Sparring

Protective Gear Is used in practice sessions, which consist of padded protection that keeps you and your partner from getting bruised or hurt.  It will help in accidentally getting kick to hard or when you are unable to block a strike.  There are times that you may want to try out new techniques when sparing to see how it would work.  Some additional information of wearing the gear will be: Headgear Is like a helmet, that can protect the sides and back of your head from kicks and punches.  Headgear may be purchased with a mask-like face protector so that a strike to the face doesn’t break the nose, cut an eye or bust a lip. Mouth Guard Is an essential item and is always required when sparring.  The mouthguard protects the teeth from blows that can cause dental problems.  Mouthguards are sold in several sizes and colors for adults and children and can be custom fitted easily. Chest Protector If you are starting out or will be sparring with fairly heavy contact, a chest protector will be a wise choice.  It may feel awkward, restrictive and sometimes it gives the feeling of unable to do some techniques. Groin Protector A male karate-ka will need one of these.  No sparing or competition is allowed without one.  Groin protectors are also available for women, but thy have been known to be unnecessary and even dangerous. Forearm Guards Protect from bumps and bruises that happen when blocking kicks and punches.  They are usually not allowed in competitions. Hand Protectors Protect your karate-ka partner in case your hand technique lands too hard or inaccurately.  There are several types of gloves and types of padding, the most common type covers the back of the hand with a strap that wraps around the wrist. Shin Guards Protect the shins from bumps and bruises when blocking strikes with your legs.  They are usually not allowed in competition. Foot Protectors Protect your karate-ka partner in case your kicking technique lands too hard or inaccurately.  The type that is preferred covers the entire foot, including the toes and the sides of the feet.  It attaches with a strap that goes around the foot.  The only draw back on this type is that it’s a little heavier and more cumbersome. There are two main fighting stances: a side stance and a front stance.  Recognizing the variations of those stances will help you predict what your opponent may do.  Competitors who use a forward stance tend to be punchers, and those who use the side stance tend to be kickers.  The better of the two is the side stance, It will provide a better defense advantage, but do not make your stance more than shoulder width apart.  Your footwork will suffer and be slower in offensive and defensive maneuvers. It will allow putting your hips in a proper position to kick and avoid telegraphing the kicks.  When sparring an opponent the outcome is determined by several interconnected factors. Some controllable qualities are: Ability Your physical ability is determined by the amount and quality of your practice. Instinct Instinct is a quality that gives you the edge in decision making.  When you are uncertain what to do next or how to handle an opponent, rely on your guy feelings.  The more experience you have in sparring, the more reliable your instincts will be. Strategy Strategy is like a play book from which you select your course of action when you first see your opponent and ends when the opponent is subdued.  Strategy is what you are going to do like win the match, plan is how you are going to win the match (what techniques). Determination Is a large role when sparring an opponent that is equally matched.  The winner will be decided by sheer guts, whoever is able to fight harder and resist longer.  To build mental and physical stamina, spar through feelings of fatigue and mild discomfort. Physical condition Set a workout schedule that includes exercises for endurance, timing, strength, speed, and reflexes. Set regular long and short term fitness goals for motivation and to track your progress. Efficiency Your body has a limited supply of energy, conserving energy is of the utmost importance to enable you to engage in prolonged or strenuous physical activity.  If both you and your opponent have the same amount of energy, the one who uses it more efficiently will be the one who delivers the final blow. Adaptability Adaptation means assessing your techniques and selecting the proper actions for fulfilling them.  With out adaptation, you may become a victim of your own strategy by becoming transparent and be countered by a skillful fighter.  Train in many ways and experiment with variations of your favorite techniques to avoid becoming countered. Experience There is only one way to gain experience and that is to engage in your target activity repeatedly.  The more experienced you are, the more insightful you can be in developing a successful strategy. Your opponent’s qualities. The same qualities that you develop in yourself are important to your opponent as well.  When you face an opponent, ask yourself these questions: Ability What is his / her level?  How much have they trained?  What are their favorite skills?  How is his / her skill level compared to mine? Instinct Does he / she prepared with many set combinations or do they go with the flow of the fight?  Can they make a quick decision when confused or surprised?  