Grey Eyed Bandit
Master of Arts
Seeing that there tends to be some disagreement and confusion about sparring practice within the Bujinkan, and with me being indoors with a cold for the time being, I thought I would at least give it a shot to put that debate on a hold for a while by creating this thread. I'm going to go through (through the best of my recollection at this point) all the sparring types, sparring-related drills and practices with one or several free elements to them I personally have experienced through my meager experience of soon-to-be eight years altogether of practicing Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu. I will try to give you a bit of my personal opinion on them and what I've experienced when doing them.
All I have said elsewhere before, the risk of sparring to early is that it may actually interfere with the practitioners's motivation for training, in that they have not yet realized that there are indeed circumstances during which certain techniques may be applied and others where they may not.
As has been seen time and again, some people may simply admit defeat once they find themselves unable to catch a boxing jab and apply an armbar or a wrist lock against the very person with which they first practiced that technique. Once this happens, there is the unfortunate risk of them settling on the techniques they may pull off in sparring practice only, and not putting in enough effort to understand where other things may be applicable. In this sense, sparring may become a limiting factor.
In my experience, the biggest breakthrough in training for many people including myself, is the day when you learn to stop just focusing on yourself and your movements, and start trying to figure out in which way your movements affect the other person's body, his balance, his posture and his will to attack. Because that is in my opinion the main reason this art is so difficult to learn; it is not enough to concentrate on yourself, you have to maintain a constant sense of control over your opponent's movements, or as Hatsumi calls it, "enveloping" your adversary.
Now I'm not claiming to have gotten the hang of doing this, far, far from it. But one of the most important guidelines regarding the achievement of this control in my experience, is to get rid of the syndrome I like to call "white belt's overbite" or "white belt's shuffle" - that is, your arms and upper body moving frenetically while your legs are totally straight and your lower body is more or less immobile.
Since grappling and ground fighting is such a can of worms at times, I'm going to start from there and work my way up.
One on one submission wrestling with no deliberate striking is probably one of the most physically demanding sparring drills, but also one of the funniest, once you learn to like it. In my experience there hasn't really been much need to tell people that the goal of the exercise is first and foremost a conditioning one, and that it isn't Bujinkan SOP to "force" a technique through in real life (not to mention to ignore of other factors such as hidden weapons or backup from either participant's friends). Mainly, this has been because I have most often been lucky enough to do this drill with people I knew from before, but should that not be the case, then it may become a breeding ground for injuries as well as misconceptions about taijutsu practice as such - I for one would never conclude that I would always be able to defeat someone IRL regardless of the circumstances just because I beat him/her in a grappling match. That may however occur among beginners who haven't really gotten the hang of what the Bujinkan has got to offer yet.
From a purely technical point of view, I find it a bit sad that this exercise is often done by people who haven't been taught a substantial technique repertoire beforehand. It need not be BJJ-influenced techniques but simply demonstrations of how to apply simple things like oni kudaki, take ori and various chokes on the ground. But then again, that shouldn't be too much of a problem if you keep the proper perspective in mind and remember that the physical conditioning is the main purpose.
Other varieties of grappling sparring include doing the above with closed eyes, and groups of four people gathering on a mat space of about four square meters, and attempting to push each other outside of that zone, or one person lying down flat on his stomach who attempts to stand up with both feet on the ground at a given signal whilst another one is trying to hold him down, sometimes with kansetsu waza but most often with mere pinning techniques. This in my opinion is an excellent drill when used in conjunction with grappling sparring, so as to practice getting up quickly and not staying on the ground with someone who wants to keep you there. Then of course you have "ukemi tag" which is exactly what it sounds like - one guy tries to tag the others while they attempt to escape, but their only movement option is rolling in any direction.
Moving up from the ground for now, there is the classical type of judo randori in which you try to throw or sweep your partner (no follow-up on the ground, the thrower has to stay on his feet). Something that complicates the matter is that when done in the Bujinkan, the premises are often such that you may not release your hands from the kumiuchi grab, and if sacrifice throws aren't allowed either this drill often ends in a stalemate, because both know that there aren't a whole lot of techniques one can expect to be used, and therefore countering becomes very easy as long as one isn't caught off guard. When done properly, if you ask me, it can be a good way of indirectly demonstrating the limitations that adhering to set rules bears with it. Other balance drills would be for two people to grab a belt, a bo staff or each other's forearms and try to unbalance each other by making the other move his feet or loose his grip. You may also have two or three persons stand in a triangle while using pushes and shoves to make each other move their feet, or you can have two people standing with only their palms and their toes touching the ground and let them try to pull out each other's hands so that they'll fall and hit the ground with their torso.
