I plan on this post being short, but I write stream of consciousness, and so it could go long.
There are many genuinely good martial arts teachers who not only don’t spar, but don’t encourage it. The logic is either it’s too risky, or that sparring is too much like a duel and not an assault, and therefore creates bad habits.
Now I would argue “What is your definition of sparring” and I would also argue “Do the bad habits outweigh the good?” or other such questions. But I won’t really cover that topic today, other than saying my definition of sparring is any kind of practice that involves someone trying to impose their will upon you and you imposing your will upon them. The drill/spar should have a goal, whether it’s controlling someone, landing clean and decisive blows(This can be done without concussions) or escaping. Either one of you or both of you are trying to reach that goal, and the other guy is trying to stop you.
That is the definition I will go by.
The reason sparring/rolling with someone trying as hard as possible to keep you from achieving your goal in a fight/assault is important comes down to this:
What is happening to Connor right now that is a learning experience? It’s failure. It’s trying to do something your very good at, maybe even perform perfectly, and then having it fail. If it works good for you, but sometimes you can have the best principles, the best timing, and yet your ability to apply it screws up with just that one partner, that one person.
You can for instance have your partners resist only 30% or even 50% and make something work well, but put it into 90% resistence(without trying to get brain damage) and suddenly the timing is different. That 260 pound guy you can easily throw around suddenly feels like he’s 400 pounds. Why? He was giving realistic resisence before, why is i in sparring or rolling you can’t move him anymore? You’re thinking about the principles, thinking of not going to force on force, trying not to focus on the point of grip or impact. All sorts of things that make good technique.
Yet it’s not working with this guy. Is that bad?
No, it’s good. It’s a very good reminder there is no such thing as a perfect technique, of something always working no matter how sound.
Sometimes you can do everything right, you can do nothing wrong. And it STILL FAILS!!!!
The only way you can accept you or your students did everything right, but things can still fail is some form of sparring or rolling.
One can argue “I sparred/Rolled in my youth. I’m well aware that sometimes, just sometimes you can’t get the right timing, you can’t escape etc”
Yes but people tend to forget, maybe not consciously, but unconsciously they grow accustomed to fighting people only resisting fifty percent. Our instincts grow dull, and sometimes we don’t have the expectation of failure in the back of our minds in a fight, and then when you do your concepts and techniques, and they fall apart, often it can be overwhelming, especially with the intensity of the fight.
People forget, martial arts is a perishable skill. If you don’t keep it sharp, it degrades.
It gets more complicated when you think about how many diverse skills exist in martial arts, you can technically continue to still practice martial arts, but other skills in other areas will degrade if you don’t go back to them.
Sometimes we get myopic and have a focus we’re concentrating on, and that focus can last for years. Only for someone to walk through the door, and use a skillset on you that you’re out of practice on, and the oppurtunity of your focus does not come up.
Principle based training helps with being able to fight when forced to use a skill you’re unfamiliar with or are rusty at, especially if you already have a general base in martial arts and mechanics, but even if you think in terms of principles instead of skillsets, you still have to actually spend time practicing whatever your doing. Alot of Internal martial artists are VERY principle based, they focus heavily on mechanics and principles of movement/fighting. Yet there are more than enough stories of them going against boxers, wrestlers, BJJ players and the like, and they get smashed. Stories of them being ambushed as well(though very few people fare well in that situation)
When the internal martial artists perform well against someone that actually fights, often we find out their school does some form of actual fighting, rolling like shiao jiao or sparring like Sanda. There are Okinawan karate practitioners that talk deeply in terms of principles, who get taken to the ground and just can’t defend themselves. NOt because the principles are wrong, but because they simply don’t take the time to fight on the ground.
Positional rolling/sparring or sparring/rolling from a deficiet or bad position often remedies this. It’s okay to start with only 40% resistence than raise it to 50% then to the point you start in a bad place/situation and they are dead set in not letting you succeed.
Many people don’t call that sparring or rolling, but in BJJ they call that positional sparring. Wrestlers do it too.
Starting off locked up or in close range, and not allowing people to make distance is a very good way to train.
Or even starting with everything ideal is very good to spar with, because again, I want to re-iterate, FAILURE is the best thing about sparring/rolling.
You will learn the most when YOU DO EVERYTHING RIGHT, YOU’RE IMAGINING THE RIGHT PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS, YOUR MIND IS NOT ATTACHED OR ENTANGLED.
But the bastard infront of you, just doesn’t want you to succeed. And sometimes you just can’t do what you want.
