sparring for striking (a guide)

[dspyrido]

There are at least a few pro boxers that did no sparring at all in their training camps, yet still regularly ruined the day of their opponents.

If you don't spar/wrestle for 3 days, your arms and legs will no longer be yours.

Great way to put it.

[willie]

Well there was some bits I left out. Like he mentions things like helmets and what not.
My experience with 4oz willie is that when I tried them for sparring I didn't feel right letting my punches go, so all we could do was 'light sparring' to be honest - where contact was concerned.

I just think you can separate out grappling and when combining it you can combine enough of it with bigger gloves.
If you're going to fight it's different, I just think the contact will be too hard or not enough (due to taking care) to be worth persevering - for sparring purposes.

I think sometimes combining with helmets might be ok, but that comes back to the issue of taking damage.
You should be able to feel something and not like it, not even in terms of pain but why get hit unless you just can't avoid it.

I think with helmets due to the impaired vision and often you may hardly feel most of the stuff (depending), it's one of those (smaller gloves plus helmets) that I think would be a useful addition from time to time but not the main thing.

I once used padded headgear with open hand in a limited sparring drill and it was pretty good I thought. I really enjoyed training my bitch slaps that day!
I just think it's better to take a mixed approach to tackle some of the shortcomings, but have at least 1 main standard.

yeah, I can agree with most of this.
getting damage is hard when there's not even a reason too.
eventually what happens, as happened to me. is that your training / sparring partners get a bit malicious over time and try to take you out.
so then after enduring that kind of shit for a while , it's time to become the wolf or don't do it at all.

[johnwang]

If you don't spar/wrestle for 3 days, your arms and legs will no longer be yours.

Great way to put it.

That was the exact words that my teacher had passed down to me. When he had defeated all the SC guys in that area, in the beginning, other SC guys told him that if he used "twist and spring", they won't wrestle with him (his "twist and spring" had 100% successful rate). Later on, even if he didn't use that move, he could still defeat everybody, All the SC guys started to form a general agreement. That was nobody wanted to wrestle with him. They all believed that if they don't wrestle with him for 2 years, his wrestling skill would decrease and they could defeat him after that. After my teacher had found out their strategy, he started to use his own brothers as his training partners.

This was why I had formed my own "sparing/wrestling" group when I was young. This way, I could spar/wrestle every day. Now I'm getting older, I still try to find someone, pay him $20, and ask him if he is willing to spar/wrestle with me for 15 rounds.

Just try to share how people in our previous generation trained their CMA.

[willie]

If you don't spar/wrestle for 3 days, your arms and legs will no longer be yours.

Great way to put it.

That was the exact words that my teacher had passed down to me. When he had defeated all the SC guys in that area, in the beginning, other SC guys told him that if he used "twist and spring", they won't wrestle with him (his "twist and spring" had 100% successful rate). Later on, even if he didn't use that move, he could still defeat everybody, All the SC guys started to form a general agreement. That was nobody wanted to wrestle with him. They all believed that if they don't wrestle with him for 2 years, his wrestling skill would decrease and they could defeat after that. After my teacher had found out their strategy, he started to use his own brothers as his training partners.

This was why I had formed my own "sparing/wrestling" group when I was young. This way, I could spar/wrestle every day. Now I'm getting older, I still try to find someone, pay him $20, and ask him if he is willing to spar/wrestle with me for 15 rounds.

Just try to share how people in our previous generation trained their CMA.

John, your writing is just the coolest, I would say, lol!
it was my friends from karate a long time ago that figured that out too.
we were all getting our asses kicked at school back then, so we formed are own little group of
real friends and spared in secret on the side like crazy, then when we went back to school, haha!
those were the good old days.

[mrtoes]

Haha you wouldn't need to pay me $20 to get repeatedly thrown into the ground by John Wang! Don't people normally pay you for the privilege, or do you really live out in the sticks?

[dspyrido]

That was the exact words that my teacher had passed down to me. When he had defeated all the SC guys in that area, in the beginning, other SC guys told him that if he used "twist and spring", they won't wrestle with him (his "twist and spring" had 100% successful rate). Later on, even if he didn't use that move, he could still defeat everybody, All the SC guys started to form a general agreement. That was nobody wanted to wrestle with him. They all believed that if they don't wrestle with him for 2 years, his wrestling skill would decrease and they could defeat him after that. After my teacher had found out their strategy, he started to use his own brothers as his training partners.

This was why I had formed my own "sparing/wrestling" group when I was young. This way, I could spar/wrestle every day. Now I'm getting older, I still try to find someone, pay him $20, and ask him if he is willing to spar/wrestle with me for 15 rounds.

Just try to share how people in our previous generation trained their CMA.

No one wants to venture to ask what your teacher's secrets were?

Anyway ... thoughts on what made your teacher so successful? How did he train? Any gems we should learn from the previous generation?