The Focus of Sparing:
By Spencer Sensei
Published: 7-19-2010
There are as many opinions about sparring as there are those who spar. Many believe that it imprints bad habits while others believe that there is no karate without sparring. Some believe that a student can only progress if they train and spar in the full contact arena. Shimabuku sensei did not make students spar, but he mainly trained United States Marines and fighting was second nature to them. He protected his students by using kendo armor to prevent injures. When he called points, it was not the first technique to land, but was the most effective one. Today sparring is despairingly called a game of slap and tickle. I believe we can still use point sparring as a means to practice mind control, vision control, angular attacks, and footwork. It can also be used to teach respect for other karatekas. I believe that a student, during kumite, after throwing a half-hearted attack, and then runs past his/her opponent thrusting their fist in the air claiming victory, is a disgrace. Their concern is not for the development of their fighting skills, but their intent is to manipulate weak-minded judges to steal what they have not earned. Love point fighting or hate point fighting, used in the proper way it can enable us to improve our fighting skills and it can simultaneously teach us about ourselves too.
Step One: The first aspect the student should work on, while participating in kumite, is mind control. Fear must be pushed out of your mind. Any internal dialogue slows the fighter’s reaction time. Technique must be practiced until it is second nature. In kumite muscle memory must be triggered as a response to a perceived attack. In other words, the eye sees a movement and the body reacts. If you must collect your thoughts, during the fight, back out of the opponent’s range, and clear your mind before stepping back into the fray. You must have mind-of-no-mind. Tell yourself to relax and kick it into auto pilot. If your mind is telling you the opponent is too strong, too fast, or too big you’ve lost. The truth is your mind can lie to you because until the fight ends you don’t know how fast, strong, or skilled they are in reality. Never worry about winning or losing. The outcome is irrelevant in sparring. You spar to learn not to win. However, you do want to get the opponent thinking. Making your opponent think you’re too strong or too fast, will cause his/her reaction time to slow down. Getting into the opponent’s head can benefit you because once he/she has started the internal dialogue you really are faster. Point fighting gives you the opportunity to improve your reflex response, but the first technique that should be practiced is quieting the mind.
Step Two: Directing the gaze is the second purpose of sparring. In Miyamoto Musashi’s book titled A Book of Five Rings [Go-Rin-No-Sho], he wrote about the gaze in the water section. He instructs the reader to see close things as if they were far away and see far away things as if they were close. It also wrote that one should develop the ability to see in all directions without moving the eyeballs. We have tendency to develop tunnel vision during a fight. Work on widening your field of vision each time you spar. Direct your gaze to see the entire silhouette of your opponent. Use all your peripheral vision. The sooner you see an attack the more quickly you can respond. One technique that can be practiced is squinting your eyes. This forces you to use your peripheral vision and it improves the focus of closer objects. Directing the gaze also means trying to get your opponent to focus on one point like your hands, feet, or shoulders. Some fighters will rhythmically circle their hands and wait until their opponent is hypnotically relaxed before attacking. Other fighters will wait until the opponent blinks. If their eyes are closed, their gaze is nonexistent. Smile and put the opponent at ease before attacking. If the opponent fixes their gaze on your shoulders, eyes, or hands, this means they have narrowed their vision and the attack must come from outside their gaze. In other words, if they’re watching your shoulders for a cue, fake with the shoulder and drive your shin into their groin. Directing the gaze can take years to develop, so don’t try it once during kumite and dismiss it because it was not a magic bullet.