Are their movements loose and fluid, without hesitation? Strategy What style fighter are they: in-fighter / out-fighter, tall / short. strength / fitness, left handed / right handed / ambidextrous, aggressive / defensive, ect.?  Is an initiative attacker or a counter attacker?  Do they use conventional tactics or unconventional skills?  What are his / her primary and secondary vital openings? Determination Is he/ she mentally determined to win? Are they focused or distracted?  Are they emotional or calm?  Do they tire quickly or is he / she able to respond to your strongest attacks with equal strength? Physical Condition What is his / her physical condition like?  Do they appear fit, strong, quick, and agile?  What are his / her strong and weak areas of conditioning?  How can you exploit his / her weakness? Efficiency Are they making unnecessary movements?  Does he / she conserve energy by flowing with you or do they expend energy for resisting?  Are their movements focused or undeveloped? Adaptability Can he / she easily adapt to your changes in tactics and strategy?    Are they locked into one style?  Is he / she vulnerable to counterattacks because his / her style is one dimensional?  Are they psychologically sensitive to your changes in tactics? Experience How experience are they?  How do they approach me?  Is he / she calm or nervous?  Is he /she checking on me or busy with themselves? After studying and practicing with a variety of opponents, the ability to analyze opponents with a minimum of conscious thought will develop. When sparring, you face many different opponents that will make you change your strategy of how to approach them.  Some of these characteristics you will need to study and will already know about your opponent.  Be prepared in how to approach each one, by the following: Emotions Emotions shadow every fighter.  Some use it to power themselves to victory and others are defeated by it.  To use emotion of combat to your advantage, don’t avoid it.  Try to understand what emotions that you are having and how you can best use them to your advantage. Fear The most obvious source of fear in any contact activity is fear of injury.  Before you engage the opponent, you will mentally size him / her up and consider how much damage he / she might be able to inflict on you.  This mental damage assessment comes from a basic instinct to remain safe.  When you find yourself doing this, reverse your thinking.  Think instead about how you have trained to avoid being hit and injured.  Focus on the strength of your defense.  Visualize how you will easily defend every attack your opponent attempts.  When you get hit the first few times, you feel angry and frightened.  Make a conscious effort to shake off this feeling and stick to your plan of attack.  Don’t become distracted by your fear or anger.  Rather. focus on the event.  No matter how skilled you are, you can not avoid being hit when you engage in one-on-one sparing.  Fighting is an exchange of blows.  Another common fear is fear of failure or fear of losing.  Losing or failing is a temporary emotional setback.  If you have a great fear of failure, look at the root causes.  Have you trained enough?  Is your opponent much better than you?  Do you have something to prove by fighting?  There are many causes of failing, ranging from poor training to bad luck.  Some you can control and some you can not, forget the uncontrollable.  Look closely to the controllable factors like determination to succeed, the amount and quality of your training, your ability and skill level.  If you find that something is truly lacking, take action immediately to fix it.  More likely, you have become the victim of self doubt.  Your skills do not change when you leave the training area, but your self-perception might change.  Try to focus on the reality of the situation besides imagining all of the horrible that could possibly happen.  If you cannot focus on success, is failing or losing really so awful?  And even if it is, does it deserve your valuable time and emotion?  Isn’t there something more important for you to be thinking about at this critical time in your life? Nervousness Emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, and impatience can trigger a response of feeling nervous.  When you create an emotional build-up that cause the flight or fight response to occur without an immediate outlet, you feel the resulting physical response as digestive irritation, muscle tension, high blood pressure, irregular heart beat, hyperventilation, hyperactivity, and other symptoms lumped together as nervousness. The best cure for nervousness is action.  Give your body some activity to burn off excess by-products of the response that is occurring.  If you are about to engage in sparing, do not attempt to remove the nervous feeling.  A certain level of activation is desirable for sparing.  Recognize the nervousness for what it is a physical preparation for up coming activity.  Practice controlling your arousal level so that it peaks just as you enter the peak activity stage.  Arousal can be controlled many ways.  Some psychological ways to control it are visualization, self-talk, meditation, etc.  For others physical activity like running, bouncing, stretching, or deep breathing works well. Anger Fear and nervousness are both natural and positive safety reactions to sparing.  