Satori or Something Like it (Thoughts on Sparring)

[Bill Mattocks]

I was recently a competitor in my third-ever karate tournament. As a late-comer to karate, and a man getting older in general, I have some thoughts on the subject that might be a different perspective from either the veteran competitor or the newcomer who is young. I am no expert - hardly even a beginner. I can offer no wisdom, just a different perspective. Forgive my verbosity; this was something I needed to write down.

I went to my first competition not due to any burning desire to participate in point-sparring. I had been to a couple competitions as an observer and photographer, and it didn't interest me that much. I could see that it wasn't really 'karate' and it wasn't really 'self-defense' either. It appeared to have elements of both in it, but in reality, since the sparring stops when a light touch is made (if the judges see it!), follow-up techniques can be less important; strategy for a longer fight isn't as important, etc. It's a game. An interesting game, and one that requires some amount of courage, along with some skill, some speed, some endurance, and even some showmanship, but a game nonetheless.

However, we had been asked to consider competing in a tournament at the end of July of this year that was to honor one of my sensei's instructors, and since I thought I should try to honor that request, I also thought I should give some thought to learning how to do this. I also developed the notion that since this competition in late July will be held just after my 50th birthday, and there is a men's advanced underbelt 50+ division, it would be an interesting birthday present to myself.

So I signed up for a local open tournament and competed.

I lost in 40 seconds or so - five points and I didn't score even one. It was amazingly fast, not to mention frustrating. My opponent wasted no time; he saw my weakness (exposed midsection) and he kicked me there five times in a row. I tried to defend, but I simply wasn't quick enough. I left that event determined to improve somehow, but also concerned that I simply wasn't fast enough and would not become fast enough anytime soon. Speed has never been something I'm that good at.

It was at this tournament that I learned that my assumptions about point-sparring had been correct - it was to a large extent a game of speed-tag. In some cases, all pretense at martial arts had been abandoned - some won with long looping overhead punches thrown in a manner that would have gotten them killed on the street, but which 'touched' the opponent lightly on top of his head, scoring a point (actually, two points in this open tournament). Some of the black belts I saw were actually fighting harder and with some semblance of karate in their moves, but I suspected it was more for the love of karate or their training than out of a desire to have a 'winning strategy'.

By the time my second tournament came up, I was determined to do more to guard my midsection. However, I still got kicked in it quite a bit. I was alert for the kick, but as soon as I saw it coming and brought my guard down to block, it was either already in, or the judge thought it was (frustrating). I did not lose so quickly, but I still lost. And I came third - out of three. I took solace in the fact that I had improved, and that because my division was so small, I had to fight much younger men. However, I was still getting kicked in the gut pretty much at will; and I was becoming resigned to the fact that I was just not fast enough.

I should note that in both these competitions - which I will not term 'fights' because, well, they didn't feel like fights, I enjoyed myself immensely. I was disappointed in my own performance, but I enjoyed the adrenalin rush, I enjoyed the pitting of skill against skill (or my lack thereof), and I felt an instant bonding with the men I had just competed against. There is something, which I've mentioned before, about looking at a person over the top of your raised fists and coming together in a clash of blows, that is a primitive and cleansing experience. It's 'real' in a way that much of modern life is not. It's not the fakery that we have to experience in our day-to-day lives, being polite to horse's asses and saying the things we must and doing the awful things we must do to get by and put bread on the table. The competition may be contrived and not real martial arts, but it is genuine competition; people strive to win against each other. It may be light violence, but it is still violence, and violence is powerful. One feels that, it courses through the veins. It's the awakener, it's real, it feels pretty good. It is more than adrenalin and endorphins, I think. There is something primordial in it.

I got some good advice before my third competition, and it worked. It basically consisted of adjusting my guard position to cover my gut (duh). Why I hadn't worked that out on my own, I don't know; but I would shuffle in using a sort of boxer's stance, hands protecting my melon, and get kicked in the gut. Using the new guard position, I was quickly able to knock down kicks as they came in - and they weren't coming as often, since I wasn't presenting my gut as a big huge target.

My third competition was also the first one where I wasn't selected to be in the first bout. So, I got to see how it was going to be. The first two guys were big and intimidating-looking; I was glad I didn't have to fight either one of them. From the start, however, they were hitting each other with much more force than I had seen in either of my previous competitions. I had seen young black belts hit each other like that, but not older (this division was age 45+) brown belts do it. I could see that I was in for a ride, and the pucker factor went up a bit.

I'm not one to get nervous; I just want to get on with it. But I can't deny that I felt the fear in the pit of my stomach as I watched these two guys hitting each other. But I kind of like that fear; it's good. Like the fighting itself, it reminds me that I'm alive and that this matters - I need to perform or I could not just lose, but get hurt. And getting hurt, well, that's part of the game, but it's not fun. Pain sucks, and at my age, healing is slow, whether I feel old or young. So I felt the fear, recognized it, and then felt the satisfaction as I knew I was the master of my fear and I was going to get in the ring no matter what, that this is what men do (sorry ladies, I know you do it too, but I can't experience it from your perspective; no offense intended!).