There is also the drill in which one person wearing boxing gloves has to use striking and footwork to evade the other trying to clinch him and throw/sweep/take down. This may also be done one on two, or without boxing gloves if one uses only palm strikes to the body.
Boxing and kickboxing sparring in my experience is most often done with full contact strikes to the body and semi-contact to the head. Varieties include one person using boxing gloves trying to strike the other, whose only goal is to use evasive footwork and practice maintaining kamae while in motion (this may be done with swords as well). I have also experienced instances in which NHB/Vale Tudo gloves have been used to drill kihon happo and/or kata from Gyokko ryu at a slightly increased speed and with harder contact. I have also used focus pads, in which all strikes and swings are done full contact, except for thrusting with the edge of the pad towards the head which is done in semi-contact. Finally, there is the so-called b*tch-slap sparring in which you try to hit the back of your opponent's shoulders or the inside of this thighs with your palm, and those who get hit have to do 10 pushups or situps.
All in all, boxing-type sparring when used correctly (that is, with people who have trained long enough to UNDERSTAND, not just know, that applied Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu does not use fixed fighting stances) does give a fair amount of eye-openers in regards to the principles of kamae, but I still cringe when people who do it for the first time start jumping to the conclusion that that is the way the average str337 aggressor is going to be hitting you.
With pads, another interesting drill reportedly favoured by Yagyu Shinkage ryu (only with swords instead of pads) is to have a group of people standing in a circle, with a lone guy in the middle. The circle then moves around becoming smaller and smaller, and the people in it may even at times move in on the middle person at an appropriate speed, and he uses any and all kinds of strikes to keep them at bay.
With smaller focus pads, there is always the muay thai-like practice of moving them around while the striker tries to hit them with fists, slaps or shuto without letting lapse his kamae.
Then we have a classic Bujinkan practice method - good old muto dori/muto taihenjutsu. We all know that beginners often seem to think that getting hit with a shinai hurts way more than it actually does, so you can imagine the motivation for getting out of the way would be even greater when bokken are used instead (there is also the old horror story of a shihan who unfortunately doesn't train anymore, who used to hurl a bo staff full speed towards beginners's legs and expect them to roll over it - on a concrete floor, no less). Muto dori is anything but a static training drill - you can never be really sure about how long you have to wait each time before the attack comes, how deep the cut will be and how fast it will be heading towards your head or knees. If you don't think you learn distance, timing and mental preparation walking towards someone armed with a shinai who may or may not slash and thrust at you whilst expecting you to react properly by rolling under, over or away from the attack, think again.
This very principle of the person you're training with alternating the frequency and power with which he'll attack you (even while still holding true to the form) can be applied pretty much anywhere, and is a great method for developing dynamic action and thinking even without free sparring. Even with a right cross boxer punch, there will be a time during which that elbow is extended to such a degree that you may be able to break it, and with training you will hopefully learn how to time, isolate and take advantage of that moment. A similar method is what the people of a particular dojo refer to as "rock-and-roll kihon happo". Basically, this means drilling the kihon happo or similar simple and basic techniques at a relatively high speed and with a just bit more power than semi-contact, while the person acting as uke attempts to protect himself a little more than usually - for instance, he may use his forearm to protect himself a bit in ichimonji no kata, pull his arm back towards himself to protect his wrist against a gyaku or retract the punching arm that you've just blocked to protect his ribcage/armpit while doing jumonji no kata. You may also do things like trying to apply hon gyaku, with your uke suddenly tensing up, upon which you change your direction a couple of times to distract him and then complete the crank when you've gotten him to relax. Naturally, tori has to adapt in various ways that he may find appropriate as well. Something that is absolutely essential for this drill to be beneficial is in my opinion that both participants know and have confidence in each other, so that it does not wind up being a competition. Of course, this holds true for all kinds of sparring.
