How bad does not sparring effect you in a real street fight situation ?

[Bruno@MT]

But the first question that leaps to my mind is "why would you set out not to do such a major component of martial arts training?"

The reason is that unless both fighters have very good technique, a sparring session becomes about 'winning' and not about improving technique. Randori within Genbukan is only done at higher levels that have proven they have good technique.

Are you afraid of sparring? (And I'm asking this of everyone, not just the OP.) Why? What scares you? I ask this because it seems to me that overcoming that fear or trepidation is both an important personal goal and a useful exercise in coming to grips with the effect of adrenaline and intimidation.
The fact that it scares some people is fine. It's useful. Learn to work through it and you'll have put sparring to one of its most basic uses.
Try to skirt around it and you'll just have short changed yourself.
Stuart

I am not afraid of randori, but I flat out refuse to fight full contact.
I am a software developer / systems engineer. I need my brain. I am not going to let people pound me in the head for no good reason. I had a severe concussion once in my life, and that was enough. Accidents happen during partner drill and resistance training as well, and I accept that. I am just not going to invite it.

And if some people label that as fear: whatever. Being able to sit behind a computer screen 12 hours per day without a headache and providing an income is higher on my priorities list than being a tough full contact fighter.

 

[Chris Parker]

At the risk of repeating myself, I will endeavour to answer the questions posed in these later posts...

ap Oweyn (Stuart), you asked "But the first question that leaps to my mind is "why would you set out not to do such a major component of martial arts training?"

Are you afraid of sparring? (And I'm asking this of everyone, not just the OP.) Why? What scares you? I ask this because it seems to me that overcoming that fear or trepidation is both an important personal goal and a useful exercise in coming to grips with the effect of adrenaline and intimidation.

The fact that it scares some people is fine. It's useful. Learn to work through it and you'll have put sparring to one of its most basic uses.

Try to skirt around it and you'll just have short changed yourself."

Well, in Ninjutsu circles, sparring as understood in karate-style systems is not a part of the training. This does not mean we do not train against resisting opponents, nor that we are fearful of anything you are mentioning. It just means that we recognise that sparring as understood in those arts has some very inherrent weakness's that do not actually add to your ablity to survive, in fact they can take away from them. So I would here go back to one of my previous posts and show what we understand as "sparring", or resistance training; randori as Bruno mentioned.

Masterfinger (Franco), you stated: "At the risk of sounding repetative (and/or stupid), I went ahead and decided to post based only on the Title and didn't bother reading a single reply: Easy, it effects you 110%. You have to know 3 simple "effects of the individuals technique" that you can only gain through sparring;
1. Does my "Technique/ Fighting skill" work against a resisting opponent?
2. Can I "Take a shot or do I have a glass jaw?"
3. Who runs out of gas 1st, me or my opponent?

IMO, sparring helps to answers these questions so that your answers can be something like (in order of question)....
1. Some did and some didn't, so I will work towards fixing or dispose of what didn't work as well as solidifying what did work.
2. One major rule is to "Always protect yourself" / "Always keep your hands up" so your "glass jaw" if you do have one, isn't compromised. If you have a glass jaw, sparring will tell you soon enough.
3. Sparring equals cardivascular conditioning. In a street fight, whoever runs out of gas 1st, usually gets his *** handed to him. That is a simple fact."

Well, at the risk of sounding repetitive myself, I would ask that you do go back and read through some of the posts previously made, as these questions are covered. But in short,
1: A "sparring" match is against a similarly trained opponent (or at least trained in a similar style/method), and as such is no real indication of effectiveness of technique against anyone but someone trained in the same methodology as yourself, and usually under restrictive rules.
2:Well, this can be done in any number of ways. And it isn't covered at all in no-contact sparring, so while I thoroughly agree with you that it is a vital (and often under-emphasised) aspect of martial art training to be able to take a hit as well as deliver one, you cannot take sparring as the way to find out. There are just too many other methods which can be used as drills in a much more effective way, and there are too many variants on the concept of sparring that do not include contact for it to be particularly viable here.
3: As for who runs out of gas first, this is absolutely essential... for a competition. If you are training for survival, most fights last 3 to 10 seconds, so endurance isn't so much of an issue. However, the ability to handle the adrenaline dump and it's after-effects is vital.

