sparring=Toughman like fight…the problem is trying to remain composed after getting tagged and not going RAHHHHHHHHH!
PJO
Are you going to start incorperating sparring in your classes now?
Yeah, apparently from getting hit hard in the abdomen.
JWT
Wushu Chik
Originally posted by wushu chik
PJO
Are you going to start incorperating sparring in your classes now?
No, I was just curious. As I said before, I suppose we do some form of sparring but it’s nothing like what’s listed here.