Shooter, that was great. Apow, I agree with you, and when fighting I like to see it through too.
But as a general warning to others I suggested that, if you consider yourself decent, and the guy is good enough to get through to you, wrap you up AND take you down – its over. If you’re good enough to get out on a good ground player, he probbaly wouldn’t have gotten in.
Just my opinion so far.
Yes and no, Fu Pow. As it was mentioned earlier, the protective gear is as much for your partner as it is for you.
Quote by Apoweyn:
“what i’ve noticed is how difficult it is for a lot of students to throw a good clean jab/cross. why? because they don’t want to drive their fists (gloves) into a friend’s unprotected face. so instead, they train themselves to throw wider, more obvious shots that pose less of a threat to classmates.”
In a way it can serve as an aid to improve your partner’s striking ability (most likely to your frustration, though :mad: ).
“If you’re good enough to get out on a good ground player, he probbaly wouldn’t have gotten in.”
I think that’s not necessarily (sp?) true. You could be facing someone with great takedown ability but mediocre positioning/submissions. Someone had mentioned that we fight like we train, so if we train to stop when we get taken down…
Also, nobody’s perfect. No one wins 100% of the time (unless they only fight tomato cans).
BTW: Where did the term “tomato can” (to describe some unskilled rook) come from? That term makes me laugh every time I read it. 
fu-pow,
if you could convince me that you weren’t making another set of concessions in not wearing a face mask, i’d see your point. i mean, do you just do medium contact to the nose? or do you not shoot for the nose? light contact to the nose? aren’t you then just training yourself to pull your shots to the face?
that’s what i mean. you can make observations about the limitations of training with a face mask. but i could make as many counter observations about training without. my feeling is that it trains you to avoid face contact, jeopardizing your ability to throw a good straight punch on someone, or you get injured frequently.
and trust me, a good stiff shot in the face mask does NOT imbue a person with a feeling of invincibility. you still feel it in your nose. and your neck. the shock (physical and psychological) doesn’t dissipate thanks to the miracle of plastics. you still absorb a lot of it. you just don’t have to go digging your teeth out of the other guy’s glove afterward.
stuart b.
tigerstyle,
exactly. part of your job as a sparring partner is to give your opponent the opportunity to train their stuff as well. and to my mind, that includes giving him the reasonable and morally acceptable option of punching me square in the face. if he can score a good solid shot on my face mask, i have no doubts (and neither will he) that he can eek out that final half inch and peg me square in the shnoz as well, should that opportunity come up.
but if my partner has trained to circumvent open shots to the face, then it doesn’t matter how many opportunities he gets. his reflexes will be to avoid my face.
evolutionfist,
i’m with tigerstyle here too. i think you and i are in basic agreement, but i don’t believe that getting away from a grappler indicates that he wouldn’t have gotten a hold of you in the first place. (did i get that right?) there are so many variables that trying to make leaps of intuition seems problematic. if you can reasonably train the event, then why not? most grappling matches don’t end with injury or breaking. so why not keep going?
as the face mask thing seems to be a hot topic, consider this: boxers spar in preparation for a match, yeah? they wear headgear. it doesn’t jeopardize their sense of the reality of the real deal. it just enables them to continue training. the real deal will be far more taxing. that’s why they don’t fight the real thing day after day. self defense is probably a bit like that. it’s different from training. so thank god you don’t do it often (if at all).
and before someone points out that boxing headgear doesn’t have a face mask, that’s true. but it has cheek guards. and boxing gloves are big enough that that padding will help to prevent every clean face shot from breaking your nose (as do the gloves themselves). but in the format i’m suggesting, you’ve got a smaller (able to slip into that opening) and lighter (less padding) glove. so any shot that gets through could potentially break your nose, take out teeth, or otherwise prevent you from visiting your kwoon for some time to come.
stuart b.
Traditional Taiji sparring is fine for me. Start out light and controlled in the beginning, and progress to full contact. No gloves, no head gear, no chest protectors. In the end, there are no pulled punches or kicks, either; you block it or it’s gonna hurt.
How can you get conditioning if you are wearing pads? How can you learn to take full powered strikes should they happen if you are wearing foam? How can you possibly learn to take the shock if the shock is less than what you would encounter in a real fight?
I understand that a degree of safety is called for, but I don’t see the benefit of pads unless you are doing all out self-defense training, where your attacker is wearing pads so you can defend yourself and strike with full power.
