What are you sparring habbits ?

[RuskiRonin]

Hello everyone,
im new here and i hope il stick around these forums, they seem interesting.
some info about myself :
i've been practicing Wing-Chun from Vietnam for 16 months.
earlier i practiced caopeira for a period of 6 months and boxing for a period of 3 months. im going to sign-up for Muay Thai because my lack of sparring partners leaves me no choice.
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I would like to know about your sparring habbits : Where do you sparr, Who do you sparr, How often , What rules do you use , What sort of equipment ?.
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I have recently started sparring with my friend who is a black belt in shotokan karate, he's been trainning for ten years, he's very powerfull and skilled and he is also a swimmer which adds to his conditioning.
I just sparr with him to get more confidence and release myself of fear, im not trying to apply my wingchun yet because we havent started sparring in class's yet and im not ready for it, but i am sparring to relieve myself of fear so i can work easier when facing an opponent and not worry about getting hit
too much and tensing up.
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I use 14oz boxing gloves and he uses some karate fist guard or whatever its called, it only covers the top of his fist and the palm is naked. we pretty much use boxing rules but we add in kicking \throws and the likes of it. right now we sparr each saturday for an hour or two. i dont have any other sparring partners or trainning partners for that matter .

[jdawg]

sparring habits

I would like to know about your sparring habbits : Where do you sparr, Who do you sparr, How often , What rules do you use , What sort of equipment ?.

where? at my kung fu school, during both regular material classes, conditioning classes and a 1-hour sparring class.

who? other students at my school. all belt levels. sometimes, if i am lucky, my master.

rules? targets include head,chest,stomach,groin; little or no head contact, no knee attacks; 1 point for punch, 2 points for kick, 3 points for take down followed immediately by a strike;

equipment? gloves, shin and foot pads, groin cup, mouthpiece. head gear for more contact and continuous sparring.

but if you are talking about other habits, here are three of my typical attacks (grappling and ground work excluded, cause i just dont train those techniques enough) --
1. opponent with same foot forward: fake punch with lead hand to head followed by lead foot round house to groin (after i have exausted any usefullness from this technique, which doesnt take long, then i fake the kick to the groin and go straight for the head)
2. opponent attacking, mostly with a puch: fade away from attack, then slide in and side kick with lead foot to chest (for some reason works more often than it should)
3. opponent with same foot forward: fake punch with lead hand, grap opp's lead arm, back foot round house to the head from blind side (takes speed speed speed)

these are decent techniques, specially within a good combo. although, i am sure there are those who will feel otherwise.

[Sasami2000]

For me.....

Where: Dojo or any gym with a little space

With: Mostly some old MA friends I've made from my current and previous martial arts styles.

Rules: We HATE point sparring! We just spar with no real rules except not to seriously hurt the other person. We hit to the head, trip, throw, tackle, grapple, mix in weapons, and sometimes fight against multiple attackers. We mix Wing Chun, boxing, TKD, wrestling, JKD, and Karate. We help teach each other what we know and work on what works, and it's a lot of fun.

Equipment: Depends. Sometimes hand/foot gear, sometimes just open hand (kempo) gloves, and sometimes nothing. I'm sure my guy friends wear cups too, lol.

[Sasami2000]

"Also beating up morons provides practice too. "


Now that's the BEST type of practice

[fool with fist]

beating up morons is by far the most fun, but i find no challenge in it. the best practice for me is to sparr someone that is bound to kick my ass, and learn from my mistakes. kinda like this ruskironin guy

[begins]

im not trying to apply my wingchun yet because we havent started sparring in class's yet and im not ready for it,

umm, rusty, what have you been doing in your wing chun class for the last 16 months without any sparring practice??

peace

[RuskiRonin]

We dont spar until later into practice.

[begins]

how much later is later in your "practice"

[RuskiRonin]

When we are ready...

[Sasami2000]

When we are ready...

Just do it now, don't wait. Get someone from the gym and start sparring outside of class if they won't do it in class; that is the only way you will be able to apply it. A few friends of mine and I took Wing Chun and we'd take whatever we learned and play with it in our own sparring, and we improved big time. Don't "wait till you're ready" because Wing Chun is one of those styles that if you don't start applying it now you'll never be able to really use it. Besides, you'll never feel "ready" until you put it into sparring and see the application and point of it.

[begins]

yeah, thats a good way to apply yourself, the only thing is... how can you not be sparring yet in wingchun... have you done anything else...like yip sao or something...because over a year of wing chun without applying seems very odd and out there...

peace

[RuskiRonin]

By sparring i mean actually putting on gloves and duking it out.
We do various 'free' drills without any equipment, a week ago we did a drill where any of us had to attack from mid range and enter chi-sao range, the other had to defend himself using an agressive block then fight at chi-sao range. kicking was included, it was like sparring but contact was light, we didnt clench our fists hard. we also do drills where we stick laundry clips at 3 different levels on our upper body and we have to sieze them and stick them on our shirts while the opponent is still fighting back. we do various applications drills
but not actuall real sparring as in boxing yet, sometimes our instructor puts us in a corner or to the wall and we have to defend ourselves.

[jdawg]

laundry clips?

we also do drills where we stick laundry clips at 3 different levels on our upper body and we have to sieze them and stick them on our shirts while the opponent is still fighting back.

interesting. is this useful to you and your classmates? do people like it?

[RuskiRonin]

It's fun, altho i understand stealing clips is nowhere near fighting it still spots mistakes and bad habbits you should fix aswell as what principles you are forgetting. this one is mostly used as a warm up tho.