I’ve had moments where I would have someone watch me spar, and they would be like “Adam why arn’t you trying to hit angles?” when I was constantly trying to hit angles, the guy I was fighting had better footwork, so everytime I moved to get an angle or readjust to get an angle, i never got it, because they were one step ahead. They were just better than me at that one skill.
I still ‘won’ the spar(You shouldn’t be thinking about winning in sparring, you should be working on a skill) but I didnt’ hit angles like the guy watching wanted me to. Because simply put, my opponent was dead set on not giving that to me, because that is what sparring and rolling is about.
I am not talking about a losing or defensive mindset.
You’re obviously still trying to win. Even if you fail, you still are trying to win.
But failure allows you to go back home, think about what happened, then try again.
Sometimes the solution is messy, sometimes the problem isn’t technique or failing to use principles, but you’re just too weak.
Nothing wrong with being a femboy, if you want to dress up like a woman, hell if you’re born biologically male but you look more beautiful than most woman at times, power to you.
But one of the biggest consequences of doing your best and always succeeding is that often we tend to assume other people failed because they ‘did x wrong’ or ‘they didn’t do x’ or ‘He failed because he was thinking about the wrong x’ and what not.
I had a 270 pound former professional Rugby player with a year of BJJ sitting in my guard, and no matter how much I tried to move into space, he had me pinned, and when I had space, he moved to take it away.
He isn’t even that technical, he’s just freakishly strong and big(and damn fast for a big guy)
His strength made it hard to break down his base and his structure compared to other big guys, where I can get under their base, or break them down to sweep or submit. His speed made it so that when I moved into empty space, he just exploded to take it back. His size made it all the more uncomfortable to simply have him on top of me, it is a constantly reminder of not trying to lift or move him, but the prensense alone is difficult.
I can hit pretty hard from the bottom, so I hit him a few times. SO then he hit me back, and with gravity on his side, with pressure on his side.
Thing is, I walked away from those sessions thinking “Man I wasn’t using X Principle” or “I didn’t do X” or blah blah blah.
But my coach basically said “Welcome to reality. This is why there are weight classes, this is why strength matters, and this is why professional athletes who do martial arts will do better than those who are not professional athletes.”
Thing is this big athletic guy will often ask my advice on martial arts, I actually teach him sometimes.
I’ve noticed I perform much better against him since I started lifting weight semi regularly, as in I’ve gotten stronger and therefore I can start to manipulate his structure and get things done. You realize, holy shit, I need to develop strength. Because sometimes strength makes technique all the more better.
Because, I want to reiterate, sparring/rolling teaches you that you can start off in a better place, with a better pace, with everything going your way, do everything right and still fail…and then you have to deal with it and figure it out. It’s about plans falling apart.
That’s maybe a better way to put it, you make plans, you try to execute a plan, but it’s sparring/rolling so it falls apart. And then you have to plan on the fly.
Okay Adeel, you’ve made the same point. Anything else you want to add?
Well the point comes down to the fact that sparring and rolling is uncomfortable, it can even feel redundant.
But worst of all, it’s hard.
I’m going to use myself as an example again.
My gym has very good instruction, we used to produce fighters…but now we don’t cater to young athletic men or young men seeking to be athletic and fight.
If I truly want to be a better martial artist, I’ll stop sparring and rolling at a gym full of soccer moms and old men, and join my students to spar and roll with other people at more competitive gyms, simply to deal with that same athleticism and to deal with different skillsets, different people.
But I’m almost forty now, and I have injuries, and I have a daughter and wife that expects things from me. I can’t give up teaching and focus on my own self-improvement, or sacrifice time and responsibilities with my family.
Going to the toughest guys in the city just isn’t a priority for me, but it is for my students and so I will never discourage them, hell I’m the one that help set that shit up for them to drop into another gym.
Thing is though, while that feeling is understandable, I won’t let it dictate my opinions. I could easily say “Oh sparring sucks I don’t need it, i’ve done enough,” or “Sparring sucks” which I have seen happen to aging martial artists, dismissing the entire practice rather than admitting they are just getting old and careful, and there is nothing wrong with that.
I remember one very skilled and talented martial arts training partner say “I don’t teach that sparring crap” when I talked about it.
Well last time I worked with him doing some dynamic drills, I suplexed him a few times, and I took him down pretty consistently, to the point he made excuses like saying I would have been stabbed if he had a knife, not knowing I’ve done grappling rounds with someone holding a knife. Who says sparring/grappling doesn’t involved drawn or sheathed weapons?
He knew how to grapple from an upright posture, his teacher is a very good teacher, one of the best in Canada, maybe even the world for counter assault. But the thing is though, I’m constantly striking or grappling people who really don’t want me doing it, with no intention of seeing me succeed. It creates a different level of problem solving, with so much more going on.