Step Three: Learn to take cues from your opponent. Take stock of his/her attitude to determine your strategy. Always circle sideways and backwards until you’re out of range, if you want to look at the opponent’s countenance. This must be done at intervals during the fight. In some cases, you’ll be able to read his/her mind by watching their body language. Is he frightened or confident? Is he defiant or timid? Are his eyes wide or are they narrow? Is he breathing hard and shallow? Does he/she look confident or confused? Remember, experienced fighters, can send false cues to set up a trap. Making yourself appear weak can give the opponent confidence causing him/her to become overly aggressive giving you openings he/she would ordinarily protect. All is fair in war. Making your opponent think you’re out-of-control can cause him/her to become reserved and more defensive. The truth is an out-of-control opponent is easier to beat because they tend to have tunnel vision, and do not cover vital striking areas when they launch their attack. The eyes are the window to the soul. An opponent’s eyes can tell you what they’re thinking which can also tell when they’re attacking. Many untrained fighter’s eyes will widen before they attack. Fear in the opponent’s eyes means you have the advantage. Remember don’t stare at the opponent’s eyes, or you’ll develop tunnel vision. Taking cues from an opponent can direct the way you prosecute a fight.
Step Four: Footwork is the fighter’s edge. Sparring teaches the karateka how to move in and out as well as side to side. In every match the karateka must practice footwork until it flows without thought. It is hard to hit a moving target. Beginners will generally attack in a forward motion. An advanced student moves in an angular direction. Like the points on a compass, the angles of attack and counterattack must be delivered from all directions. Never retreat straight backwards because the opponent can, in most cases, run faster forward than you can backwards. A fighter must learn to slip a punch. This is not a lot of footwork or moving in a big circle, but a simple step sideways or a bend at the waist. Practice your footwork until you can easily move around to the side or behind an opponent. Once this is movement perfected and you find yourself slightly to one side, of the other fighter, you must develop your recognition of vulnerable target areas to attack. Slip to the opponent’s weak side whenever possible, but don’t become predictable. It is only smart to stay away from the opponent’s power side, but if you find yourself on the opponent’s power side, punch the opponent’s bicep muscle and move out of range. This buys you time and neutralizes his/her power punch. If an aggressive fighter charges you, when you back out of range, stop abruptly and attack with a flurry of blows then quickly move laterally and away. A well-placed heel thrust kick to the sternum or bladder can put the aggressive fighter on the ground. A few times of running into an attack slows the boldest of competitor especially if it hurts. Aggressive fighters can even be baited into this counterattack. If you’re taking more than one and a half steps, during an attack or counterattack, your moving too much and wasting energy. Being able to slip a punch using footwork is more valuable than any strike because it opens up your opponent’s defense. The shuffle step is most effective in kumite. Try to never cross your feet while moving because it is too easy to trip over your own feet, and it inhibits lateral movement. To practice footwork outside of sparring simply get up on your toes and shuffle backwards, then right sideways, then forwards, and then left sideways in a box until the movement is fluid and takes no thought. Next do it in the other direction. Tiger boxing drills are a great way of developing slipping and angular movement. They also develop attack recognition and simultaneous blocking and striking. Footwork can take you out of range or put you in range. Use footwork to be unpredictable. Move in big circles then attack linearly. Learn how to close the gap between you and the other fighter, and then to retreat on an angle. Move backwards and draw the opponent in, and when the fighter commits by moving forward reverse your direction and attack. Put a foot on his lead leg to impede his forward motion. Learn to drive off the back leg and counter with the rear hand. If you cannot move, you’re a human punching bag.
Step Five: It is important to find your range of combat at the beginning of any match. The sooner you become able to recognize the range of combat the sooner you can begin developing your strategy. Practice this during kumite until it becomes second nature. The range of combat is how close you can get before the opponent can hit you or that you can hit the opponent. One and a half steps is the average range, but if you are a shorter fighter you’ll need t to be closer. Once inside the range of combat, blocking becomes more important than striking. If you can block, while inside the range of combat, all you need to do is wait for your shot at a knock-out. Most street brawlers’ only defense is an offense, so they wade into the fray hoping for that lucky punch or with the intent of overpowering their adversary and driving them to the ground. Tiger boxing drills teach the karateka to defend these haymakers, and it creates a situation where the attacker unwittingly allows you inside their defense. Unfortunately blocking is a lost aspect in point fighting. The quick attack is all corner judges are in tune to recognize. A block counter is seldom called for a point. In reality the block and simultaneous strike wins the confrontation when the strike is directed to a vulnerable area. Size is important in the range of combat. A taller fighter wants to keep a shorter fighter at bay, and the key to this is a combination of quick footwork and striking. Keeping the shorter fighter out of range allows the taller fighter to slowly wear down the shorter fighter’s defense until a knock-out is inevitable. Conversely the shorter fighter must work inside the long arms and legs of his/her opponent to find the taller fighter’s vital striking areas. If a fighter throws high round kicks, step inside and try and put an elbow into his/her thigh or sweep the support leg. Kickers have variable ranges of combat because legs are longer and stronger than arms. A kicker’s range will be different when he/she is kicking than when he/she is punching. Finding these multiple ranges of combat is an essential component that can be developed by sparring.