Anger, however, is not.  It is an emotion of conflict and the inability to deal with a given conflict.  Anger destroys your emotional balance and prevents clear thought and judgment.  It leads to an uncontrollable level of arousal.  If you feel angry with you opponent, channel that feeling into a more positive desire to win or to succeed through your plan.  If the anger is rooted in something other than the sparing situation, try to remove it, or at least control it, before you engage your opponent. Height Taller Opponent Will try to use his / her reach advantage to prevent you from coming within striking range of any of their targets.  They will hit you or cut your movement whenever you try to penetrate their safety zone.  To counteract this strategy, stay out of his range until you are prepared to attack.  Use quick footwork to dart in, attack, destroy your target and retreat quickly.  This is called a hit-and-run strategy.  Another strategy is to draw the opponent into attacking by out waiting them.  Simply wait until they become impatient and attack, take advantage of your speed and smaller body size by beating them to the target. Shorter opponent If you use your reach properly, by pushing your opponent away before he / she is able to penetrate your safety zone, you will be victorious against a smaller opponent.  Be careful for the hit-and-run strategy, don’t retreat.  Wait for them to come into range and use your reach to strike / kick before they can escape. Strength / Speed Stronger opponent Rarely will an opponent be both extremely strong and extremely quick.  If relying primarily on strength, counter with speed and smarts.  Avoid his / her full power attacks by evasion, parries and intelligence.  Make them doubt the effectiveness of their power by avoiding the blows and hurting them with quick, sharp strikes.  When they become frustrated and confused, use your best attacks and commit to finishing the fight immediately. Quicker opponent A quick opponent often relies on their speed to make up for the lack of size or power.  If they lack power, engage in an exchange and absorb some of the blows.  When they come in, use your superior strength to immobilize their speed and win. Hand / Foot Dominant Hand dominant opponent Many fighters depend heavily on their hands for attack and defense.  To break their defensive posture, attack low targets such as the legs, thighs, groin, and frustrate them with their inability to block lower sections of the body.  Once you have established a pattern of lower body attacks, move up and work the upper body.  Mix up your attacks to confuse your opponent. Foot dominate opponent A kicking opponent relies on their ability to balance one leg while attacking with the other.  Your first strategy should be to attack the base leg whenever they begin their kicks.  Make them feel insecure in kicking, especially kicks that expose their base leg for a long period of time.  When you get a good shot of the base leg, take it down with a sweep or throw.  Once they are on the ground, their kicking ability will be virtually useless.  If you can not get the base leg, attack to the high sections of the body to prevent them from finding good kicking opportunities.  Decrease the distance to stop the kicks, but be caution of low kicks to exposed areas. Distance Distance fighter Like to control the tone of the fight by dictating the distance at which they will confront you.  Remember, with this type of opponent takes patients.  The more you attempt to go against his strategy, the more frustrated you will become and the more times you will get hit.  Instead of trying to change the distance, wait until they move.  Once they decide to move in for attack, attack quickly without letting them regain their favored distance. Close fighter Like to engage you and stay close.  They are usually strong and able to take a lot of punishment without giving in.  Try to prevent them from engaging you physically, by keeping your distance through long range kicks and foot work (back and side steps).  If you get trapped, attack immediately to the most vulnerable targets, use unexpected attacks that are not common.  Avoid playing by their rules. Group Psychology By seeing a group as a single enemy, you can formulate your strategy.  Every group depends on team moral and fighting spirit.  If you are alone or outnumbered against two or more opponents, you will have to demoralize the group before you can defeat it.  A group’s weakness is the individuals who comprise it because they depend on the power of superior size.  If one of the elements in the group gives up the fight, the other elements begin to question their involvement as well.  Another weakness of groups is that they are often made up of series of weak elements that have banded together for strength.  They do not work well when alone or divided.  They are basically weak, but depend on their strength from the security of a strong leader and the buffer of being surrounded by others.  The quickest way to demoralize a group is to attack the leader.  When the leader is defeated, the group will become smaller groups that will often begin to fight against themselves.  Also in every group is the antagonizer who wants to take position of the leader and will split to take leadership.  Use this person as an alley in your fight to defeat the leader and split the group.