Can you become a good fighter by just sparring/wrestling only?

Kung Fu Wang

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?
 
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geezer

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So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for. ...Your thought?

I don't know of any competitive sport where working with a good coach and doing drills to develop specific skills isn't hugely important.

Just sparring, rolling or wrestling, etc. every day without working with a coach or, at least, more experienced practitioners, and stopping to break-down, analyze, train, and improve what you do is not a very efficient way to learn.
 
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JowGaWolf

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?
Not sure about the context on this one.

Fighting clubs in general are no good. People just end up broken. Sparring clubs are more productive to training because you spend more time learning how to apply technique and less time healing from being injured. I do sparring in Jow Ga. That's where I learned my hip throw.

I'm thinking that people who say learn skill in a fighting club daily had never had the experience of healing from injuries that were received when in a fight. It gets old really quick.
 

Buka

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Sparring and rolling are terrific. But without proper coaching and drills to develop everything in a student, you really won't get squat.

On the flip side of course, proper drills and good coaching without actual resistance sparring and rolling, isn't going to get you squat either in my opinion.

And there's also the mental aspect to consider, which can be huge for some students, maybe most of them. Have to have good coaching and hard training.
 

drop bear

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?

Depends on the environment. If you trained with guys who are good. And sparred wrestled in a way that was focused on development rather than winning.

You would get quite good.
 

dvcochran

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?
I would say that is true if you are not getting training or critique.
If you are sparring in different environments and with different people is a great way to improve.
 

Graywalker

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I think that I would need a deeper definition of fighting. There is a mental aspect involved with a dangerous situation. Fighting for your life compared to fighting within a controlled environment are two different things.

Although I do believe that if you can train/spar/fight club, as close as you can to actual reality, it can somewhat prepare for some situations, but not all.
 

Martial D

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If you spar and wrestle every day against people that know what they are doing you will of course get good at it. Just like any other activity.

At this point you have the best teacher of all, one that can not lie to you or sell you on fantasy bs .

Trial and error.
 

drop bear

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I think that I would need a deeper definition of fighting. There is a mental aspect involved with a dangerous situation. Fighting for your life compared to fighting within a controlled environment are two different things.

Although I do believe that if you can train/spar/fight club, as close as you can to actual reality, it can somewhat prepare for some situations, but not all.

I don't think that is as pronounced as people think. There was a guy recently who lost a finger in a controlled environment. And wanted to fight on because he was winning.

MMA Fighter Who Lost Finger Back To Training Already

People will take some serious injuries and not quit.

Where in uncontrolled situations people do quit.
 

dvcochran

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I don't think that is as pronounced as people think. There was a guy recently who lost a finger in a controlled environment. And wanted to fight on because he was winning.

MMA Fighter Who Lost Finger Back To Training Already

People will take some serious injuries and not quit.

Where in uncontrolled situations people do quit.
I would have to say it goes both ways in both situations. In controlled situations I would think you have fewer who push on; like the guy you mentioned who would be an outlier. This would not include getting a boo boo during a match. I hope most everyone would push through that.

I uncontrolled situations, like controlling a guy who is jacked up all bets are off and you have to assume they are going to keep coming.
 

Graywalker

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I don't think that is as pronounced as people think. There was a guy recently who lost a finger in a controlled environment. And wanted to fight on because he was winning.

MMA Fighter Who Lost Finger Back To Training Already

People will take some serious injuries and not quit.

Where in uncontrolled situations people do quit.
Yeah, in highschool shop class, a guy cut off his finger and was back the next day.
 

Gerry Seymour

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Could you? Yes. I don't think it's reliable, though, with just those specifications. If you're only sparring/wrestling with guys who completely dominate you, there may not be much opportunity to learn. If you're only sparring/wrestling guys who are much worse (weaker or not aggressive enough, perhaps), there may not be enough challenge to progress. And if it's just a small group of people, after an initial period much of the learning may be more about using specific flaws in their game against them, rather than good generalized skills.