So my turn came and we got in the ring, and we fought. And I do mean 'fought', because we quickly moved from light touch to heavy sparring, hitting each other with power and speed and really driving the punches in. I think my opponent felt the same way I did - at least it seemed that way when we talked it over later - that we felt a joy and a rush. There was no anger directed at each other; we were not out of control or in a rage. Speaking for myself, I was on a high. I was fighting with all I had, and I was hanging in there. I was getting hit, but giving as good as I got, and it felt good. A very different experience from point-sparring, very different from trying to adhere to rules about light-touch and where we could and could not hit each other. We weren't trying to hurt each other, or even to win the competition in that sense. I felt that I was struggling, contending, grappling, with something a lot bigger than what that ring represented. And succeeding. It was a joyous feeling, incomprehensible on some level and oh, so satisfying.

It wasn't the violence itself. It wasn't the power being turned loose. It was the feeling of giving 100% of yourself to something that mattered; and although competitions don't matter and trophies don't matter, this moment mattered.

Even though we got upbraided for the level of violence and had to go again, even though I got hurt some in the next bout, I was on a high that took hours to come down. As I was driving out of town, holding the steering wheel with one hand to avoid using my jammed fingers, and trying not to cough because my ribs were killing me, as I called my wife and told her I had won third place and was coming home and yes, i was slightly injured, she said "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Yes, I was. The way the competition turned into a slugfest, the feeling of hitting and being hit, hell, even the pain; it was all good.

It's not about beating the hell out of someone - heck, I didn't even do that, my opponent and i were going toe-to-toe, pretty evenly matched, in my opinion. I didn't try to hurt him, he didn't try to hurt me. I would not have wanted for inflict pain or injury on him and would have felt horrible if I had; I'm no sadist (nor a masochist, thank goodness). It's about the physicality of violence but more about the struggle. Real struggle, not philosophical or moral or emotional or mental. Muscle against muscle, fist and foot against each other. The solid feeling of impact when delivering a punch, even the feeling of taking a solid punch and just absorbing it. I was competing with my opponent, but I was contending with something altogether different. Does that make any sense?

I am now ready for my next competition; the one I started training for at the beginning of the year. I don't know how I'll do. I don't know if it will be speed-tag or something else. I don't know if I will win or lose; all I hope for is to try my best and give a good showing for my dojo. I don't need to win or climb any more emotional mountains. I am not sure I'll even compete again after this - I may have accomplished what I needed to accomplish for a 50-year-old man facing his mortality and his loss of vigor (and hair) and seeing the world run by younger, more capable men. I know I'll never be a great karate practitioner, or the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. But I didn't need that. I needed something else. I think I found it.

Satori, or something like it.

 

[Thesemindz]

I know exactly what you mean Bill. It's one of the things I love the most about karate. Where else, as adults, is it socially acceptable to punch, kick, tackle, and choke another human being? Where else can we struggle with all our might to strangle and defend against strangles, to grab and lift and slam and be grabbed and lifted and slammed. It is visceral. It is real. For me, it is karate.

I can't get enough of it. Ever. I win. I lose. That's not the most important part. The most important part is struggling and improving. Combating and learning. Dan Anderson wrote about the power of confrontation in his classic American Freestyle Karate. If you will permit,

The Ability to Confront

“To confront – verb transitive – Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 2.a. “to cause to meet: bring face to face.”

Psychologically, everything in karate boils right down to the idea of confrontation, to face up to something. Sparring, approaches, technical information, everything.

A person's ability to confront things comes with familiarization and gradient stages of the ability to confront itself.

When you have trouble with any face of karate, it comes from a failure to confront that particular area. Example: a person is a strong technician and is tough but does not think when sparring. The thing to do is to have them confront thinking during sparring in gradient stages. 1) Plan out each attack and carry out the plan; 2) spot circuits (habit patterns) in your opponent's sparring, etc. Take him through each step until he is up to sparring and thinking.

The ability to confront is such a great part of everything. Anything you can do well is because you can confront it, meet it face to face, nose to nose with a big grin. Karate has always felt easy to me, but acceptance of getting hit in the head has never been easy. My ability to confront things is up on karate and down on getting hit in the head.

Things that you cannot confront easily will have to be worked through, but if you take any one particular thing and work it out in easily handled steps, pretty soon the punch in the head (or whatever) will not seem so awful to you.

This is how I break my students into sparring. Thanks to movies and television, beginners come in with preconceived notions of karate, ranging anywhere from macho brutality to the idea that the studio is a monastic retreat for pacifistic martial monks. But, they have one thing in common; they sit back and tense up when watching somebody else spar. Here it is so close to them, violence, punching faces, kicking groins, struggling. A sparring match can be a fearsome sight to a lot of beginners. So, I start them off easy with a punch, a stance, a kick, a block, until they are comfortable with it. Then slowly, easily in a line drill, they see that attack come at them and block it. Great. That attack was handled. Then after a while, they get into slow and easy, unstructured blocks and attacks with a partner, the same thing that bugged their eyes out in the first place, sparring. The only difference is that through a series of gradient steps, they reached a point where what was once foreign to them was now recognizable and comfortable. That is what the ability to confront is about. Anything you have trouble with, work on in easy steps until it becomes comfortable.

