Sparring With Your Teacher..

[MaartenSFS]

I'm interested in knowing how many teachers spar with their students and whether they are in the majority or in the minority. Mine spars with us almost every time we meet, depending on what we are working on.

[neijia_boxer]

I can't vote on this.
At the MMA and Muay thai school- yes instructors spar with students all the time.
At the boxing gym- no the instructor is do damn old to spar.
At the Taiji school I work out at sometimes- hell no, the Taiji teacher wont even push hands unless he is showing a pattern.
At the Taiji class in the park- yes instructor and many folks will "push hands". handsies pansies.
At my own class- hell yeah we gear up for san shou sparring.

[MaguiBaguaNJ]

My teacher always shows techniques with his students, but reserves most of the sparring for when we're doing private training. So he spars frequently withe me, but I can't say the same for all his students.

[kenneth fish]

Some did, some didn't. Generally it was more frightening than instructive (except to inform me how low level my skills were in comparison).

[Doc Stier]

All of my teachers, regardless of their style, regularly sparred with students. Like Kenneth Fish said, it was most often as scary and intimidating as it was instructional, although nothing matches the value of personally feeling high level skills directly applied to your own body the way they were intended to be used. Standing or sitting off to the side and watching genuine fighting skills applied on someone else is never as effective for acquiring such skills yourself. Hands on contact is always a far superior method of learning how to really fight, imo, if not the only practical means of doing so!

[D_Glenn]

Like Kenneth and Doc said, too scary to really call it sparring. Just getting to feel what you are trying to obtain. This one time he came at me near full speed, a split second after he made it was clear that he was going to attack, so I had to go from drilling practice mode to full on fighting mode in that split second, and I did manage to get my arm up to defend my face, but the shock wave that passed through my head made me realize what the saying of "... and even their [the opponent's] Hun and Po will be scared.", actually meant.

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[Orpheus]

My shuai jiao coach would wrestle with us all the time.

[MaartenSFS]

I'm happy to see that alot of your training echoes my own. Yes, sparring with Shifu is scary! Especially if I make the mistake of trying to surprise him with an attack. His Qinna is 'by the way', meaning he never does it directly, but always during a combination of things. His Bagua is particullarly evil. He seems to get me with his Qinna from every angle and when I get out of one I am lead into the next.. :-P

[dspyrido]

Perhaps it might help to make it more specific?

"Sparring with your IMA instructor"

[JessOBrien]

I've never "sparred" with my teachers.
I've sparred with many many people with gloves on and had fun trying to pound each other.
None of my teachers would ever in a million years put on gloves and square off with me in a contest.
That would be a pitiful fruitless waste of training time that should be spent on painful, full contact instruction.

[cerebus]

Hmmm... no. My teachers did not spar with me (not my boxing trainers, my Shaolin instructor, or my internal Kung Fu teachers). But they taught me to spar with the other students, and made corrections from there. They did, however, do training drills with me quite often directed toward developing fighting skills. As for me sparring with my students, yes. In fact, to insure they don't get injured, I make sure they develop some decent sparring abilities with me (while I go easy on them) before I let them spar with each other.

[yeniseri]

I never 'sparred' with my teachers per the common usage of the word. Chang Dungsheng was the only one who approached 'sparring' but it was mainly 'setting up' within an encounter and how to use basic training elements per the 13 training/physical conditions exercises. Another wing chun teacher who taught me taiji, had an uncle who came from Hong Kong to visit and he was ruthless with push hands training. The other teachers were "up in age' but as they worked in the security caravans of the old days, they were able to show the extent of their experience. Another teacher with whom I learnt baquazhang from told me that nobody wanted to 'spar' with me because one day after class, I was playing around with
the punching bad for about 10 minutes then i whippoed around in yangzhang executed a kick to the underbelly of the bag and the bag came crashing down. I was as shocked as everyone else

[cerebus]

Oh wait! Actually my 2nd boxing trainer sparred with me twice. The first time he dropped me with a body shot. The second time, a couple years later, we sparred and my defense was much better, he couldn't land any solid shots on me. Almost forgot about that. And one of my Karate senseis used to spar with me as well.

[cerebus]

But for tui shou and rou shou, yes. A number of my teachers did this...

[taiwandeutscher]

Some did, some didn't. Generally it was more frightening than instructive (except to inform me how low level my skills were in comparison).

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