So, in essence (once again), it depends entirely on why you are training, how you train in your system, and how you art your art define "sparring". And finally, if anyone feels that the traditional Japanese form of free-form training (randori) is less scary than the more competitive versions of sparring, I invite you to recognise that the traditional is far closer to a fight in that there is an attacker who is commited to attacking when the defender doesn't know hwo they are coming at them, and the defender is responding in ways the attacker doesn't know to prepare for. As in most fights, there is an attacker and a defender, as opposed to sparring in which there are 2 aggressors (which is not actually realistic at all).

 

[ap Oweyn]

The last two replies sound as though I was accusing people of being afraid of sparring. You missed my point. It wasn't a rhetorical question. If someone rejects sparring because they've got particular medical concerns, they've found tools that work better for them, or they haven't developed and/or found a sparring format that addresses their concerns, that's one thing. I was asking, genuinely, whether the original poster was afraid of the idea of sparring. IF they were, I was suggesting that confronting that fear was a benefit to him or her. I was NOT suggesting that everyone who rejects sparring is afraid of it. Dig?

 

[ap Oweyn]

The reason is that unless both fighters have very good technique, a sparring session becomes about 'winning' and not about improving technique. Randori within Genbukan is only done at higher levels that have proven they have good technique.

I don't believe that. Sparring is about whatever a teacher reinforces in his students. If he touts it as a tool to develop technique, that's how it will be viewed.

In fact, I think that idea is actually undermined by this policy of only having higher ranks spar. Because, by then, two things have happened: 1) the person has developed a reputation as a skilled proponent of his system; a reputation that stands to be tarnished in sparring (because, let's face it, everyone looks bad in sparring at one time or another) and 2) people develop a sense of technique based on more ideal circumstances; a sense that comes crumbling down once sparring is finally introduced.

To my mind, the sooner sparring is introduced, the better it serves as a learning tool. I believe a lot of the bad sparring I see stems from the mental hiccup people get when their technique doesn't look and feel the way it did in line practice, pad work, or kata. The earlier they get to grips with that sense of dissonance, the sooner they start to internalize a sense of how it will actually feel in its less-idealized state.

Also, by using sparring as a learning tool early on, you establish that sparring is the laboratory. Not the showcase. Less ego involved when everyone in the match understands that they're still in the process of developing the tools.

I am not afraid of randori, but I flat out refuse to fight full contact.
I am a software developer / systems engineer. I need my brain. I am not going to let people pound me in the head for no good reason. I had a severe concussion once in my life, and that was enough. Accidents happen during partner drill and resistance training as well, and I accept that. I am just not going to invite it.

Who said anything about full contact? I'm a former writer/editor, former counselor, and current stay-at-home dad. You don't think I need a brain?

First of all, people have the option of wearing headgear and gloves. I sparred in boxing and can still form a coherent sentence. I competed in full-contact stick sparring under the WEKAF format and can still walk a straight line.

But the OP never even mentioned full contact. They just said sparring. I personally was intimidated by sparring, even the comparatively light contact sparring we did in taekwondo. It was simply the feeling of being in direct physical conflict with someone else that bothered me. Level of contact was inconsequential. Being matched up against someone else was enough to make me very uncomfortable at that age.

Conflict often makes people uncomfortable, even without the threat of physical harm.

And if some people label that as fear: whatever. Being able to sit behind a computer screen 12 hours per day without a headache and providing an income is higher on my priorities list than being a tough full contact fighter.

I'm not a tough full-contact fighter. I spend my days changing diapers and steaming carrots. So there's no need to be defensive about this. As I said in my previous post, you've misunderstood my point here. Okay?

I don't think we're actually in nearly as much disagreement as you seem to think. Cool?


Stuart

 

[Chris Parker]

Yes, but this is a direct quote from your post...

There have been some really well considered answers about training methods, types of sparring, mental rehearsal, etc. But the first question that leaps to my mind is "why would you set out not to do such a major component of martial arts training?"

Are you afraid of sparring? (And I'm asking this of everyone, not just the OP.) Why? What scares you? I ask this because it seems to me that overcoming that fear or trepidation is both an important personal goal and a useful exercise in coming to grips with the effect of adrenaline and intimidation.

Try to skirt around it and you'll just have short changed yourself.

