Kaotiren

I teach and continue my training in a Northern Shaolin art called Tai Yoe Q'uan and I believe that the techniques are great but are useless unless you try it out with some sort of sparring. I prefer to start people in a controlled light sparring and move slowly up to full contact sparring. I don't see the advantage to bare fisted sparring due to the risk factor of getting hurt.

I think it is pretty realistic to use gloves and footgear to strike the head, back, front above the belt and maybe even to the thigh but control is needed for leg strikes. I have been hit pretty hard and the glove kept me from getting really hurt while feeling some serious impact. I noticed that the cool nifty techiques do not work unless you practice by sparring a lot.

Any ideas from anyone else.