Going further in this direction, there is also the notion of "practicing kata in such a way that it feels slightly like randori". An example of this would be during an instance this summer when I and another guy were practicing "Kanpo" from Kukishinden ryu Sojutsu. Seeing as we were outdoors with plenty of room to pedal, and I had a spear with a business end he wished to stay as far away from as possible, he simply didn't seem to want to stay put whenever I tried to thrust at him. Similarly, if I got too close to him he would attempt to strike my spear aside, charge in and cut me down, and also I made sure to alter the time between my attacks as often as possible. This too can be used to teach proper reflexes. Incidentally, this is also the basic setting of what the modern combatives crowd tend to refer to as "reactive combat scenarios".
Another drill which is useful for teaching kamae in motion and also favoured in many Indonesian systems is a special kind of foot trapping drill, in which two people start out standing in ichimonji close to each other with their own right foot in trapping position against the other person's right foot. You then start out with one person retreating backwards by taking a large step so that his left side is in lead. At the same time, the other guy moves in to trap his opponent's foot once again, and he may also throw a single strike of any kind with the same timing as he's moving his feet, and the other guy parries it so as to maintains his kamae, all in one motion. Another popular Silat-influenced method would be to start out doing any technique and then stopping just short of securing your control over your opponent, so that he may counter and to the same thing to you once again.
There is also something we did this summer, which started out as a ganseki nage with uke having an extended arm, which he then bends to protect himself while you flow into o-gyaku, oni kudaki, musha dori, katamaki, te makura or similar stuff. The unwritten rule was that uke stopped resisting if the technique you put on was secured to something like 60-70 percent or more, and again, this isn't something you can really do successfully with someone you don't know and trust.
With swords, I've done shinai sparring with gloves (and a few times with a helmet when I was younger, I believe) in which thrusts were allowed semi-contact and to the abdomen, as well as full contact sparring with soft boffer swords (and a handful of times, with a soft bo staff versus sword) without any protection and the only rule being no thrusts to the face or groin. It's kind of funny that the arms and hands are pretty much always the first to get cut, and it's also kind of funny to notice that this approach is used in pretty much all of the nine basic sword kata in the Kukishinden Bikenjutsu, if memory serves me correctly...
However, proper cutting and moving with a Japanese katana takes quite an amount of time to be properly learned, and it is all too easy to fool oneself into thinking one knows how to handle a katana just by sparring practice alone. Another problem with this kind of training is that one may forget the high stakes of an actual duel with sharp swords - that is, if you screw up during initial contact, you're pretty much screwed without any possibility to make up for your misjudgement. Furthermore, blocking tends to be much more frequent in these kinds of matches than what would be preferable in real life. One way of circumventing this problem is for the "losing" person to instantly name the place where he's been hit, such as "right forearm", "left knee", "left shoulder" and so forth after which the duel is reset - kind of like kendo sparring procedure in reverse.
I have done free knife-to-knife sparring several times, but as Tim Bathurst pointed out last year, if the other guy has a knife and you know it, and you have a knife and he knows it, the most advisable thing to do is really to beat a hasty retreat. Knife versus empty hands in my experience most often revolves around the unarmed guy using footwork to evade, parry and counterattack the incoming knife arm, or (as mentioned above, depending on the intensity of the exercise at that particular time) to isolate the knife arm at a certain point and then move in on the knife wielding assailant, which can of course also be done in regular kata practice with heightened intensity and a smaller margin of error. As with all sparring, the reason many people wind up getting cut so much is very often that they attempt to hang back and remain defensive too long. At the very least, there is often a good chance that an aggressive and overwhelming counterattack has a larger probability of success than hanging back and staying in the opponent's "sweet spot" for the punishing type of knife assault, which is described on Animal's webpage under "dueling versus survival".
The "Circle of Death" in which the Yagyu ryu circle scenario is replicated with the defender empty handed, is a common practice method in many martial arts and has also been effectively employed by the Guardian Angels since the 70's. Sparring may have it's place but drills such as this in which the middle person has to improvise his defensive tactics on the spot can get you very far too, all the while reducing the risk of injury.
