Sparring

[Azulx]

@Buka what styles do you teach?

 

[Azulx]

Not many people know what Jow Ga is, we aren't as popular as TKD, Karate, Wing Chun, or BJJ.
You would be able to spar at the school as a guest, but as a Jow Ga student I will make you get rid of that stance. We spar with other schools and we don't care if they use their stance. We prefer that they use their own stance because it gives us a chance to fight against different fighting systems. But as a Jow Ga student, you would get lectured. If you still insisted on that stance then I would let you learn the hard way, and then give you a lecture about keeping your hands up.

For my school a high guard keeps students safe. You can see me use the high guard here.

That looks awesome! I definitely would not keep my hands down in my TKD stance if I was sparring like this. My hand placement really depends on what I feel is going on the fight.

 

[Andrew Green]

Our main rule is that the students can only use Jow Ga. We force students to fight using Jow Ga techniques and Jow Ga movement. If we see someone doing boxing then we'll call that person out and tell them to stop boxing and do Jow Ga.

I find this interesting. Just out of curiosity, would you consider yourself more interested in preservation the practicality?

I ask this because in order to fight against something you need to train with it, and against it. Variety in the way that your training partners fight is going to give you experience dealing with, and fighting against different styles.

If I have someone that comes in and has a background in something else, I want them to use that, and add and integrate what we do and teach to it.

So I guess my question is, how do you train your guys to adapt to dealing with other styles of fighting when you forbid it in sparring? Or is that something you just don't deal with as it is outside of your style?

 

[JowGaWolf]

in order to fight against something you need to train with it, and against it.

This is a misconception. How many UFC fighters trained in WC, for the sole purpose of fighting against it. You only need to understand how a system attacks you and have an understanding of how you use your system in the context of how you are being attacked.

If I went in to the UFC right now, how many of them will feel like they need to learn Jow Ga kung fu in order to beat me? The only thing they will do is try to get an understanding of how I might use Jow Ga to attack them them. From there, they will determine how they can use their existing skills to fight against me.

How many hours do you think Royce Gracie trained as a Sumo Wrestler in order to fight a Sumo Wrestler?

"in order to fight against something you need to train with it" I think this thinking mainly comes out of the world of MMA because it's definitely not a traditional martial art perspective.

how do you train your guys to adapt to dealing with other styles of fighting when you forbid it in sparring?

If you do TKD and get invited to spar with Jow Ga students, then we want you to use TKD so we can experience how you attack your opponent. From there we adjust our Jow Ga applications so that we can use those techniques against your TKD. If a BJJ person comes and spars with us, then we use the techniques that better suited for how BJJ works.
If you are a Jow Ga student then you do Jow Ga, because you are in a school to learn Jow Ga, not TKD or BJJ. You are there to learn how to fight by using Jow Ga.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Think of Sparring like this. If you are a TKD student, then how can you be good in using TKD in sparring if you are constantly doing non-TKD techniques from other systems during your sparring training?

Instead of trying to integrate outside techniques into your system. 1st learn how to be effective in the system that you train.

 

[Ironbear24]

No chokes, No neck holds or neck strikes. No breaks. Everything else is legal and we spar with gloves and mouth pieces and a cup. If you have none of these then you do not spar.

 

[Andrew Green]

This is a misconception. How many UFC fighters trained in WC, for the sole purpose of fighting against it. You only need to understand how a system attacks you and have an understanding of how you use your system in the context of how you are being attacked.

To a certain extent perhaps, but if everyone you train with fights the same way you;ll never learn to adapt on the fly to different styles.

Even within the same style this happens, it's why fighting southpaws is so awkward for some people.

I also think that if you train with a wide variety of things allowed you will gravitate towards certain tendencies. Some things are just going to correct themselves as you go.

I also find it funny that you mention the Gracies, in the beginning they dominated because they trained to fight outside of their style and their opponents did not. They had a long history of challenging anyone, of any style and being able to impose their sort of fight against them because the other guy was unfamiliar with what they did.

Sure their opponents trained against other striking styles, and maybe even a little against wrestling. But against a style that wanted to submit you, even from bottom position? that was unfamiliar, and ignored because it wasn't part of those styles.

In fact if you look at MMA history you can see that pattern repeated a few times. "Pure" BJJ lost its dominance when wrestlers trained to defend submissions and pound you down from inside your guard and when kick boxers learnt to sprawl and get back up without being submitted if they went down, training specifically to deal with those other styles. Eventually everyone ended up training everything as without doing so it was easy to take advantage of holes.

