I second that!I enjoyed reading your post as I do with most of them.
The question then becomes whether or not what you describe constitutes sparring or something else. That brings us back to how sparring is defined and what is meant to be achieved in sparring.Help me understand this please. As a karate man, I believe there are fundamental strategies embedded within the kata I practice. Most of the strategies I favor involved closing with the foe, striking him in hopefully a destructive fashion and then ending the altercation with a forceful take down or a controlling pin of some fashion.
We can practice these so-called bunkai in a cooperative fashion with a partner where each one of you take turns playing a mannequin for the other to manipulate. At some point however, I think it is imperative to gradually decrease the level of cooperation from the partner until there is none and the two are now actually engaged in a form of free sparring with each seeking to implement the lessons learned from our kata. Of course, the application now looks nothing like our pretty prearranged drills, but we have learned to use the specific teachings in 'organized chaos', and I think this is as close as it gets to real combat as we can simulate in our dojo.
We are seeking to take our kata and gradually build from a static solo exercise to a prearranged partner drill and then finally to a reasonable free form expression. I don't see how we can make a truer simulation. Do you? We have no running kata, so I would preclude discussion of running or other similar strategies as an alternative, even though certainly it might be a best option in reality.
Daniel