Finally we have the so called "Nakadai sparring" - that is, one person strikes with all kinds of attacks with varying speed and power depending on the particular instance and the skill of the practitioners, while the other one evades his attacks and when told to by the instructor tries to take him down however he likes. The manner in which the attacker tries to resist may of course be increased as the two participants grow more skilled, but for now let's just say it's akin to what he would do in "rock-and-roll kihon happo" - not quite fighting for his life, but not quite compliant either.
Now, in my opinion both these kinds of drills are absolutely and utterly useless, sometimes also counterproductive, if the people doing them a) have not yet practiced basic techniques under what I believe Daniel Weidman once described as something along the lines of "the optimal circumstances in which to apply those particular techniques", b) have not yet learned how to integrate the motion of their feet with the maintaining of kamae, c) have not done very much bag- or focus mitts hitting (if you don't know what it's like to hit something that is relatively static, how are you effectively going to hit someone who is moving around?) and d) know and have mutual trust in each other. All of this takes time to achieve and to understand, longer time than many may be willing to admit. What's also important IMHO is that the terms and conditions are very clearly defined beforehand. That's NOT to say the whole affair should be turned into an overly regulated sporting contest - if both people know each other and are able to be friends at the end of the day no matter what happens I think you can go at each other as hard as you like.
It's also necessary if you want to minimize the risks of injury that the participants know and respect the consequences of getting hit and act accordingly, so that you don't have to actually connect with things like slaps to the ear, knees to the groin or elbows to the throat. I'm saying this because it's all too easy to forget that getting hit with and without padding and regulated legal targets are two entirely different ballgames.
If I haven't made this clear before I have experienced all of these kinds of sparring numerous times, unless stated otherwise. Having said all of this, one thing that isn't mentioned very often is the possibility to train with a large degree of focus. If we see all training as a game we may learn the physical skills, but we may not learn how to stay focused. It is of course easier to remain focused whilst doing a drill than to be focused in the midst of chaos, which is illustrated by the quote "you use the drill to instill a skill, you fight with the skill and not the drill". In regards to the relatively slow training often employed within the Bujinkan, keep in mind that it is more difficult to generate power while training slowly, which hopefully may in due time lead to better developed biomechanics and thus greater power.
"Begin by realizing that all training is a simulation of reality. The operative word here is 'simulation'."
- Bob Orlando
Now, I need a pizza. :asian:
All I have said elsewhere before, the risk of sparring to early is that it may actually interfere with the practitioners's motivation for training, in that they have not yet realized that there are indeed circumstances during which certain techniques may be applied and others where they may not.
As has been seen time and again, some people may simply admit defeat once they find themselves unable to catch a boxing jab and apply an armbar or a wrist lock against the very person with which they first practiced that technique. Once this happens, there is the unfortunate risk of them settling on the techniques they may pull off in sparring practice only, and not putting in enough effort to understand where other things may be applicable. In this sense, sparring may become a limiting factor.
In my experience, the biggest breakthrough in training for many people including myself, is the day when you learn to stop just focusing on yourself and your movements, and start trying to figure out in which way your movements affect the other person's body, his balance, his posture and his will to attack. Because that is in my opinion the main reason this art is so difficult to learn; it is not enough to concentrate on yourself, you have to maintain a constant sense of control over your opponent's movements, or as Hatsumi calls it, "enveloping" your adversary.
Now I'm not claiming to have gotten the hang of doing this, far, far from it. But one of the most important guidelines regarding the achievement of this control in my experience, is to get rid of the syndrome I like to call "white belt's overbite" or "white belt's shuffle" - that is, your arms and upper body moving frenetically while your legs are totally straight and your lower body is more or less immobile.
Since grappling and ground fighting is such a can of worms at times, I'm going to start from there and work my way up.
One on one submission wrestling with no deliberate striking is probably one of the most physically demanding sparring drills, but also one of the funniest, once you learn to like it. In my experience there hasn't really been much need to tell people that the goal of the exercise is first and foremost a conditioning one, and that it isn't Bujinkan SOP to "force" a technique through in real life (not to mention to ignore of other factors such as hidden weapons or backup from either participant's friends). Mainly, this has been because I have most often been lucky enough to do this drill with people I knew from before, but should that not be the case, then it may become a breeding ground for injuries as well as misconceptions about taijutsu practice as such - I for one would never conclude that I would always be able to defeat someone IRL regardless of the circumstances just because I beat him/her in a grappling match. That may however occur among beginners who haven't really gotten the hang of what the Bujinkan has got to offer yet.
