Myth: Thai's only spar light

[jayoliver00]

Thais also spar for knockouts.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

He doesn't talk much about watching the Thais spar amongst themselves while he was over there, but rather his experience in his own sparring sessions. I wonder if the trainers were taking advantage of the opportunity to give their fighters some hard rounds with a talented foreigner who had a different style.

Personally I think any assertions about how a country full of people "only", "always", or "never" do something a certain way are always going to be dubious. My impression is that the Thais usually default to lighter sparring because they actually fight in the ring so often that they don't need to get their hard contact experience in their daily sparring. (Plus they don't want to lose out on the income from a pro fight because of being injured from the gym.) That certainly doesn't mean they never spar hard.

You can take my impression with a large grain of salt, because I've never been to Thailand myself. I've only trained with Thais in the U.S., talked to people who have trained in Thailand and watched footage of training in Thailand.

 

[jayoliver00]

He doesn't talk much about watching the Thais spar amongst themselves while he was over there, but rather his experience in his own sparring sessions. I wonder if the trainers were taking advantage of the opportunity to give their fighters some hard rounds with a talented foreigner who had a different style.

Personally I think any assertions about how a country full of people "only", "always", or "never" do something a certain way are always going to be dubious. My impression is that the Thais usually default to lighter sparring because they actually fight in the ring so often that they don't need to get their hard contact experience in their daily sparring. (Plus they don't want to lose out on the income from a pro fight because of being injured from the gym.) That certainly doesn't mean they never spar hard.

You can take my impression with a large grain of salt, because I've never been to Thailand myself. I've only trained with Thais in the U.S., talked to people who have trained in Thailand and watched footage of training in Thailand.

That's a good point. And it's also due to how often they fight, which is what hard sparring is for. USA/Euros don't fight as much as there aren't even enough events around; while Thai's have plenty as it's their national sport; which is why USA/Euros need more hard sparring as fighters.

I've had two Thai Kru's who immigrated to the USA and they both usually wanted us to go light to medium, but at times hard; esp. while prepping for a fight. These Kru's had 200-300 fights each.

Here's another American who actually lives in Thailand and she's up to 170+ fights there, IIRC. She's much more of an authority on how the Thai's do spar than Varga; saying the same thing, that they do spar hard.