Going without padding is BS. You can learn to absorb blows…shoot boxers and thai boxers do it all the time. They do not go all out during training. Even the KYOKHSIAN( ??? ) karate guys go all out but guess what happen when they get struck in the face accidently…fracture nose. Boxers wear headgear in practice to avoid getting HURT…they get hit and if they constantly get hit they feel it! Or there coach *****es at them…
Sam…it’s like u’re saying hey…let’s practice knife fighting full contact without gear…how do u know if u can operate if u’re never stabbed!
Originally posted by LEGEND
Sam…it’s like u’re saying hey…let’s practice knife fighting full contact without gear…how do u know if u can operate if u’re never stabbed!
Not at all. It’s not THAT extreme. And although I have tested knife defenses against people with real knives, I would never recommend something so foolish to someone else. I do things like that to make sure it works before passing it on, but would never recommend knife training with real knives to others because of the danger factor. But here, we are getting into the kind of training that needs some sort of special equipment anyway. We’re getting into solid self defense training, and not just fighting training. That’s different than friendly sparring.
Besides, I do not trust the conditioning methods of Thai boxers. There is a video clip being passed around the net right now of either a kickboxing or Thai boxing match (I forget which it is), where one boxer tries to kick the other in the thigh. The guy blocks it with his shin, and the kicker’s shin snaps like a twig, and he steps back on it and it folds beneath him. Sounds to me like their conditioning methods are not all that trustworthy, nor are some of their other methods like purposely making bone on bone contact. Whether or not they can take a blow, I don’t trust their methods.
Anyway, the full contact stuff should only come when you are ready for it. Obviously, if you cannot take a blow and cannot defend yourself properly against attacks, then you should not be sparring full contact. The power should be lesser and the control should be greater.
Sam,
Not trusting Thai Boxing conditioning methods? Ok… look, that guy was a fluke. The exception that proves the rule. It’s an ugly ugly thing, but it happens. Should I not trust wrestling headgear because my ear got partway torn off by set that shifted during practice and they had to sew it back on? (True story) 
I second the use of BOXING style headgear WITHOUT the facemask. If you can’t handle getting hit in the face, you can’t handle getting hit.
An full contact self defense sparring session, without weapons, would for me, ideally consist of:
Boxing headgear
Mouthpiece
Cup
shinguards
NHB type gloves.
Light knees to the head (meaning LIGHT)
Light elbows to the head (meaning LIGHT)
75% punches to the head while on the ground
Don’t kick the knees.
If you cannot escape an inferior position (side mounted, back mount or full mount) AND the person in control is throwing strikes to the head for 10 seconds straight (like I’ve got you in side control and I’m kneeing your head repeatedly and you can’t seem to get out), then you lose and get to start over. I say this because controlling somebody is one thing. STRIKING and controlling them on the ground is a little different. If I’m controlling you, but I can’t hit you without losing control, then good for you–you may have just saved yourself a fight ender!
On all the rest, have fun and go play. Use common sense. If the guy has your head controlled properly and his thumb positioned near your eye for a good solid, appropriate gouge, then concede. If he has hold of your windpipe and you know getting out isn’t really an option because there’s appropriate control, concede.
And no biting. Bite me to escape the armbar and I am fully justified in anything I do to you
elbow/knee pads too.
Otherwise, no one uses them. Chest protector…untill they have gut muscles. I hate fighting people who only think of grappling and lean their body forward. Then I kick, but don’t have the heart to kick or knee them too hard. Then they ignore the kick.
Then I’ll do it again, knock the wind out of them leaving them gasping on the ground. Suddenly I’m the criminal.:rolleyes:
Nobody would be full contact sparring like that unless they were in shape for it. That means they’ve sparred all the “other,” pieces seperately and more or less full contact.
Ideally, this eliminates the idea of guy who doesn’t know how to take a shot to the body dropping like a brick.
Good thread so far guys. MerryPrankster is a dangerous man, LOL (by the way, I completely agree about control in a groundpound situation…that, in my opinion, is the real key.)
I spar both with and without headgear at times, but without it you do hold back. Having headgear gives you the ability to throw a more intentful punch, and that’s important.
(Not to say I’ve not gotten creamed in the face while sparring without headgear LOL)
Ryu
I hate the face mask!!! Throw it away! I’m with Merry on the gear topic and rules topic.
