SPARRING
It cannot be over emphasized how important contact sparring should be in your training. Putting the pads and gloves on should be essential to your training. If you were to take swimming lessons, you would learn the different strokes, perhaps you will probably learn some of the history of the great swimmers of the past, but at some point in your training you have to put on your bathing suit and swim. It’s what you have been training for, and it is only in the actual swimming that your body is truly going to know how it feels to float. Well, it’s the same in Martial Arts; at some point in your training you’re going to have to fight: it’s what you have been training for. It’s the only test to see if you have been training in techniques that actually work. It’s your chance to actually feel combat.
Another benefit of contact sparring is that you will know what it feels like to get hit. Getting hit is not a natural thing, it is something that most normal thinking people fear. The biggest reason we fear it is because we think it is going to hurt a lot more than it does. Having the knowledge of what it feels like, serves two purposes; (1) it alleviates your fear and lets you relax and (2) it gets you to know just how powerful a technique is. Then, you are not surprised when you hit an opponent square in the face and he does not get knocked out.
To a martial artist a successful sparring session can be the biggest confidence builder there is. We all have self doubt and when you haven’t tested yourself that self doubt can fester and build until it gets to a level where you cannot function properly. However, when you do test yourself and you start to pass those tests through sparring, your confidence level increases tenfold.
When choosing sparring partners, make sure you choose different types of fighters, from a variety of different styles. Don’t just spar against the type of fighter you enjoy fighting. When I was younger I always hated sparring with fighters who charged in at me. This type of fighter made me feel very insecure of my fighting ability. So I avoided them like the plague. I hated to loose and I always lost to this type of fighter. Then one day the Sensei made me spar with a fighter who I knew excelled in charging. It was his forte, and the very idea of sparring him made me nervous. Sometime during the bout he charged in at me, but this time as he charged, I threw out a very powerful sidekick, hitting him in the chest. He went straight down, and I felt about nine feet tall. Since then I have come to realize that these sparring sessions were really lessons that had to be learned. It was not important if I won or lost, it was only important that I learned from the bout. By frequently sparring chargers, I have conquered that fear and learned how to deal with them.
True enlightenment in the martial arts can only be achieved through some form of sparring. Be it full out full contact, the pushing hands of Tai-Chi, or Chi-Sao of Wing Chun, it takes several combative exercises to learn to adapt to your opponents style and form. While all three of the named forms of sparring are excellent for achieving awareness and sensitivity, do not rely on one or two of them. Learn all that you can and practice the ones that blend with your system. However, don’t just write off the exercises that don’t blend in, instead investigate the reasons why and make sure that the reason it doesn’t blend in isn’t that there is something lacking in your martial art.
Sparring can lead to your discovery of new arts and their techniques, it also can lead to techniques trapped inside of yourself that you have not realized were practical in combat situations. Sparring brings to life techniques that up to now you only read about in books and magazines. It is not until you have used them in combat, or until you have been hit by them, that the effectiveness of the whipping elbows of Muay Thai or the joint locks and throws of Jiu-Jistu become apparent. Through sparring and cross training with martial artist from other arts, no matter how obscure, Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do practitioners exchange information on different techniques and their respective arts. A martial artist friend of mine asked me to show him some Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do. So we put on the pads and sparred. While sparring he jammed a vertical punch of mine and hit me with a backfist. It was a very effective combination from Wing Chun that I had not seen before. As the sparring went on, I saw my chance to show him Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do, I threw another vertical punch and once he jammed it I knew what he was going to do. He was going to throw a backfist, but this time I was ready for it. I used his own technique against him. I jammed his backfist and hit him with one of my own. I then stepped back and said, "that was Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do". So in this case, Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do was not just the jamming and backfist technique that I borrowed from him, it was that technique combined with the principle of programming your opponent. Using this principle you know what your opponent is going to do before he does. This can only be learned through sparring.
After years of studying the martial arts, it is inevitable that you will have what we call techniques trapped or locked up inside of you. These are techniques that you have learned and trained with while you were practicing a classical martial art and later considered them not practical. While sparring though, some of these locked up techniques will eventually become unlocked, and tried by you. You must not let this become a conscious decision, rather, during the bout, let you body and mind (through the process known as Mushin) choose the technique and if it should choose one of these locked up technique, then let it flow into your repertoire of combative techniques.
It was during an intense sparring match with a Shinto-ryu stylist that this principle came to life for me. After deflecting an attack of his, I brought my leg up and hit him with an inside crescent kick. The kick nearly knocked him out. After the bout we spoke about what had happened, and we both agreed if asked before the bout that weather a crescent kick was an effective combat technique, we would both probably say no, but not anymore. Now I realize how effective this technique is, and it has become one of my favorite counter-attacks.
Three things were needed for me to come to this realization. First, I needed to have the proper mind-set in order for my mind to let my reactions take over and use the technique. Secondly, I needed to have studied a martial art that included the technique in its repertoire, and thirdly I needed to have been sparring. If I had all the time in the world to kick a heavy bag or do a Kata, it still would have never led me to adding this particular technique to my system.
This technique is only one of many classical techniques that have been unlocked through sparring. Sparring is a learning process, you learn from your opponent, but you also learn from yourself. Learn to look inside yourself. You can be your best teacher. The information you need is sometimes locked up inside of you, you just need a way of bringing it out. In Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do this way is through various forms of sparring. Sparring is actually a way of self-discovery. A way of discovering how you are going to react in situations that can not be tested in Kata.
When you spar, do not set to many restrictive rules for yourself and your opponent. Of course, for safety sake, there has to be some guidelines, but not guidelines that would disallow techniques that are foreign to your system. Where as a finger strike to the eyes is not necessary in sparring, a hip throw is perfectly fine. However you must make provisions in order to practice the finger strike. While sparring, most classical schools do not allow using techniques that they do not teach in their art. This, I believe, is closed-minded and actually robbing the student of the experience of seeing and facing those techniques that they could use or worse, techniques that could be used against them. This closed minded approach ends up giving the student a false sense of security and this false sense can cause tragic results if the student ever needed to defend himself or herself on the street.
Sparring brings all the training that you have done together. It becomes the proverbial melting pot of the martial arts. You can train in many different arts and study different methods of learning them, but it is not until you have to mix the techniques, that you have learned together in a combat situation, that it all makes sense. Sparring is the glue that holds it all together. If a technique doesn’t work in the dojo, it will never work in the street.
The time to test your skill is under some controlled conditions in a dojo, not on the street or in an alley. Remember that stagnation leads to defeat and evolution leads to victory. Sparring is a must. If done in the proper way it will keep your art constantly evolving.
Designed by Ovidiu Semenea