From a purely technical point of view, I find it a bit sad that this exercise is often done by people who haven't been taught a substantial technique repertoire beforehand. It need not be BJJ-influenced techniques but simply demonstrations of how to apply simple things like oni kudaki, take ori and various chokes on the ground. But then again, that shouldn't be too much of a problem if you keep the proper perspective in mind and remember that the physical conditioning is the main purpose.
Other varieties of grappling sparring include doing the above with closed eyes, and groups of four people gathering on a mat space of about four square meters, and attempting to push each other outside of that zone, or one person lying down flat on his stomach who attempts to stand up with both feet on the ground at a given signal whilst another one is trying to hold him down, sometimes with kansetsu waza but most often with mere pinning techniques. This in my opinion is an excellent drill when used in conjunction with grappling sparring, so as to practice getting up quickly and not staying on the ground with someone who wants to keep you there. Then of course you have "ukemi tag" which is exactly what it sounds like - one guy tries to tag the others while they attempt to escape, but their only movement option is rolling in any direction.
Moving up from the ground for now, there is the classical type of judo randori in which you try to throw or sweep your partner (no follow-up on the ground, the thrower has to stay on his feet). Something that complicates the matter is that when done in the Bujinkan, the premises are often such that you may not release your hands from the kumiuchi grab, and if sacrifice throws aren't allowed either this drill often ends in a stalemate, because both know that there aren't a whole lot of techniques one can expect to be used, and therefore countering becomes very easy as long as one isn't caught off guard. When done properly, if you ask me, it can be a good way of indirectly demonstrating the limitations that adhering to set rules bears with it. Other balance drills would be for two people to grab a belt, a bo staff or each other's forearms and try to unbalance each other by making the other move his feet or loose his grip. You may also have two or three persons stand in a triangle while using pushes and shoves to make each other move their feet, or you can have two people standing with only their palms and their toes touching the ground and let them try to pull out each other's hands so that they'll fall and hit the ground with their torso.
There is also the drill in which one person wearing boxing gloves has to use striking and footwork to evade the other trying to clinch him and throw/sweep/take down. This may also be done one on two, or without boxing gloves if one uses only palm strikes to the body.
Boxing and kickboxing sparring in my experience is most often done with full contact strikes to the body and semi-contact to the head. Varieties include one person using boxing gloves trying to strike the other, whose only goal is to use evasive footwork and practice maintaining kamae while in motion (this may be done with swords as well). I have also experienced instances in which NHB/Vale Tudo gloves have been used to drill kihon happo and/or kata from Gyokko ryu at a slightly increased speed and with harder contact. I have also used focus pads, in which all strikes and swings are done full contact, except for thrusting with the edge of the pad towards the head which is done in semi-contact. Finally, there is the so-called b*tch-slap sparring in which you try to hit the back of your opponent's shoulders or the inside of this thighs with your palm, and those who get hit have to do 10 pushups or situps.
All in all, boxing-type sparring when used correctly (that is, with people who have trained long enough to UNDERSTAND, not just know, that applied Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu does not use fixed fighting stances) does give a fair amount of eye-openers in regards to the principles of kamae, but I still cringe when people who do it for the first time start jumping to the conclusion that that is the way the average str337 aggressor is going to be hitting you.
With pads, another interesting drill reportedly favoured by Yagyu Shinkage ryu (only with swords instead of pads) is to have a group of people standing in a circle, with a lone guy in the middle. The circle then moves around becoming smaller and smaller, and the people in it may even at times move in on the middle person at an appropriate speed, and he uses any and all kinds of strikes to keep them at bay.
With smaller focus pads, there is always the muay thai-like practice of moving them around while the striker tries to hit them with fists, slaps or shuto without letting lapse his kamae.