That's the lesson of karate to me. We learn it in a thousand different ways. We study it and apply it and restate it with the language of our studios and our styles, but in essence, karate is about confrontation. About facing the opponents, internal and external, and bringing all our strength to bear.

Sometimes we lose the battle. Sometimes we win. But as long as we rise to the challenge and grow from the experience we are always victorious. At our school, we don't compete for medals. We don't spar in tournaments. We spar in the school, and we practice spontaneous drills and activities, and we get bumps and bruises and scrapes. But the real rewards are within.

Sometimes the fighting gets rough. About a year ago I had my knee ripped to pieces and I'm still slowly recovering. A few weeks ago I bonked a brown belt on the head with a downward hammerfist and knocked him silly. Last week one of our students hurt his knee grappling and he'll be out for two weeks. But for those of us who thrive on the contact the injuries, while not exactly pleasant, are a part of the process. The pain is a part of the experience for me.

I don't want to be maimed, my knee injury was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. It has been a constant internal battle, to not allow myself to lose hope. To not drown in depression over how it has changed my training and my future. And I don't want to hurt my students, I always blame myself when a student gets hurt. It's my responsibility to provide a safe training environment. But that's karate. My wife knows. Last night I was down about my student hurting his knee and she reminded me that when I hurt my knee the most important thing for me was making sure my training partner didn't blame himself. I don't ever want my training partners or students or instructors to feel bad when I get hurt. Injuries are a risk I willingly, and admittedly somewhat gladly, accept as part of my journey in karate. The day I ripped my knee apart I'd been telling my students that karate is a contact sport and some degree of discomfort was to be expected. Then when the injury occurred, after a few minutes of shock when I could communicate again, I smiled and turned to my students and said, "I just got contacted." That's karate.

I get it Bill. It's not what everyone wants in their training. But for me, it's when I feel alive. When I'm struggling. When I'm blocking and evading and grappling and striking and being struck or held or choked or locked. When we attack each other with clubs and knives and staffs. The clash of arms. The cry of battle.

There is a kind of peace in that. A sense of being nothing more or less than yourself. Bringing all the hard work and sweat and effort to the fore to face a real challenge. Skill on skill alone.

Congratulations on your training and your competitions. Good luck in the future. We may study a skill set that's been rendered largely obsolete since the invention of the firearm several hundred years ago, but those of use who've felt the blows land and the blood pound in our skulls and our lungs burn in our chest get it. We know why we train. We know just how real it is. And how important it is, even today.

That's why I train. That's why I teach. So that I can honor the men and women who took time out of their lives to pass the traditions on to me by passing them on to others. I can never repay that gift. I can only seek to live up to that example.


-Rob

 

[chinto]

I personally am not into sparring at tournaments. I have always trained for the streets. there is a lot of skill in it, do not get me wrong, but they are not like a real fight. real fights are nasty, and over in seconds. sparring is speed tag, who looks to have gotten the shot in first wins... when I have acted as a corner judge at tournaments, I do not call shots, kicks or punches that did not have the ability to have hit hard and done damage. most judges don't care if there was any touch at all. but I just am not into the point sparring generally.

 

[Buka]

Good for you, Bill. I wish more folks had your spirit and attitude. All the best on your next time out.

Just have fun, everything else usually takes care of itself.

 

[oftheherd1]

Interesting thread. Not everyone will get it Bill. But there is a lot to what you say.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I personally am not into sparring at tournaments. I have always trained for the streets. there is a lot of skill in it, do not get me wrong, but they are not like a real fight. real fights are nasty, and over in seconds. sparring is speed tag, who looks to have gotten the shot in first wins... when I have acted as a corner judge at tournaments, I do not call shots, kicks or punches that did not have the ability to have hit hard and done damage. most judges don't care if there was any touch at all. but I just am not into the point sparring generally.

I do not disagree with you, but I have learned a few things doing point-sparring. One thing, it teaches you to react quickly. For some, that's natural. For others (including me), I had to learn it. Second, it teaches the follow-up technique and the combination. Block, yes, but then attack. Third, it helps master fear for those who need it. It is very different standing across from a sparring partner in your own dojo than it is standing across from an opponent who is an unknown value. All of these things can be useful in other situations, I think. Naturally, I agree that the techniques one might employ to score a point in point-sparring are not likely to be effective techniques in real self-defense in many cases.

 

[OKenpo942]

Bill, I think it is wonderful that you are so filled with the martial arts spirit and find true pleasure in what you do. I think that is the essence of life... that you find what truly makes you happy.

It is very inspirational to hear someone who may not be a "master" teach a lesson such as this. life is not just about reaching a goal, but the journey to get there. We are not defined by our obstacles, but how we respond to them.

James