 

[drop bear]

Do you have any basic rules, for when people want to freestyle together? Or do you just pick the most applicable set of competition rules (which seems a sensible option)?

If you use the toilet turn the lights off.

Otherwise we don't really have an issue with guys going off reservation. If a person has a fight coming up then we are much more strict. But otherwise whatever seems applicable at the time.

 

[drop bear]

When I run a sparring session - we don't grapple as part of regular sparring, we grapple separately. But I've been thinking of changing that. Why I haven't so far is I've found that once winded, they tend to go all grappling - or, perhaps better described as "stalling while grappling". But maybe that's not so bad, I'm not sure.

I find it is the other way. I put in a serious stint of grappling,say in shute boxing or mma and I am munted.

You can cheat and do a ten(ish) second ground rule.or at least until they are on their back eating punches.

We do that for shute because the boxing gloves do make it a bit difficult to do subs.

If you want an intense session. Shorten the rounds. We do 30 second wrestling sets to make people pressure fight.

 

[Blindside]

The Adult Pekiti Tirsia Kali class:
Rule 1: Try not to break your sparring partner.

Rule 2: If the other guy is sort of stumbling around and looking silly, let him get his bearing back (see Rule 1).

Rule 3: No knee capping (see Rule 1), a stick to the knee cap sucks so watch out for that.

Watch your slams and big throws (see Rule 1).

Treat the knife looking thing like it was actually a knife not a short aluminum baton, give it the respect it deserves.

With our more advanced students we allow pretty much all ranges, weapon, strike, grapple, throw, and hell, probably thrown weapons if someone got particularly silly.

Our youth Swordsmanship class is standing only and we haven't introduced striking though we have done standing clinch. We will get there.

 

[Buka]

@Buka what styles do you teach?

I teach American Karate.

 

[JowGaWolf]

everyone you train with fights the same way you;ll never learn to adapt on the fly to different styles.

We train in the same system but none of us fight the same way. I'm not sure if you saw the videos on the Jow Ga website, but our sparring is not the typical basic kickboxing type sparring. The fighting system uses a variety of punches and attacks that can be used in any type of combo. We grapple as well as strike. We train from a self-defense perspective so we have a variety of offensive and defenses. Things like sprawling are natural in our system.

We also try to have friendly sparring matches against other schools with different fighting systems out there which helps us to understand our system in the context of other systems. Not only does this give us an opportunity to fight against other fighting systems, but it also helps us to understand our own system better.

We train from a self-defense perspective so we drill against punches and attacks that one would most likely get from someone in the street. We sometimes spar with scenarios like disadvantages
- 2 vs 1,
- having one fighter using one hand against someone that can use both hands,
- having one fighter start from the ground vs a fighter standing up
- having one fighter attacking from behind vs a fighter with their backs turned
- having multiple people surround one fighter and 1 random person from that circle will attack
- fighting against each other on our bad side. Advance students can easily fight from the left (south paw) or the right.
- having both fighters start from the ground.

 

[crazydiamond]

My martial arts includes all sorts of systems and methods - boxing, kick boxing, grappling, wing chun, weapons, etc...and we spar in all these - but I will focus on boxing sparing for beginners like me in this thread

We have 1) No touch - partner with focus mitts 2) light touch but more hitting gloves 3) more free form light sparing - mouth guard and maybe headgear.

examples below of 2 and 3 sparing.


2

3

 

[Hanzou]

No chokes, No neck holds or neck strikes. No breaks.

No fun.

 

[Ironbear24]

Eh you can still punch and kick to the face and use other submissions. These rules are much more liberal than most sparring rules and are geared for safety.

 

[Danny T]

1. Incremental developmental sparring
2. Light developmental sparring
3. Moderate Incremental sparring
4. Light open technical sparring
5. Moderate technical sparring
6. Heavy technical sparring
7. Open fight prep sparring.

 

[Buka]

I don't think there is anything more fun in Martial Arts than sparring. I've also found that gyms/dojos where they are having the most fun sparring, seems like the more elite development of fighters and Martial Artists in general. Just an observation.

 

[Azulx]

I teach American Karate.

What is the difference between American Karate and other more common forms of Karate such as Shotokan, Kyokushin, Tae Kwon Do, etc.?

 

[Flatfish]

What is the difference between American Karate and other more common forms of Karate such as Shotokan, Kyokushin, Tae Kwon Do, etc.?

They wear Rex Kwon Do pants?

 

[crazydiamond]

What is the difference between American Karate and other more common forms of Karate such as Shotokan, Kyokushin, Tae Kwon Do, etc.?

Wait TKD is a branch of Karate ?

Or everything just originated in Japan ?