Conventional Wisdom for Sparring Training
Wouldn’t you love to have all those shiny tournament plaques there is on display at your school or at home? Well, you can. All you need to do is enter in a number of martial art tournaments and win them! So, we got a little ahead of ourselves because you might be asking yourself. How do you get there? The answer to this is simple: sparring. You must work very hard to geat a great deal of situational experience in training to find yourself on the winners podium with a medal or trohpy. You need experience and skill and that is why sparring training is a must. Or, more accurately, proper sparring is a must.
So, here are a few tips to help you get the most from of your sparring sessions:
Let’s straighten out something out from the right here: sparring is not fighting. Sparring is a drill designed to enhance your fighting skills. Like we have been told since we were kids it is not about winning or losing but how you prepare for it. It is about improvement. That means you need to curb your competitive spirit and approach sparring with an attitude centering on a positive learning experience.
Also, if you are not brown or black belt, you should never be sparring without proper supervision fr om an instructor. In addition to having a knowledgeable eye presenting you with tips and pointers, there will be someone there to ensure the sparring session stays light and friendly.
It is imperative that in now way do you spar without the proper MMA gear on. Yes, you see professional fighters sparring without such equipment all the time. They are also professionals and they have the experience to handle such training. If you are training as a hobby or for amateur or tournament competition, you will want to wear as much protective gear as possible. This includes head, chest, feet, hand, and groin protection. Doing this will minimize the likelyhood of injury and this gives you the change to train more and safer.
Always keep intensity and physical contact levels low. You don’t have to practice at 100% to develop sharp your sparring skills. In fact, doing so is often self-defeating. You want to be able to assess your strengths and weaknesses while sparring while refining the areas you excel and enhancing (or avoiding) that are underdeveloped. It is very tough to do this when you are training with excess contact or intensity and such heavy training should be limited. However, limited does NOT mean never. It is important to train in the state of exhaustion you will be in durying a compeition so you must push yourslef very hard. A rough estimate is to do full intensity sparring about 10% of your training.
Spar according to the rules of the tournament you wish to enter. This way, you will be able to work the tournament rules to your advantage when you compete. It is important that you wear the same sparring apparel while training that you will wear when in a competition. If you train in mixed martial arts shorts and martial arts shoes then you are in a tournament that requires a uniform and doesn’t allow shoes, you will feel very off when the competition arrives. Always pick your sparring partners wisely. You want someone who is safe, controlled, and non-competitive but still knows how to push you to improve. Be sure to avoid sparring partners who are ultra competitive or they feel like they have to prove something to you!