And the learning would certainly go faster with a competent coach/instructor invovled in determining why something didn't work. If my single-leg is awful and fails in 4 different matches in a row, I could conclude that a single-leg isn't a good tool and discard it. A competent coach would be able to show me what's wrong with my single-leg, and help me make better use of it.

And, of course, it gets even better if there's actual training time on top of that. A good amount of training between is where skill can be developed most quickly. Skill is develped during training and refined based on what you learn in sparring/wrestling. But then we're no longer learning from just sparring/wrestling.
 

Yokozuna514

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Only sparring in a fight club ? That's like going to school and only doing tests. Tests are a snapshot of what you know at that time compared to your peers under the same conditions. They can check the length and the breadth of what you know at that time but how do you learn to progress without proper guidance ? The more complicated the subject, the more you need to have time to assimilate and learn a progression of thoughts and ideas that translate into skills to practice (ie: learning to walk before running). More importantly, how do you learn how to do something complicated without injuring yourself in the process ?

Will you become a good fighter ? Compared to whom ?
 

jobo

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?
bI think as usual people are over analysing this

good at what is the question ? good at wrestling untrained people ? possibly or possibly not, it rather depends on what attributes your taking into the situation and if you have the capacity to improve those attributes. just getting beaten up everyday wont make you better unless you analyse it and change something. of course if your winning everyday you wont get better either unless you change something to do so

you really always want to be up against someone only slightly better, ( or at least only slightly worse) which is very difficult to arrange on your own and results in people having a very elevated or lowered view of their own abilities if they are consistently miss matched
 
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Buka

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If you spar and wrestle every day against people that know what they are doing you will of course get good at it. Just like any other activity.

At this point you have the best teacher of all, one that can not lie to you or sell you on fantasy bs .

Trial and error.

True, to some extent, but not always. When I first trained BJJ, a lot of times I'd be rolling and a lot of the guys there were coaching the other guy in Portuguese, especially when I was holding my own.

I guess I should have learned the language. Ah, well.
 

Martial D

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True, to some extent, but not always. When I first trained BJJ, a lot of times I'd be rolling and a lot of the guys there were coaching the other guy in Portuguese, especially when I was holding my own.

I guess I should have learned the language. Ah, well.
Well coaching always helps. Like, I don't think any amount of sparring could get you pulling off submissions if you aren't at all familiar with them, and you would develop a ton of bad habits.
But take the guy with no coaching and 100 hours of sparring and put him against the guy with 100 hours of kata and no sparring and what you have is a quick one sided fight.
 

jobo

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Well coaching always helps. Like, I don't think any amount of sparring could get you pulling off submissions if you aren't at all familiar with them, and you would develop a ton of bad habits.
But take the guy with no coaching and 100 hours of sparring and put him against the guy with 100 hours of kata and no sparring and what you have is a quick one sided fight.
that would depend greatly on 5he size and conditioning of the people involved, untrained wrestling is largly the application of size and weight and strengh, the possesion of which gives you a considerable advantage, unless you've been trained to combat that. as nether has, it's very much up for grabs

it's no co incidence that body builders types generally want to wrestle you
 

dvcochran

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Well coaching always helps. Like, I don't think any amount of sparring could get you pulling off submissions if you aren't at all familiar with them, and you would develop a ton of bad habits.
But take the guy with no coaching and 100 hours of sparring and put him against the guy with 100 hours of kata and no sparring and what you have is a quick one sided fight.
No argument here but that is two completely different training scenarios. A little too black and white to be realistic. I know of no one who does 100's of hours of sparring without at least some coaching; to learn the ruleset if nothing. Conversely, I know of no one who does purely kata.
If these two scenarios did exist I agree the sparring guy is going to be ahead of the curve in Sparring.
 

Martial D

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No argument here but that is two completely different training scenarios. A little too black and white to be realistic. I know of no one who does 100's of hours of sparring without at least some coaching; to learn the ruleset if nothing. Conversely, I know of no one who does purely kata.
If these two scenarios did exist I agree the sparring guy is going to be ahead of the curve in Sparring.
And which of these two activities is more similar to fighting?
 

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