Mostly it depends on your instructor whether there is any sparring at all, whether there is 1 or 2-step sparring (set-up sparring), full boxing, Thai Boxing with shin pads and head gear, or hard hand-sparring but very limited leg sparring. Master Chai told me he personally does not like his students to leg spar because of the chance of a fight-preventing bruise, and because he does not want students learning to hold their kicks back, but he does like them to box hard. When I watched classes in Thailand, I never saw any full sparring. What I did see was, the last hour of the class, the number 1 student would get in the center of the ring and one by one the other students would plumb with him until someone was thrown down, then immediately the next in line would grab the standing man and it would start over.
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