Tournaments

[markulous]

I just wanted to know how many people participate in "karate" tournaments. And your opinion on them.

My Sifu and I have a mixed martial art system and train for real life but we have never participated in a tournament so we decided to just try it out and see what it's about. So we signed up to one called the Delta Smackdown.

Most peoples systems I saw there was Kempo, Kajukenbo, Karate, and "Kung Fu"(I swear they all fought like they took Karate).

I don't know where to begin about how crappy this tournament and just about everyones system was. We just signed up for sparring so we got to see what these guys studied for. And I am not impressed at all. 98% of the points scored were either by guys hopping on their back leg and tapping out there front foot or the classic jumping slap to the top of the head. Out of the 2 fights I had there was only one good blow thrown at me. The rest just sucked. The guys are just tapping their kicks out in front of them so I grabbed the guys foot and threw him down. Point for me? Nope, he happened to tap me on the side on the way down so he got a point and I got a warning for grabbing his leg.

It's just so funny because I know for a fact if they tried that crap on me with our "rules"(which we really don't have much. just no eye gouges or throat chops, and we go easy on the knees) I would beat the living crap out of them.

Speaking of rules they don't have any clear definition of rules. We asked 3 different people about them and we got 3 different answers. They just ran around in circles and contradicted themselves.

I really didn't talk to anyone to see if what they thought they were doing was real because I didn't really care at the moment. But what it comes down to is it's a game of 2 grown men playing tag. If it makes you happy to do it then that's fine. But if someone calls that realistic and calls it a martial art then I have two words for them. BULL S***! :angry:

 

[Marginal]

I've never gone to an open tournament. I've been to two USTF tournaments though. The format's light contact, continous sparring with no grabbing etc allowed.

Does it realistically model real fighting? Not especially, but there are some advantages to attending such a tournament outside of sparring in class. Mainly as I see it, it lets you confront people that aren't used to your idiosycracies, and it puts you into an unknown, more stressful environment where you're actually trying to win the match. Also lets you brush up against people with slightly different interpretations of the rules.

Last tournament I was in, I was extremely sick so I'd resolved not to move too much. My opponent would close in and punch a little then launch an overhand chop etc. I'd kick him in return. Not hard. Wasn't going for any kind of penetration etc, but regardless pretty much every time I connected, he'd give me this hurt look and stare are the ref. The ref would shout out "clean hit!" every time. I ended up losing on points. Learned that fighting while sick sucks. He at least learned that time around that light contact's a very subjective term....

 

[Ceicei]

What you are seeing is called "point sparring". It's basically like how you call it: "playing tag". There are many different kinds of sparring, but at several (if not most) tournaments, the use of point sparring is pretty common.

However, be aware that point sparring does not really showcase their styles nor is it comparable, when push comes to shove on the streets, to how these martial artists would actually fight. Fighting with their given styles is very, very much different than tournament (point) sparring. Unfortunately, some schools focus on tournaments as their training process.

Granted, there will be some MAists that may fight like how you saw at the tournament, but the ones who truly know their styles and are actually competent would not fight that way (as in sparring) in a true altercation. They know the difference between tourney sparring and fighting.

These kinds of tournaments do not really do enough justice in showing how martial arts styles are really like.

On a different issue, I sometimes wonder if the purposes of these tournaments (especially those that have children's divisions) are actually just a way for various schools to try to recruit new students and to fellowship. They can't really go all-out full contact fighting (as in street fighting because of liability issues) and scare Little Johnny's parents against the possibility of enrolling kids into a martial art.

- Ceicei

 

[Quick Sand]

I completely agree with Ceicei, you can't always tell how effective a system would be in the street by looking at it's sparring.

In my system when we spar we have very specific rules, no head contact, no contact below the belt, no sweeps, no dumping people etc. etc. And everything is light contact. Thats not how we practice Self Defense though, our self defense is a different thing all together. We practice sparring to learn to control techniques, to learn speed, to learn to watch our opponent and anticipate the next mood and so on.

We don't go to open tournaments but we have one tournament every year for just students of our association. If you came to watch just that you would still have no idea how effective our actual system is.

I guess I'm basically saying you can't judge a book by it's cover and you can't judge an MA style but it's point sparring.

 

[OULobo]

There are decent tournaments out there if you look. San Shou, Bando, Muay Thai, ect. Some allow some take downs, don't have "point" rules, don't restict contact, do/don't allow grappling, ect. They might be a little better suited for what you are trying to get. The negative of some of these tournaments is that some moves are restricted by protective gear and beause there are no "points", the fight is often judged, which means some bias can have an effect, but for just trying your art and abilities on opponents the winner of the fight is inconsequential.

 

[Mormegil]

I view it as a different animal. Not real combat. But on the other hand, I don't think there is anything wrong with training for tournaments, as long as you know that isn't real life.

Martial art practitioners probably fight in more tournament matches than real life altercations. So in that sense, what's wrong with a martial artist training for tournaments.


I've never been in a tournament. I would like to think that what I train is more geared towards street combat. I also use to train Filipino Martial Arts, but never really got into much sparring. I visited the school my sister trains at, in FMA, and they are geared towards tournaments. So I sparred with them, and it was a lot of fun. It was also VERY different from what I was use to, since they do point sparring. They wield very light sticks, using a lot of quick flicking strikes (abanikos at about 3 hits / second), and hardly block strikes (as they don't hurt with all the padding on). Some of the best guys would actually put their "alive" hand (which is used primarily used in defense) behind their back.

My background has no point sparring, and I was trained to avoid getting hit and blocking the strikes, and grabbing the weapon. So I would block and grab as I hit. Man did that confuse and piss them off. Due to my tactics, I got hit a lot less, but I also didn't get as many hits in. I would have done horribly in a tournament. Likewise, not blocking, many of these guys wouldn't have survived a real stick or sword fight. Of course, how likely is that to happen?