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

My TKD dojang used to do full contact boxing, kickboxing, and MMA or all in sometimes as well as light contact free sparing and kick sparring, like with Dereck, however my master instructor left so we only occasionally spar and it's light or no contact TKD free sparring so I do my full contact sparring with friends now (black belts and the one guy I'm training right now). We may go bareknuckle style free sparring using only body shots and kicks kyokushinkai style, or full contact body shots only with gloves, all in fighting with head shots, clinch, nkees, takedowns, ground fighting a little bit etc. I also do a lot of grappling and submisison, BJJ, etc. I try to spar hard ever possible chance I get, as well as grappling, which, out of the wrestling season, isn't very often.

in the school I should be going to (been so long that it doesn't seem right calling it 'my school' these days), savate sparring is a seperate class- 90 mins that runs off the back of the Savate class itself. The Savate class uses a lot of light contact partner work on various aspects of the art- combo's, defense, footwork etc. For many, this is enough, and is what they enjoy. others want to stay on and attempt to apply what they have been practicing in a live environment- attendance of the sparring sessions is always encouraged, but never pressured- our instructors recognise that different people want different things from their study.

Yes we spar but very light contact because sometimes we practice a few days before a tournament and we don't want anyone hurt or sore before the tournament comes.Period we spar lightly because of just safety issues.Even though we are supposed to do light contact many of my classmates don't, they go harder but not hard enough to get anyone really injured.I remember one time my bro was sparring with this guy that always talked smack about people and he did this kick that slapped the guy dead in the face, it was loud.The guy started crying and everyone started clapping.
P.S my bro appologized anyway.

For us it really does depend on which sensei is running the class. Most times gears are used but for the special few instructors who are from the old school which are still on the floor light/medium contact is used for under ranks.