Then we have a classic Bujinkan practice method - good old muto dori/muto taihenjutsu. We all know that beginners often seem to think that getting hit with a shinai hurts way more than it actually does, so you can imagine the motivation for getting out of the way would be even greater when bokken are used instead (there is also the old horror story of a shihan who unfortunately doesn't train anymore, who used to hurl a bo staff full speed towards beginners's legs and expect them to roll over it - on a concrete floor, no less). Muto dori is anything but a static training drill - you can never be really sure about how long you have to wait each time before the attack comes, how deep the cut will be and how fast it will be heading towards your head or knees. If you don't think you learn distance, timing and mental preparation walking towards someone armed with a shinai who may or may not slash and thrust at you whilst expecting you to react properly by rolling under, over or away from the attack, think again.
This very principle of the person you're training with alternating the frequency and power with which he'll attack you (even while still holding true to the form) can be applied pretty much anywhere, and is a great method for developing dynamic action and thinking even without free sparring. Even with a right cross boxer punch, there will be a time during which that elbow is extended to such a degree that you may be able to break it, and with training you will hopefully learn how to time, isolate and take advantage of that moment. A similar method is what the people of a particular dojo refer to as "rock-and-roll kihon happo". Basically, this means drilling the kihon happo or similar simple and basic techniques at a relatively high speed and with a just bit more power than semi-contact, while the person acting as uke attempts to protect himself a little more than usually - for instance, he may use his forearm to protect himself a bit in ichimonji no kata, pull his arm back towards himself to protect his wrist against a gyaku or retract the punching arm that you've just blocked to protect his ribcage/armpit while doing jumonji no kata. You may also do things like trying to apply hon gyaku, with your uke suddenly tensing up, upon which you change your direction a couple of times to distract him and then complete the crank when you've gotten him to relax. Naturally, tori has to adapt in various ways that he may find appropriate as well. Something that is absolutely essential for this drill to be beneficial is in my opinion that both participants know and have confidence in each other, so that it does not wind up being a competition. Of course, this holds true for all kinds of sparring.
Going further in this direction, there is also the notion of "practicing kata in such a way that it feels slightly like randori". An example of this would be during an instance this summer when I and another guy were practicing "Kanpo" from Kukishinden ryu Sojutsu. Seeing as we were outdoors with plenty of room to pedal, and I had a spear with a business end he wished to stay as far away from as possible, he simply didn't seem to want to stay put whenever I tried to thrust at him. Similarly, if I got too close to him he would attempt to strike my spear aside, charge in and cut me down, and also I made sure to alter the time between my attacks as often as possible. This too can be used to teach proper reflexes. Incidentally, this is also the basic setting of what the modern combatives crowd tend to refer to as "reactive combat scenarios".
Another drill which is useful for teaching kamae in motion and also favoured in many Indonesian systems is a special kind of foot trapping drill, in which two people start out standing in ichimonji close to each other with their own right foot in trapping position against the other person's right foot. You then start out with one person retreating backwards by taking a large step so that his left side is in lead. At the same time, the other guy moves in to trap his opponent's foot once again, and he may also throw a single strike of any kind with the same timing as he's moving his feet, and the other guy parries it so as to maintains his kamae, all in one motion. Another popular Silat-influenced method would be to start out doing any technique and then stopping just short of securing your control over your opponent, so that he may counter and to the same thing to you once again.
There is also something we did this summer, which started out as a ganseki nage with uke having an extended arm, which he then bends to protect himself while you flow into o-gyaku, oni kudaki, musha dori, katamaki, te makura or similar stuff. The unwritten rule was that uke stopped resisting if the technique you put on was secured to something like 60-70 percent or more, and again, this isn't something you can really do successfully with someone you don't know and trust.
With swords, I've done shinai sparring with gloves (and a few times with a helmet when I was younger, I believe) in which thrusts were allowed semi-contact and to the abdomen, as well as full contact sparring with soft boffer swords (and a handful of times, with a soft bo staff versus sword) without any protection and the only rule being no thrusts to the face or groin. It's kind of funny that the arms and hands are pretty much always the first to get cut, and it's also kind of funny to notice that this approach is used in pretty much all of the nine basic sword kata in the Kukishinden Bikenjutsu, if memory serves me correctly...