Now, to me, phrases such as "I'm asking this of everyone, not just the OP" does imply everyone who doesn't spar. Did we mis-read? You also have a direct link in thought process between "Why wouldn't you..." and "Are you afraid?". Whether deliberate or not, having one question follow directly from another creates a link between the two concepts, giving the impression that you feel that if you don't spar, then you are afraid. I'm sure you can understand how we came to that conclusion, yes?

I personally didn't see anything in your post which alluded any other reason for not sparring, other than fear. And we didn't treat it as rhetorical, you may notice. We answered.

That said, I do agree that if you are experiencing fear, confronting it is a very important, and powerful action. It is to be recommended to each and every person, in as many forms as possible, whether that is sparring, or diving out of a plane, or trying a new food for the first time! So if we did mis-read your statement, I for one apologise, but I was simply following the words you posted.

 

[ap Oweyn]

Now, to me, phrases such as "I'm asking this of everyone, not just the OP" does imply everyone who doesn't spar. Did we mis-read? You also have a direct link in thought process between "Why wouldn't you..." and "Are you afraid?". Whether deliberate or not, having one question follow directly from another creates a link between the two concepts, giving the impression that you feel that if you don't spar, then you are afraid. I'm sure you can understand how we came to that conclusion, yes?

Sure I can. But only if you assumed it was rhetorical. I suppose I could've taken the time to provide other possible reasons. But 1) it was late and 2) I thought that other reasons had already been thoughtfully and thoroughly covered by previous posters. A fact that I believe I acknowledged in my very first sentence.

I personally didn't see anything in your post which alluded any other reason for not sparring, other than fear. And we didn't treat it as rhetorical, you may notice. We answered.

As I say, I thought the other reasons had already been sufficiently covered. And people answer rhetorical questions all the time. The nature of the answers suggests a foregone conclusion on my part (which wasn't true).

That said, I do agree that if you are experiencing fear, confronting it is a very important, and powerful action. It is to be recommended to each and every person, in as many forms as possible, whether that is sparring, or diving out of a plane, or trying a new food for the first time! So if we did mis-read your statement, I for one apologise, but I was simply following the words you posted.

Hey, as a writer, I know that things can always be worded better. I'm used to posting on a different forum. Perhaps if you knew me better, as they do over there, it wouldn't have come off that way. I'll have to remember to start over from scratch here.

No need to apologize, in any event.


Stuart

 

[Chris Parker]

Cool. I can certainly understand posting late at night, and that affecting your posting... and, yes, you did reference other answers in your post, but then continued with "the first thing that comes to my mind", so I took that as your primary argument. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[ap Oweyn]

Cool. I can certainly understand posting late at night, and that affecting your posting... and, yes, you did reference other answers in your post, but then continued with "the first thing that comes to my mind", so I took that as your primary argument. Thanks for the clarification.

Next time, I'll include my standard (and exhaustive) list of disclaimers. Remember, you brought this on yourselves.

 

[Bruno@MT]

Ok let me put it differently: My current system does not contain sparring. I like it very much and I am going to stick with it for the foreseeable future. That is why I don't do randori. I like (love) groundfighting but as I mentioned it is not part of my training. I was explained the reason for not sparring, and to me they make sense. If you disagree, then we can agree to disagree.

If a system would demand full contact sparring, I would not do it for the reasons I already mentioned. You mention head gear and gloves. When I was doing modern JJ I sometimes sparred like that. When I accidentally stepped into my sensei's punch, my lights went out. I felt sick all day.
Even with gloves and gear, the statistics about headtrauma with boxers are shocking. Boxers still die from blunt force trauma. There is a thread running in the boxing forum right now about a death after a title fight. No matter how much protection you use, getting pound in the head -will- cause a level of brain damage.

 

[ap Oweyn]

Even with gloves and gear, the statistics about headtrauma with boxers are shocking. Boxers still die from blunt force trauma. There is a thread running in the boxing forum right now about a death after a title fight. No matter how much protection you use, getting pound in the head -will- cause a level of brain damage.

I don't train that way any longer. I want to use a level of contact that forces people to address the mental reaction to getting hit, without dealing with the physiological damage. Believe me, I don't want any life-altering sparring sessions either. My kids need me thinking straight.



Stuart

 

[BLACK LION]

you do what you train... you train what you do...

you are either trained or untrained...