And the beautiful thing about sparring/rolling is it can be done slow or fast. If you maul your opponent or they maul you a few times, and you have no idea how it happened, you can just slow things down to the point you can ‘see’ things and problem solve like that.
Notice the speed? Slow enough for them to see where to move, fast enough to keep a good pace. They can turn it up, make it a full wrestling match, take all the space away so the escapes and scrambles are grinding. Or they can keep it loose and flow.
Either Way, sparring and rolling needs to have a purpose, each man should be trying to work on something, and each man shouldn’t just let the partner have their way with them. They can have agreements to feed an energy, but the timing must be broken, and whatever happen afterwards should not be agreed upon.
Notice they are not letting anyone get anything in that clip above? But at the same time, they arn’t just blitzing each other to get a KO.
They are both clearly working on mid range, or just at the edge of mid range. If they were point karate or TKD guys they would be really really far away, but these guys are not settling for that. If you’re more a street person, it would look like Boxing or muay thai milling drills. Or someone attacks from the side and then they go.
The reason I even bring any of this up is that it’s very much possible to spar and roll at an old age, especially with modern day training methodology. Ironically a karate or kung-fu school that is full contact is more likely to have unsafe sparring and grappling protocol than a western influenced full-contact school. It’s very much fallen out of fashion in boxing, muay thai and sometimes even Kyokushin to give concussions to your training partners and inuring them, not just rules for competition but general safety in training. Sport science has evolved greatly afterall, and more and more full contact schools do slow rolling, slow sparring and flow work. If the grappling is a grind, and if the striking is quick without a chance to flow, it still will likely be at a pace where injury is not prevalent.
The biggest thing I noticed though, is that when people first begin doing martial arts, they are very much open to being smashed. As in they can get ragdolled or peppered with strikes, and then eagerly go right back into it the next day.
What happens though, is as they get better, they get mauled much less often…so when it DOES happen, they are not very happy with it like when they were a fresh martial artist. Either they keep sparring/rolling only in places where they are the top dog or in control, or they don’t do it at all.
I noticed this with myself, my willingness to get mauled, I wasn’t as comfortable with it as I was ten year ago. Again, part of that is age and maturity, but another part of it also is just that well…i’m not used to it. Still, while I don’t drop into other schools to fight guys anymore like I used to, I still make it a point to try and fight and roll at the places I teach at, so I don’t grow complacent, so I can constantly get out of my comfort zone, without the time commitment and travel to go fight at different places like a professional fighter.
I especially noticed this from guys who run their own martial arts schools, including guys that come from styles/systems known for being badass and tough. One guy would never roll with one of his students who teaches grappling classes, because that student would maul him. Which is sad, because his other skills were good, and if he picked up grappling, he would have been a monster, it would have been momentary discomfort for long term gain.
Sometimes there is an expectation of things going smoother than they should be when training goes alive, and when it isn’t smooth, sparring/rolling gets blamed for it. When maybe the person just is going out of his way so you can’t flow, or he has your number. When you’re an older, very skilled martial artist, it can almost feel counter intuitive, because whether boxing, muay thai, karate, kung-fu/Taiji, the progression of skill is to be more efficient, more smooth, less exchanges, less back and forth.
But then when that young super-muscular former athlete makes your entire sparring/rolling experience rough, lots of back and forth, lots of exchanges, suddenly you may even start to think sparring itself if bad and teaches bad habits, when in reality…you got hit by reality, because you’re not young, because there are physical freaks alive that walk through the door of your gym. Sometimes when you visit another gym to spar, the guy is just more focussed on fighting than you, while you are also focussed on teaching.
Many experienced martial artists love to experiment with mechanics, concepts, etc, while young fighters are conservative, they just want to train and fight, and get good at it. They will maul you because that’s all they are focused on, while you my aged martial arts master, want to play with something you worked on with your friends or students, and you want to teach it, kicking ass is secondary.
So to go back to the original point of this blogpost:
The best part about sparring and rolling is getting smashed. You need to get smashed, it kills your ego, and it forces you to problem solve like you never have before. Getting smashed gives you perspective. It also is a reminder to get to the fucking gym and squat/deadlift. Because you quickly learn when there is full resistance how powerful strongmen and power lifters truly are.
Another thing sparring/rolling actually does is it teaches you the value of using equipment in your training, a bare knuckle teaches you one thing, a boxing glove another, an mma glove another. Just like how my Karate teacher Rick uses different types of training knives for different qualities.
But that could be another blog post on it’s own.
No go out there, whether beginner martial artist or older and fatter like me, and get mauled, and learn to enjoy it.
What's the deal with Adeel? 