Karate sparring?

Question

ok yester day we had a open sparring class for all the belts from ages 8 to 15 and im 12 and a white belt and i had 2 sparring bouts with blue belts the first one i destroyed 3 to 1 and then the second one went for 10 minutes and wa 1 to 1 and i tied and my sensei says that i should use my punches more and bascially my question is douse this mean im leading on the right path of being an awesome sparrer

Answer 1

how good you are depends on how good/bad your opponents are. But if you beat them, it means that you are faster in speed or have better reflexes or you are a faster learner, or have a good sense of what to do in sparring or your opponents are really bad at those at those points mentioned. Since they are blue belts, they should have more experience and training than you, but still you managed to do really well.

Take it as a motivation to training harder. Nothing like progress and a winning to inspire you. Learn more about the sparring game if you have a nack for it. learn more about strategies, tactics, how to set up your opponent, what are counter techniques you can use, how to sparr with people of different heights, reach, speed, power, passive fighter, or aggressive fighter. Lots of things to learn, and they are very interesting. knowledge will make you a smarter fighter. Even you have equal skill with someone, but if you are smarter, you can still win.

Do your training at home, do blocks and then punch/kicks, do block and attack spontaneously, think of different situations.

Come to class 20 minutes, early, do your warm up, and when other students arrives. Ask them to do mock sparring with you, play around a little, experiment with techniques. Ask you instructor questions. Watch professional karate fights or other fights on youtube or dvd. observe and analysis the best fighters, watch their tactics. The best way to learn is by watching and learning. best fighters are usually very smart fighters.

Be sure to do homework, do half an hour per day for now. One year later, do 1 hour homework per day, 2 years later, do 1.5 hours per day. If you wan to be really good, you need to train 2 session with a total of 3-4 hours per day. read some of my previous answers may help.

Answer 2

Points sparring, the biggest waste of time I've ever seen, do you get something from it? maybe a little, but not enough to make it worth putting a lot of time into it. Point champions most of the time end up getting hurt on the street, because you can't apply the point mentality or strategy to the street, work your Kata's, practical applications and self defense techs. Point stuff it what I like to call baby karate, good for trophies

Answer 3

I agree with pama that point sparring is basicly a waste of time unless you want to collect trophy's. Yes it will teach you timing, balance, movement, positioning, but so will sparring with medium to heavy contact, and the medium to heavy contact will teach you faster. One bad thing about point sparring is it teaches you to pull your techniques, and the way you train is the way you will fight. I have also seen techniques score at tournements where the actual basic sof the technique, IE stance, focus, intent, location were totally absent, and would have done nothing to an attacker on the street.

I actually saw a point scored where the kid threw a kick as he fell down, and he wasn't even looking at his opponent. Play fighting will jsut get you kurt if you confuse it with real self defense. If you can seperate the two that's ok, but in a tense situation your body will rect as you have trained it. if you are more interetsed in trophy's then self defense, then yes you are doing good and kep it up.

Answer 4

To be allowed to spar in the first place, you must have been training for at least a few of months. If you'd just begun you wouldn't be allowed to spar till you'd had some decent training.

How many belts above white is a blue belt at your school? If it's quite far above then they can't be training very hard if they got beaten by a white belt. It's possible that you have potential to be good at sparring, but you'll need to train hard to achieve that.

Don't get full of it just 'cos you're on a level with a couple of blue belts at your club - the coloured belts at other clubs might be able to wipe the floor with you. When I started at taekwondo I used to get my *** handed to me by the higher grades, but now after a lot of training, I can win against them.

It sounds like you've started on the right path to becoming good at sparring, but if you start competitions, you're going to be competing against people who are just as good. It's not just sparring you have to focus on. You also have to concentrate on the other aspects of your training as well to become an awesome martial artist.

Answer 5

In Karate, it is all about finding an opening and exposing it by strikes. Punches are essential in a front attack, but mix it up with other strikes. I'm a Sensei in Gojo-Ryu, so I've done my share of points Sparring in my childhood years.