If you’re not doing both, and want to train specifically for competition, you’re probably best served by spending most of your time close to the rules you’ll compete under. You’ll develop more consistent strategies to take advantage of the rules.
You contradicted yourself in these two posts. Electronic hogu's and headgear score points accordingly based on location And force. A touch does Not score. Kicks to parts of the head/face are not only scored but have a higher point value based on where the kick landed, what technique was used, and balance of technique. It is the judges/scoring groups responsibility to identify what kick is thrown which also determines point value. Yes, knock downs count as long as offensive balance is maintained and knockouts end a match in a win as long as a legal technique caused the knockout. There can also be TKO's which are much more common that true KO's. Electronic scoring is becoming more prevalent and is changing the role of judging. There are 3 grades of KKW/WT referee's if memory serves. It is shifting more from "did a competitor score" to "how did they score" and player safety.
If you’ve never done continuous sparring, it’ll take some time to train the strategies you need and to stop stopping. I see this with students who come to me with either a point-stop background or a lot of trade off experience (where folks get into the habit of “I attack, now you attack”).
That's not true. Kicks to the face in the Olympics do not score, unless the helmet registered the impact, which is unlikely since it's designed to register direct impact. Kicks to the face in the amateur levels still score however
I don't want to do anything. My background is continuous and that's fine with me. I was curious about guys who directly step into continuous from stop formats
Yeah. So I'll use the example of folks with a habit of trading attacks. I teach finding an opening and staying on offense as long as there's still an opening, as a principle. Students used to trading off will find an opening, strike once or twice, then back off, even if I don't close the opening. It takes a while to erase that habit, but I start that process pretty early.
Sorry for the confusion - that was the generic "you" (where proper English used to use "one", which was much clearer).
If they don't train continuous....they struggle. You can usually overwhelm them with combinations and pressure.
The problems I've heard when it comes judging comparing light to no contact stop format with semi contact is that the stop format guys may even fake a KIA, and the judges buy it. Wheras in the continuous, semi contact circuit, the level of contact permitted is inconsistent. And it gets tricky with kicks involved. I had a world competitor in my Taekwondo club who kicked out someones mouth piece out and got disqualified for excessive force, even though the guy was fine. Typical sissy Swedish culture. Whereas that type of contact is normal in World events. You might even win from a knockout if a person gets up or runs into it. And you can certainly knock him down. So it's not like continuous sparring gets rid of bad decisions.
I actually sparred one Karate competitor who joined our Taekwondo club and he was very hesitant in our rule-set. He didn't let his hand or feet go. And didn't move around either. That's clearly muscle memory from a stop format where you stare at each other and wait...
They kicked a lot more in the old days in those stop formats compared to todays JKA and WKF championships. I think they've refined the blitzing tactics with tsuki/straight punches to a higher level these days and let kicks take on a secondary importance. Granted not everybody in this clip are Karatekas but Joe Lewis certainly was and he fought like a Taekwondo fighter. I approve of his side kick!
Folks start out with what I call "light, technical sparring", so there's not much power used in sparring at that point. The ones I'm referring to all came from a classical Karate training (Shotokan or Shorin-ryu for most of them), and had no trouble generating reasonable power at the heavy bag.
I would say the more you do something, the more you get used to it. I went from a few years in a 'non-contact' points sparring karate style, to having a break for a few years, to full contact karate (continuous sparring). The contact was something obviously more of the shock to get used to, but the continuous sparring style was easy to get used to. Even in the first style, when we sparred we still did so continuously. We didn't stop and reset, but I guess we were still doing that 'one-hit' and retreat style. But it in no way meant we didn't do combinations. And from there To THEN actively competing in point sparring tournaments the last few years. Found no issues adapting to the different sparring styles.
An acquaintance of mine teaches defensive tactics at the local police academy. He’s had a handful of guys with a TKD background stop after hitting someone once. When asked why they stopped, one guy said “it was a point.” The instructor then replied “do you see a f’ing scoreboard?”
I guess he was so satisfied with the kick because there is no rule that you have to stop in TKD after the first blow.