POLL - Does your school spar?

Taken from the Little Survey in the Karate forum

http://www.fightingarts.com/ubbthreads/s...e=0&fpart=1

I thought I would expand the reach by asking it here to everybody.

Unfortunately, my current school frowns on sparring (a real dilemma for someone such as myself, however it is the best school here). All our drills are necessarily full contact though (this is Jujutsu after all). I've tried on occasion to get sparring included in the syllabus but being a white belt, my opinion doesn't hold much sway.

No. Too small a study group/training and only contains beginners.

Yes and full contact. Just some clarification on this. Taekwondo sport sparring is full contact with head protection, chest protector, groin protector and shin/forearm pads. With grappling you can were a small groin protector and a mouth guard should you want. For mixed fighting including stand up, take down, grappling, submission all with kicking, punching a ground 'n pound, this is usually controlled and not full contact. This would be more light to medium contact with no protection or possibly mouth guard or gloves. Mind you depending on who you are training with, it could easily be more then medium contact.

Yes, three times a week and Saturday our MMA classes are full contact. They all have to wear head gear gloves, mouth gaurds etc. Most of the guys use pretty good control but if there is a big competition their training for they don't hold back much. Some of the guys pad up pretty good but most wear the bare minimum.....
Hear are some of my excuses not to train with those guys, I'm 50, enjoy going to work without swollen eyes, don't like cuts on my face, can't bend over the next morning to get dressed, don't like to puke in the dojo, hate hitting the heavy bag more than five minutes. Some of those guys stand in front of the bag and pound it what seems forever, and then they throw the bag on the ground and smash it with elbow strikes. We have woods next to our dojo and one day as I pulled up in my truck there was a guys running into the woods with the heavy bag over his shoulder, thought someone was stealing our bag but it was only a fighter preping for a MMA cage competition. The intensity of the MMA fighters pre fight routine is pretty insane. Anyone will tell you, before you step into the cage you better make sure your stamina is at it's peak otherwise your gona gas or puke.....you you, youg whippersnappers!!


For the people that say their dojo does not allow sparring you should check out a school that does and try some cross training, don't let anyone tell you different, sparring is a very important part of your MA training. Be it full contact MMA, point sparring, grappling etc you have to learn how to spar.

Had to come back and edit my post just to state that when I say "full contact" that doesn't mean all out knee strikes to the face or solid elbow/forearm strike, the crippling/knock out techniques are just for the ring, we are still a curtious bunch

Quote:

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Had to come back and edit my post just to state that when I say "full contact" that doesn't mean all out knee strikes to the face or solid elbow/forearm strike, the crippling/knock out techniques are just for the ring, we are still a curtious bunch

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This is what I was referring to with our stand up to take down to ground work. It is "controlled" but when you get hit it is enough to let you know that it could hurt a lot worse and you'd better cover up and protect yourself. It is "training" so you are not trying to kill each other as you want to train with these people again, but injuries do happen an thinks can get heated but afterwards there should be no hard feelings and you should have learned something.