You could have been punching a human drawing on a brick wall for 10 years and it can still translate into real life situation... most people who survive violence had the same thing in common... the unwaivering will to live so much that they forged thier own reality...

 

[sgtmac_46]

There is a thread running in the boxing forum right now about a death after a title fight. No matter how much protection you use, getting pound in the head -will- cause a level of brain damage.

Is fighting......is not safe.

 

[sgtmac_46]

real simple, as I am a simple man.

if you aint used to getting hit, it's gonna be ugly when you do get hit.

and you WILL get hit on the street.

True, that........nothing like getting punched in the nose hard by someone who means it........you don't want the first time to be someone who means you ultimate ill.

 

[sgtmac_46]

Real, hard sparring is where you strip away what you KNOW from what you THINK you know.......it's not about gaining a truth, it's about losing an illusion and subsequently training accordingly.

 

[nelsonkari]

How bad?

Life and death bad.

I believe the late BL once said:

"A fighter must be hurt occasionally and stung often in order to keep cool in a kill or get killed situation."

I agree with Bruce. Learing the latest dance steps won't save you butt on the street. If you've never felt the pain of a KO it is hard to learn how important it is to learn your basic blocks.

Just one man's opinion.

Nelson Kari

 

[BLACK LION]

How bad?

Life and death bad.

I believe the late BL once said:

"A fighter must be hurt occasionally and stung often in order to keep cool in a kill or get killed situation."

I agree with Bruce. Learing the latest dance steps won't save you butt on the street. If you've never felt the pain of a KO it is hard to learn how important it is to learn your basic blocks.

Just one man's opinion.

Nelson Kari

Pain is the teacher.... it has been since we were born... its a language all man and animals understand. You can tell a child 100 times not to touch the stove becuase its hot... buit they never seem to learn until after they get burned... this reciprocates throughout the duration of our lives and if we understand it and harness it we can separate the truth from fiction in your training real quick.... this is why force on force is covering so much ground.... we normally train with and against dry guns but found the truth once we inserted pellets into the chamber and put some gas behind them... once you get shot point blank with a 500fps pellet you learn quick whats right and what will get you mortally wounded...

 

[Big Don]

To my aging mind, this type of question is symptomatic of the schizophrenic society we seem to live in today, where physical violence is something that young people often see in media but very rarely are allowed to experience (at a non-lethal level).

You allow them to experience lethal levels? You are bad ***...

When I was young {and no it's not all that long ago :lol:}, people did not need sparring in their martial arts training to know what taking and giving a 'hit' in the real world felt like. We got an awful lot of that from schoolyard fights and the punishments that usually devolved from same .

I couldn't agree with you more.

It would appear that our youth are now so wrapped up in cotton wool that the only violence they encounter in daily life is shooting each other; not a lot of help in unarmed martial arts .

Sparring in any empty-hand art is a quick way of getting students to appreciate timing and distance so that their 'solo' training visualisation has something to found itself upon. Other than that it's just plain fun - or at least it was for me in my empty-hand days.

IMO, learning Katas/forms, Sets, techniques are precursors to sparring. Sparring, a controlled form of fighting, is the fun part, and the GOAL of martial arts is to be a good fighter, at least to me.

 

[Shinobi Teikiatsu]

My instructor has just started incorporating sparring into our curriculum (At the end of classes), and I love it.

The way I see it, sparring is good if you allow full contact, but in a controlled environment. You know the person you spar with and you know when to pull out of the fight, and you have people that can help to tell you when the match is over. Sparring is good because it conditions your endurance and shows you what you're good at, what you're bad at, and what your favorite techniques are.

I think we should view sparring as a tool for our training, in the sense that it helps our form and technique, not that it better prepares us for that street fight that we all seem to crave or fear.

Granted, all forms of martial art will, in one way or another, help prepare you for a real fight, but our ultimate goal should be simply to perfect ourselves through our training, not to be able to best any for. I used to train because I was always afraid that one day I'd be walking down the street and someone would pull a gun on me, then I realized that, even if I train for 20 years, if someone pulls a gun on me, the odds are slim that I'll walk away from it. That said, the chances of that happening are pretty slim as well, depending on where you are. That's when I realized that I should train just to train, to clear my mind, to stay healthy, and to have fun.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to spar to prepare for a street fight, we should spar just to better ourselves. ALL of our training should help us in a street fight, as there are people who do nothing but kata all day and can defend themselves pretty well, I've seen it.

