"Honest" Sparring
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 4:37 pm
In my experience the most important division between training, competitions and real fights is risk of injury.
In training, ideally, a serious freak accident comes up every year or so - along with the galaxy of bruises and sprains we all shrug off.
In competition, ideally, you win without injury, but the impact is higher, there's less padding and the torquing on joints happens faster and less forgivingly. Injuries aren't infrequent, usually a person or two will leave a competition to the ER for an assessment or a few months off (or early retirement).
In "Real fighting" - ideally, it doesn't happen. When it does there's no padding, no mats and very little room for error. Someone gets injured usually, broken noses and teeth, broken this or that, maybe someone died - who knows. There isn't a lot of room for growth there, it works or it doesn't and "good enough" can be pretty ugly and unskilled.
I've had several discussions with my current training partner about the rulesets we currently use to spar, trying to mix the versatility of skills available to use with a decent amount of realism for assessing the potential damage taken in a serious exchange. Where we are now is a mix of rounds in muay thai, kyokushin, mma, and no-gi wrestling, it's not perfect, nothing can be. We had to stop for a few months after a rib injury but we're back to it again and it feels good to be back to swinging at each other.
What rulesets have you found useful in giving meaningful pressure for skill growth and feedback but also limiting injury?
I've seen experienced practitioners suffering from things like flinching/blinking to strikes, overreacting to feints, fatiguing quickly under striking pressure, fatiguing quickly under wrestling pressure. The first two are pretty crucial, the last two are relative and more sport oriented but still relevant if the mess someone gets stuck in takes a few minutes to shake off. Do you feel your training exposed you to these things enough to handle them consistently?
In training, ideally, a serious freak accident comes up every year or so - along with the galaxy of bruises and sprains we all shrug off.
In competition, ideally, you win without injury, but the impact is higher, there's less padding and the torquing on joints happens faster and less forgivingly. Injuries aren't infrequent, usually a person or two will leave a competition to the ER for an assessment or a few months off (or early retirement).
In "Real fighting" - ideally, it doesn't happen. When it does there's no padding, no mats and very little room for error. Someone gets injured usually, broken noses and teeth, broken this or that, maybe someone died - who knows. There isn't a lot of room for growth there, it works or it doesn't and "good enough" can be pretty ugly and unskilled.
I've had several discussions with my current training partner about the rulesets we currently use to spar, trying to mix the versatility of skills available to use with a decent amount of realism for assessing the potential damage taken in a serious exchange. Where we are now is a mix of rounds in muay thai, kyokushin, mma, and no-gi wrestling, it's not perfect, nothing can be. We had to stop for a few months after a rib injury but we're back to it again and it feels good to be back to swinging at each other.
What rulesets have you found useful in giving meaningful pressure for skill growth and feedback but also limiting injury?
I've seen experienced practitioners suffering from things like flinching/blinking to strikes, overreacting to feints, fatiguing quickly under striking pressure, fatiguing quickly under wrestling pressure. The first two are pretty crucial, the last two are relative and more sport oriented but still relevant if the mess someone gets stuck in takes a few minutes to shake off. Do you feel your training exposed you to these things enough to handle them consistently?