At my jutsu club we have experimented with what rules should be used to give a realistic but not to dangerous competition.
Using atemis on the ground;
hard to count points because of unclean techniques. If there is a timelimit atemis gives more points(in our experiment), but if a timelimit isn’t used atemis aren’t used that much.
We choosed 30 seconds as a timelimit on the ground, all atemis allowed and 5 minutes matches.
Another problem was all the blood because of straight punches to the face standing. We use ordinary open-grip grappling gloves and when you connect with a straight to the face it will be bloody. We choosed not to use straight punches standing due to this problem(I use uraken instead).
BTW: Great topic
the other argument for a face shield, at least in the format i was suggesting, is the threat of an errant knife (rubber or otherwise) in the eye. no amount of conditioning is going to make you feel a whole hell of a lot better about that.
also, you can certainly make the argument that anyone ‘hardcore’ about their training should learn to take a punch. or evade a punch. or whatever. and that’s a sound point. but it assumes a certain level of skill. many of the people in this thread have years of experience. merryprankster, i know from personal experience, is more than good enough to close past punching range before absorbing too many shots. but what about the guy who doesn’t do that? because they’ve got less experience. or because they’re more comfortable at a longer range (albeit not more talented)? or whatever. i’m suggesting measures that can be taken to train people of varying strengths and weaknesses. not necessarily the bad*sses on this forum.
in my classes, i have students who, in time, might be really good. but for now, if we trained with earnest straight shots to the face in sparring, and they took a couple in the nose, they’d be gone. if i can get them to stick around, we can change that. if i can’t, that opportunity is lost. and that’s not such a great training method, to my mind.
stuart b.
nichiren,
i’m pleased with how this topic is shaping up too, thanks to you guys. i may not agree with everything here (obviously), but this is definitely turning out to be one of the more productive threads i’ve seen (at least, it’s productive for me).
cheers.
stuart b.
When I taught kung fu a few years ago at a kwoon, I would take a kicking bag and one of those foam “blockers” that looks like a demented baseball bat.
I’d hold the kicking bag like a shield in one hand and wield the blocker in the other. It was like having a sword and shield.
Then I’d tell the student to ATTACK, full force. As they attacked, I’d batter them with that “sword” in order to force them to keep their guard up. They could even grapple me, though they’d get smacked by the “sword” all over the place.
With another instructor, I’d come at these students with this kind of gear. This is how we’d introduce the concept of fighting multiple opponents.
Of course, it’s nowhere near the same as full contact sparring.
But it was a good way to introduce sparring to beginners without scaring or hurting them.
actually, i really like that idea. might swipe it from you, with your permission.
Head gear with a face mask kinda sucks cause it majorly impairs your vision. But I use boxing gloves and I think that as long as u use boxing gloves the training partner will be safe…sort of…lol!
On da ground…true BJJ is practice with palm strikes??? If u look at RALPH GRACIE training…he works the positioning and shows palms strikes…u can do that for ground fighting if u have no money! The training partner should inform u that u’re doing good or not. That’s really the key…good thing we dont’ have a lot of arrogant guys at our skool. Usually does ***** don’t last!
i hadn’t really anticipated the face shield thing being such a hot topic.
in any event, whether a person wears one or no isn’t worth my getting riled up about. god knows i don’t always wear one myself. but i was coming up with standards that would serve as an overall guideline, to be altered at the discretion of those involved.
in any event, carry on.
stuart b.
Ap,
I totally agree that a face shield is a good thing for certain formats.
With weapons, it’s a must, absolutely. And with newer guys, that’s fine too. I was just assuming a certain level of skill on the part of the combatants. No biggie. You adjust as needed to fit the situation. But an IDEAL sparring format was what you asked for, so I gave you my ideal hee-hee.
And as for being good enough to get by without absorbing punches, I’ll take a rain check. I remember distinctly eating some fists a few months ago from a friend of mine with VERY heavy hands.
To say nothing of the knee you caught me with when we played that one time That, my friend, would have ended me before we started.
Since I actually swiped that drill from my TKD instructor (a true Korean master), you can swipe it from me apoweyn.
He didn’t have the blocker to beat my butt with, but he did have the blue shield and used it to his full advantage.
I was the only student he really did it with because he knew I had full control.