Step Six: Breathing is the fighter’s gas supply. Footwork may be the fighter’s transmission, but without air the bus does not run. Physical conditioning can be the difference in any fight. Physical conditioning builds the body and the mind. If your breathing is normal, your confidence is high. If your breathing becomes erratic your mental state becomes erratic. The mind or fatigue can cause you to lose control of your breathing. Once you’re exhausted fear can set in causing your breathing to become irregular. Even if you’re tired, relax your mind and allow your breathing to become normal. Without oxygen the brain’s functions become slow, and this puts the fighter at a disadvantage. Your opponent can see his/her advantage if you’ve lost your breath. Conceal this problem in any confrontation. Breathe in through the nose and out the mouth. A beginner can force out a breath as they punch to force an inhale. Focus on controlling your breathing during sparring, but not to the point of distraction. Never hold your breath during a fight because the muscles will become fatigued. If you don’t breath, you die.
Step Seven: Stances are the fighter’s foundation. Like the foundation of house, a fighter’s stance can make him/her stable or allow them to topple. Point fighters fight from a side stance because it takes away most of the target areas allowed in competition. This is one reason that many karate instructors dislike point fighting. Any time the karateka spars they should maintain a hips forward balanced stance. More weapons can be brought into play from this stance, and footwork can be more angular. Full contact fighters rarely fight from a side stance. When a student spars, they should always spar from a balanced stance.
Point Fighting: A problem with point fighting is the focused technique. A fellow martial artist told me of one of his street confrontations. The disagreement escalated into a full-blown fight. When the attacker started for my friend, he instinctively threw a beautiful round kick to the attacker’s face stopping it only inches from his nose. Unfortunately, the other guy was not a martial artist and slammed a right hand into my friend’s face. Had my friend landed the kick, the fight would have been over, but years of point fighting and lectures on control caused his focus to be off momentarily. I’m not condemning point fighting. I believe it is a great way to teach timing, footwork, breath control, and mental control without harming the students, but it must be accompanied with bag work, so the student can switch gears from control to knock-out power.
Conclusion: Take your time. There is a time for everything. Patients are the fighter’s friend. The fighter that lashes out blindly opens himself/herself up to attack. No one wins a fight by getting hit. While sparring clear your mind, use your footwork, control your gaze, control your breathing, and read the cues. These skills must be honed anytime you are afforded the opportunity to spar. Let the opponent lose patients. Move when he moves. If he is faster at closing the gap, get inside and jam his/her footwork. Be unpredictable. Be fluid. Sparring is a safe place to practice. Do not get frustrated when you make a mistake simply learn from it. You can make mistakes in point fighting that you cannot make in a real-life preservation situation. Rank does not make you a better fighter. Practice makes you a better fighter. Time does not exist during a fight. Only the fighters exist in the conflagration.
If the above techniques are practiced each time the karateka spars, he/she is the victor regardless of who has more points at the end of a match. Everyone gets hit. The object is to get hit less and less as your skills improve. Plastic trophies never determine the best fighter. The best fighter is the one that is still fighting after they’re bloody and broken. These are simply techniques that give you an edge in kumite and translate well when taken into the street.