 

[Franc0]

1: A "sparring" match is against a similarly trained opponent (or at least trained in a similar style/method), and as such is no real indication of effectiveness of technique against anyone but someone trained in the same methodology as yourself, and usually under restrictive rules.
And who sets these rules of matching skill levels? Your school may, but not mine, so please don't place the limitations of your training as a comparison, cuz they're not even close.
2:Well, this can be done in any number of ways. And it isn't covered at all in no-contact sparring, so while I thoroughly agree with you that it is a vital (and often under-emphasised) aspect of martial art training to be able to take a hit as well as deliver one, you cannot take sparring as the way to find out. There are just too many other methods which can be used as drills in a much more effective way, and there are too many variants on the concept of sparring that do not include contact for it to be particularly viable here.
OK, I can see your view, but for the benefit of others, explain to me and the others who are reading this, the "other" methods of how one is to measure whether or nor not you can take the hits. Do we stand still and see how hard a shot we can take?

3: As for who runs out of gas first, this is absolutely essential... for a competition. If you are training for survival, most fights last 3 to 10 seconds, so endurance isn't so much of an issue. However, the ability to handle the adrenaline dump and it's after-effects is vital.
So you can fully predict that a street confrontation will last you 3 to 10 seconds? If we all had the gift of determining/guessing how long a confrontation will last, wouldn't we all train towards acheiving that? Sorry but thats a limitation. I do however agree that controlling the adrenalin dump is important.

So, in essence (once again), it depends entirely on why you are training, how you train in your system, and how you art your art define "sparring". And finally, if anyone feels that the traditional Japanese form of free-form training (randori) is less scary than the more competitive versions of sparring, I invite you to recognise that the traditional is far closer to a fight in that there is an attacker who is commited to attacking when the defender doesn't know hwo they are coming at them, and the defender is responding in ways the attacker doesn't know to prepare for. As in most fights, there is an attacker and a defender, as opposed to sparring in which there are 2 aggressors (which is not actually realistic at all).
OK my friend, this is something we agree upon. Part of our training is what we call D/A Sparring (Defender'Aggressor Sparring) which is basically learning to react against the sucker punch/direct attack. This where the elements of what we were talking about comes in to play. This is what separates "sparring' from "reactive defenses". The prior (sparring) helps to develope skill sets such as the jab, combos and the ability to take a hit. DA works on the more immediate apps. Kinda see the diff?

Franco

[/quote]

 

[Bruno@MT]

Real, hard sparring is where you strip away what you KNOW from what you THINK you know.......it's not about gaining a truth, it's about losing an illusion and subsequently training accordingly.

To know whether a technique works, you can also use partner drill (1, 2, 3, ...) step training against a resisting partner. The more experienced you get, the more you can add variations etc. This is how traditional martial arts have always been practised, and that seems to work too.

Is fighting......is not safe.

There is always risk with MA.
I have practised my basic tai sabaki enough that my sensei knows that I know what I am doing ( I am by no means at a high level though), and that I should be able to evade hard attacks and not just the slow 'see the bokken coming what am I supposed to do' attacks.

If I don't move or do the wrong thing, I will get hit pretty hard and possibly end up with a concussion if I am unlucky. I accept that.

I am currently practising zenpo tenkai (handstand flip), and preparing to learn koho tenkai (handstand backflip) even though they are not mandatory. I've already fallen hundreds of time, and I will fall some more. If I fall the wrong way, I can break my collarbone, arms, wrist, or worst case my neck.
And I accept that too.

If I practise blocks with my sensei and he tells me that he will hit to get me, I had better do something to prevent that from happening. Fine, no problem.

But setting out like a boxer, knowing that it is not a risk but a certainty that I will get hit in the head time and time again, and that I am guaranteed to have measureable brain damage... -that- is the part I object to.

To me, the risk of getting injured in full contact sparring (the consequences of head blows) outweighs the risk of not doing full contact sparring and being less prepared for full contact hits on the street.

My head sensei seems to be able to handle himself very well without full contact sparring, as do other senior ninjutsu practisioner. Even if full contact would prepare them better still, they are better prepared for conforntation than 99% of the people. So absence of full contact does not make a system inherently worthless imo.