However, proper cutting and moving with a Japanese katana takes quite an amount of time to be properly learned, and it is all too easy to fool oneself into thinking one knows how to handle a katana just by sparring practice alone. Another problem with this kind of training is that one may forget the high stakes of an actual duel with sharp swords - that is, if you screw up during initial contact, you're pretty much screwed without any possibility to make up for your misjudgement. Furthermore, blocking tends to be much more frequent in these kinds of matches than what would be preferable in real life. One way of circumventing this problem is for the "losing" person to instantly name the place where he's been hit, such as "right forearm", "left knee", "left shoulder" and so forth after which the duel is reset - kind of like kendo sparring procedure in reverse.
I have done free knife-to-knife sparring several times, but as Tim Bathurst pointed out last year, if the other guy has a knife and you know it, and you have a knife and he knows it, the most advisable thing to do is really to beat a hasty retreat. Knife versus empty hands in my experience most often revolves around the unarmed guy using footwork to evade, parry and counterattack the incoming knife arm, or (as mentioned above, depending on the intensity of the exercise at that particular time) to isolate the knife arm at a certain point and then move in on the knife wielding assailant, which can of course also be done in regular kata practice with heightened intensity and a smaller margin of error. As with all sparring, the reason many people wind up getting cut so much is very often that they attempt to hang back and remain defensive too long. At the very least, there is often a good chance that an aggressive and overwhelming counterattack has a larger probability of success than hanging back and staying in the opponent's "sweet spot" for the punishing type of knife assault, which is described on Animal's webpage under "dueling versus survival".
The "Circle of Death" in which the Yagyu ryu circle scenario is replicated with the defender empty handed, is a common practice method in many martial arts and has also been effectively employed by the Guardian Angels since the 70's. Sparring may have it's place but drills such as this in which the middle person has to improvise his defensive tactics on the spot can get you very far too, all the while reducing the risk of injury.
Finally we have the so called "Nakadai sparring" - that is, one person strikes with all kinds of attacks with varying speed and power depending on the particular instance and the skill of the practitioners, while the other one evades his attacks and when told to by the instructor tries to take him down however he likes. The manner in which the attacker tries to resist may of course be increased as the two participants grow more skilled, but for now let's just say it's akin to what he would do in "rock-and-roll kihon happo" - not quite fighting for his life, but not quite compliant either.
Now, in my opinion both these kinds of drills are absolutely and utterly useless, sometimes also counterproductive, if the people doing them a) have not yet practiced basic techniques under what I believe Daniel Weidman once described as something along the lines of "the optimal circumstances in which to apply those particular techniques", b) have not yet learned how to integrate the motion of their feet with the maintaining of kamae, c) have not done very much bag- or focus mitts hitting (if you don't know what it's like to hit something that is relatively static, how are you effectively going to hit someone who is moving around?) and d) know and have mutual trust in each other. All of this takes time to achieve and to understand, longer time than many may be willing to admit. What's also important IMHO is that the terms and conditions are very clearly defined beforehand. That's NOT to say the whole affair should be turned into an overly regulated sporting contest - if both people know each other and are able to be friends at the end of the day no matter what happens I think you can go at each other as hard as you like.
It's also necessary if you want to minimize the risks of injury that the participants know and respect the consequences of getting hit and act accordingly, so that you don't have to actually connect with things like slaps to the ear, knees to the groin or elbows to the throat. I'm saying this because it's all too easy to forget that getting hit with and without padding and regulated legal targets are two entirely different ballgames.
If I haven't made this clear before I have experienced all of these kinds of sparring numerous times, unless stated otherwise. Having said all of this, one thing that isn't mentioned very often is the possibility to train with a large degree of focus. If we see all training as a game we may learn the physical skills, but we may not learn how to stay focused. It is of course easier to remain focused whilst doing a drill than to be focused in the midst of chaos, which is illustrated by the quote "you use the drill to instill a skill, you fight with the skill and not the drill". In regards to the relatively slow training often employed within the Bujinkan, keep in mind that it is more difficult to generate power while training slowly, which hopefully may in due time lead to better developed biomechanics and thus greater power.
"Begin by realizing that all training is a simulation of reality. The operative word here is 'simulation'."
- Bob Orlando
Now, I need a pizza. :asian: