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Оглавление10 Ways to Make Your Sparring Street Smart
By Iain Abernethy
Almost all martial artists include sparring in their training. However, there are many different types of sparring and there is some debate as to what types are most realistic. It’s even fair to say that some question if sparring has any relevance to self-protection situations. To my mind, the amount of relevance that it has to the street is determined by how that sparring is structured. With that in mind, I’d like to raise some of the key issues to consider when structuring your sparring and share 10 ways to help make yours street smart.
A word on awareness and avoidance
From the onset it’s vital that you understand that fighting is what happens when self-protection has gone bad. If you are truly serious about keeping yourself safe on the streets, it’s not fighting you should be focusing on, but awareness and avoidance.
The way I break down self-protection for my students is as follows: 95 percent of self-protection is awareness and avoidance skills coupled with a healthy attitude to personal safety. If you are unable to avoid a situation, you need to be able to control the dialogue and distance, strike preemptively, and use the opportunity to escape. This ability to control a situation before it becomes a fight makes up 4 percent of self-protection. The remaining 1 percent is the fighting skills you fall back on when all else fails. In my experience, it is common for martial artists to overly fixate on fighting (the last 1 percent) and hence they are not effectively addressing the issue of self-protection.
The point I’m making here is that you can be one hell of a kick-ass fighter, and yet still be incapable of keeping yourself safe. If your awareness skills are poor, you’ll be taken out before you are even aware there is a threat. You simply won’t get the opportunity to use your fighting skills. Consider that no matter how good a fighter you are, there will be people who are better. The way to keep yourself safe from more skilled fighters is very simple: don’t fight them! Avoid the situation entirely, and if you can’t, control distance through talking with your hands (keep them between the assailant and you), use dialogue and deception to facilitate a first strike, and then use the moment of confusion to flee. In this way, it can be possible to protect yourself from people you may not be able to out fight. However, if all that fails then you have no option but to fight.
As we’ve established, in this section we are looking at training for that last 1 percent should all your other skills fail; it is therefore not appropriate to discuss in detail awareness and pre-emption. The reason I mention them is that it is vitally important that the sparring methods we are going to examine are viewed from the correct perspective. Remember, fighting skills aren’t the key to self-protection: fighting is what happens when self-protection goes bad.
Sparring and the nature of a street fight
Having established where sparring and fighting fit into the grand scheme of things, the next thing we need to cover briefly is the nature of the environment we are training for. In this book we are talking about the street and therefore the nature of the street will determine how we should spar to prepare for it. If we look at the sparring used in the various combat sports, it is immediately apparent that many differing methods of sparring exist. They vary because what is needed to win varies. What is needed to win is determined by the rules, and hence people sometimes assume that seeing as there are no rules in the street, getting rid of the rules will make sparring like a street situation. However, it’s not that straight forward. Aside from the lack of rules, there are many other things that make a street situation what it is.
A fight is what happens when self-protection goes wrong.
The reality of street fights
A detailed discussion on the nature of street fights is beyond the scope of this look at sparring; however, here are a few key points that need to be considered:
The vast majority take place at close-range.Real fights often involve multiple assailants and weapons.Real fights are fast, frantic and chaotic.Real fights do not resemble a skilled exchange between two martial artists.In a real situation, you need to keep things really simple.The fight might begin without warning (awareness being the key to ensuring it doesn’t).Deceptive or aggressive dialogue will frequently precede any physical exchange.Real fights are terrifying and wholly unpleasant (assuming you’re not a psychopath).
To make our sparring relevant to real situations, we need to consider all the things listed above. When they are factored in, sparring can be quite a bit different from what is seen in most dojos. This does not mean other types of sparring have no value: far from it. As a martial artist, it’s very likely that you will train for a variety of reasons and have an interest in many aspects of martial training. It is therefore entirely possible that you will spar in more than one way: different types of sparring for different aspects of your training.
You may spar in one way for a straight fight with other martial artists, and another way for the street. Some argue that by sparring in more than one way you may inadvertently use the wrong method at the wrong time. I can follow this logic, but it’s my view that the dojo and street environments are so radically different that it is unlikely you’ll mix up the various methods so long as you keep the various types of sparring totally separate. (Almost all the leading realists that I know and train with also engage in sparring methods that aren’t directly transferable to the street and yet they are easily able to keep the various methods separate.)
Having covered some of the key issues, it’s now time to look at the 10 ways to make your sparring street smart.
Important point: All sparring is potentially dangerous and must always be closely supervised by a suitably qualified and experienced person. If you don’t have such supervision, don’t try out the methods we’re going to discuss.
Be aware of the flaws of any sparring exercise
No matter how realistic sparring is, it is never real. We are always making compromises in the name of safety. If we didn’t, every training session would result in the majority of students going to the hospital. We need to introduce necessary flaws into training to ensure that we can do it safely. Without these flaws, training would be just as dangerous as the street; which kind of defeats the whole point of training. It won’t make our lives any safer; it will just expose us to many more life-threatening encounters.
The necessity and problem of compromise
If you do any of the following you’ve introduced a flaw into your sparring: train on mats, wear sparring gloves, use a gum shield [mouth guard], limit contact levels, omit techniques such as biting, eye gouges, and groin attacks, you or your partner end the fight by tapping out or submitting, and so on. Changes such as these will make training safer and more productive, but they also move it further away from a real fight. The trick to ensuring that this drift from reality is minimal is to be aware of the flaws and their effects.
By way of example, let’s say you and a partner were about to engage in heavy contact sparring. To maximize safety, one precaution you may take is to wear boxing gloves. Before you start sparring, you should think about the flaws that donning them has introduced:
Your fists are now much bigger than they would be in reality and hence your hit rate may increase.You can hide behind the gloves to protect yourself.You can’t grab or effectively set up a datum and neither can your partner, meaning you use one hand to locate and control the opponent’s head so the other hand can strike more accurately during the chaos of combatThe blows have less of an effect than they would in reality.The nature of the gloves means that open-hand strikes cannot be delivered.Your grappling techniques are severely limited.
By being aware of the flaws introduced by any safety considerations, you ensure that the reality of the street stays at the forefront of your mind. Sparring is a means to an end; it is not the end in itself. Being aware of the flaws in sparring also helps keep that distinction clear.
It’s not just safety that introduces flaws. You may also purposefully introduce some limitations to enhance certain skills. As an example, when sparring you may wish to isolate striking from a clinch. You limit the sparring to striking from a clinch, and therefore throws and takedowns would not be allowed. It’s my observation that as soon as you limit what techniques are allowed – which can be a very useful training method – people forget about the methods that have been omitted and hence leave themselves vulnerable to them. So even if you’ve agreed not to permit throws when working on clinch striking, you should still ensure you don’t get into bad habits by being aware of the flaw you’ve introduced.
Start with aggressive dialogue; not etiquette
Competitive and dojo sparring often begins with a formal show of respect. Depending on the nature of the art being practiced this may be a bow, a touching of gloves, shaking hands, and so on. Street fights don’t start that way. They are frequently preceded by deceptive or aggressive dialogue. To be adequately prepared for the street, you need to have exposure to such talk so that it does not faze you.
When sparring for the street, begin the fight with one person (or more) taking on the role of the bad guy. They should close the gap with either aggressive dialogue, or deceptive dialogue that will switch to aggressive. It’s important to make the dialogue and associated body language realistic. Push, shove, splay your arms, shout and swear (not in front of any kids, though). Although it’s training, as the bad guy you should attempt to intimidate your partner in the same way a real assailant would.
The other person should attempt to control distance and talk the situation down. Sometimes the bad guy may decide to back away without the situation getting physical. On other occasions, either party can begin the sparring when he feels it is appropriate.
Deceptive and aggressive dialog
Deceptive dialogue occurs when the assailant closes the gap between you by asking for directions, the time, or a light for a cigarette. He appears friendly and unthreatening until it’s time to become physical. Awareness, controlling distance and trusting your instincts are the key to dealing with this.
Aggressive dialogue is when the assailant screams, shouts and swears to intimidate you. The aim of this aggressive behavior is to pump himself up enough to physically attack, and to hopefully overload you with fear so that you freeze and are unable to effectively deal with the situation. If you’re not used to such naked aggression, this methods will probably work and render all physical skills you have redundant.
Start without warning
Some situations will start without any warning, i.e., if your awareness wasn’t what it should have been or if you are the victim of a well-executed ambush. It can therefore be good training to also have your sparring start without warning.
Sudden and unexpected sparring
Seeing as the sparring can start at any time, all participants need to wear their protective equipment throughout the entire session. The students will then engage in normal training (fitness work, drilling techniques, and hitting the pads). Whenever the leader of the training feels like it, they will shout out the command, “Fight!” At that instant all students should begin sparring with the person or people nearest to them.
The great thing about this type of training is that you are never sure what situation will develop or when. You might quickly respond to the command and attack an unsuspecting class mate, only for someone else to attack you from the rear. One second you thought you had the advantage, the next you’re frantically doing your best against two opponents. After a certain amount of time, the person leading the training will shout, “Stop!” and the students return to whatever they were doing previously.
If you are training as part of a small group, another way to have sparring start without warning is to agree that anyone can attack anyone else at any point during the session (you may want to make some exceptions in the name of safety: i.e., agree that you can’t be attacked when handling weights). The lack of the command to start makes the sparring all the more unexpected. It also ensures that all training done between the sparring is done with the correct attitude. If you start doing things in a half-hearted fashion, your partners may very well decide that it’s a good time to attack you.
Surprise sparring is a great training method that can get you used to having to fight without warning. It is also a great way to give a training session that added edge.
Fight! Now!
It’s important that the person giving out the commands does his best to ensure that the sparring is unexpected. I’m partial to shouting “Fight!” during water breaks, in the middle of drills, straight after a previous bout of sparring, while the students are performing push-ups, and immediately after I’ve told them the surprise sparring is over (my personal favorite). The students quickly begin to expect the unexpected and start to fight well regardless of the situation and position they find themselves in.
Keep the combat up close and personal
Most exchanges between skilled martial artists take place at a greatly exaggerated distance when compared to what happens on the street. The vast majority of real fights start close and they stay close. In the street there is rarely a gap to be closed and there is rarely any back and forth. This obviously has a significant effect on how we structure our sparring for the street.
As we’ve established, real situations will begin with dialogue or without warning. The distance at which words are exchanged is typically the same as punching distance. So in the case of dialogue, the distance has already been closed when the situation gets physical (people don’t try to intimidate you from 15 feet away). If a situation begins without warning, then the distance has already been closed.
A fight is about to begin in the dojo. Notice the distance between Tim and me. Street fights take place at a much closer range.
When two martial artists fight in the dojo or competitive environment, they typically begin the fight from outside kicking distance. This means that a key part of martial arts sparring is to effectively close that gap. These skills are essentially irrelevant for the street.
This is typically how a situation develops in the street. Here I play the bad guy as Tim takes control and lines me up for a strike. Notice how the distance has already gone before things get physical. The verbal exchange and the close proximity should be replicated in street sparring.
Another big difference between the street and a dojo exchange between two martial artists is that the there is no back and forth. In the street, people don’t back off, and then move around for a bit looking for an opening before closing the gap again. All of this means that when training for the street we need to exchange techniques at close range (the exception being when we flee, which we will look at later).
Practice within arm’s reach
When you start your street sparring, you should be within arms length of your partner and you should stay at that distance; with practice you’ll get used to it. However, to begin with you may need to force the distance; here are two ways to do this.
One of the best ways is to limit the floor space. The students who aren’t sparring form a circle around those who are so that there simply isn’t the space to exaggerate the distance.Another way was introduced to me by Shihan Chris Rowen. Chris simply uses a karate belt to tie the students together. It’s a simple method but it works incredibly well. The students can’t exaggerate the distance and hence it forces them to spar at a realistic range. The only downside with this is that the students can’t practice escaping. That said, as a way to isolate close-range skills it’s superb.
When you keep your sparring close there are a few things you will learn. One is that blocking becomes almost impossible. There simply isn’t the time or room to react. This is a really useful learning experience as it brings home the importance of being pre-emptive and proactive in the street.
Another characteristic of close-range fighting is that it becomes very important to keep both hands active. They should be either attacking the opponent or setting him up so he can be attacked (i.e. setting datums and removing obstructions).
Keeping the sparring close is a great way to learn about what is required for the street. So to make your sparring realistic it’s important to start close and stay close.
Don’t bring trained responses into the mix
One of the most important things for martial artists to appreciate is that when training for the street trained responses are not a factor. As martial artists we get trained to respond in certain ways to specific stimuli, i.e. when the opponent does motion A; you are trained to respond with motion B. When two martial artists meet these trained responses are invariably exploited: martial artist 1 will move in such a way that it looks to martial artist 2 as if he is attacking with motion A. Martial artist 2 counters with motion B, just as martial artist 1 hoped he would. By responding with motion B, martial artist 2 makes himself vulnerable to motion C; which was martial artists 1’s true intention. He attacked with motion A to illicit a response which would set things up for motion C.
In a street fight, you can’t use trained responses in the same way; hence you need to do your best to eliminate such practices from your street sparring.
Why trained responses fail
Trained responses aren’t relevant in the street for two key reasons:
Your opponent is highly unlikely to be trained in the same martial discipline as you are and hence won’t react as predicted. But what if he is a martial artist, I hear you cry.The street is so very different that even if your attacker is a trained martial artist he won’t fight like he does in the dojo or competitive environment. Street fights are far faster, more emotional, and more chaotic than martial bouts.
Observe two world-standard martial artists fight and count the average number of techniques thrown in a 15-second period. You’ll notice that most of the time is spent moving around and playing for position. The overall rate of exchange is actually pretty low. Certainly they are likely to be some blindingly fast exchanges, but they are often very short in duration. The ones that last that little bit longer are the ones when a combatant becomes injured or disorientated and the other moves in for a win.
However, a street fight is consistently frantic. It starts fast, stays fast and finishes fast. There is no time for trained responses. Indeed there is no time for responses of any sort.
In addition to being faster, a street fight is also more emotional. The intense nature of a street situation means that neither you nor your opponent will be best placed to process the information that exploiting trained responses demands. So in the unlikely event that you do meet another martial artist in a street situation, it still won’t be like a dojo or competitive situation.
A good illustration of this is the fight that broke out at the Tyson/Lewis press conference in the run-up to their long awaited bout. There we had the two best heavyweight boxers at the time, but when it kicked off for real the resulting exchange was nothing like a boxing match. It was a “street fight,” and was hence faster and more emotional.
Trained responses aren’t a part of a street fight and hence they shouldn’t be part of your street sparring. The difficulty of course is that you will be training with other martial artists so it initially takes some discipline not to engage in “game play.” The instant you do start trying to illicit trained responses, you’re no longer sparring realistically. In a real fight you need to keep things simple and direct. So practice keeping it simple and direct in your sparring.
Escape: Don’t stay and fight!
At the very beginning of this discussion we said that a fight is what happens when self-protection goes bad. Real fights are thoroughly unpleasant affairs that can have severe medical, emotional and legal consequences. If you therefore get the opportunity to stop fighting and run you should take it without hesitation. Many a wannabe tough guy will frown on the idea of fleeing a fight, but the smart and experienced people who have “been there” will always advise flight over fight. The true warrior doesn’t risk his life and liberty over his ego. He always does the smart thing.
Real life isn’t a kung fu movie
I recently received an email from a martial artist who a few days previously had been approached by two men armed with knives. He quickly assessed the situation and ran away. In his email he said that he was disappointed with himself because all he could think to do was run. He asked what martial techniques he could have applied in that situation. My advice was that he shouldn’t feel bad as he had dealt with the situation perfectly. His awareness was such that he had spotted the situation early enough to allow escape, and he had the presence of mind to act in what was undoubtedly the right way.
Fight two armed men and at best you’re going to have some pretty big medical bills. Because he had run away, he didn’t even get scratched. I’m certain that anyone who understands the street would advise nothing but running in that situation. Putting distance between yourself and a dangerous situation keeps you safe and ensures you’re able to spend your time on the fun things in life. So for your sparring to be street smart, you need to practice running away.
Fleeing is more than just running
Fleeing a fight is not as straight forward as just turning tail and running. If there is a sufficient gap between you and any would be assailant, you can do just that (again, this emphasizes the importance of awareness). However, if the assailant is close enough to strike you, or the situation has degenerated into a fight, you need confusion and distance. If you don’t have confusion and distance when you begin running, you will be giving the opponent your back. Bad things can occur when you do that.
If you have managed to incapacitate the opponent, even for a moment, then in that moment of confusion and disorientation you should flee. Because the opponent won’t be able to immediately react, you have the chance to generate sufficient distance to allow a successful escape. When a gap appears in the street, your self-protection training should have conditioned you to make it bigger. Much bigger! You should not be thinking of closing the gap and continuing the fight.
A great way to practice fleeing in training is to make part of your dojo a “safe zone.” Your aim is to reach this safe zone while your partner (or partners) prevents you from doing so. The full range of martial techniques are allowed, but if a gap is created (they rarely appear on their own) the aim is to extend it and make it to the safe zone.
Another good way to practice escaping is to have two people at either end of the dojo, while the person practicing fleeing is in the middle. The middle person will run towards the first person and they start sparring (using both grappling and striking). As soon as the fighting begins, the person who started in the middle must break contact and create a gap. He then runs to the other end and repeats the process. This drill is a great way to develop the skills needed to create a gap, and engrain the habit of running when you have the opportunity. It’s also one fantastic workout.
Running away is the smart and practical thing to do whenever possible. Hence, you need to ensure fleeing is included in your sparring.
Don’t limit the techniques or ranges
In a real situation, anything goes and hence you need to ensure your street sparring isn’t limited. If your background is in a striking system, ensure that you bring grappling into your sparring. Likewise, if your background is in grappling, ensure that you bring striking into your sparring. The more wide-ranging you make your sparring the more realistic it will be.
Allow banned techniques
You also need to ensure that you include the techniques not allowed by the rules. In combat sports, there are two groups of techniques that will be banned. First, there are those banned in the name of the purity of the sport, i.e. boxing is about punching so anything that can stifle the exchange of punches is prohibited. All combat sports have similar restrictions in order to maintain the purity of the sport and give the spectators what they want to see. Secondly, there are the techniques that are banned in the name of safety, such as low blows. All of these banned techniques are allowed in a street situation.
Modifying dangerous techniques
A real fight has no rules, and hence you need to ensure you ignore the rule book of your art when you structure your street sparring. It’s pretty easy to ignore the purity-based restrictions, but great care needs to be taken when ignoring the safety-based ones. In some instances you can substitute dangerous techniques for less dangerous alternatives. For example, if your partner secures a grip on the knot in your belt, it’s a safe assumption he could also have attacked your groin in the same fashion. Likewise, putting the thumb on your partner’s forehead above the eyebrows can be used as a substitute for eye gouges.
Substitutions like these ensure that you develop the skills to use and defend against such attacks. The flaw in this training is that if you’re not mindful of the intent of the substitution, you may find yourself using the substitution in the street at a time when you should be using the real technique. As I said at the very start, always be aware of the flaws of any drill. Because the alternative is to omit the techniques completely, I feel substitution is the best way forwards.
In addition to substitution, you can also reduce the intensity of certain techniques to ensure safety. For example, if you nip your partner with your teeth, he can be sure he would be missing flesh if the fight was for real. It is important that your sparring is closely supervised by a suitably experienced and qualified person when bringing potentially dangerous techniques such as biting and gouging into your sparring. The person supervising the sparring will be able to advise you on substitution, omission and intensity.
By not limiting the techniques or ranges of your sparring, you ensure that “blind spots” don’t develop and that your sparring has relevance to a real fight.
Emphasize simplicity & high-percentage skills
It is vitally important in the street to keep things very simple. The simpler a technique is, the more likely it is to succeed. The more complex a technique is, the more likely it is to fail.
However, it doesn’t always work that way in a dojo or competitive bout between two martial artists. In that environment, using complex and sophisticated methods can catch your opponent off guard. The simple methods will be more easily recognized and countered so it can be advantageous to use methods that are “off radar.” In almost all combat sports, much of what was winning fights a few years ago is now obsolete because it is easily recognized and hence easily countered. Competitors need to enhance, disguise, and evolve their techniques if they are to keep winning. Complex and indirect can work fine in the dojo or in sport. The complex and indirect won’t fare well in the street, however.
Advanced isn’t always better
When sparring for the street, be sure to stick to the basics. Many martial artists inadvertently associate the term “advanced” with “better.” That is not how it works in the street. There is the basic stuff that works; and the advanced stuff that doesn’t work. There are no such things as “advanced self-protection” or “advanced street fighting.” When sparring for the street, keep everything simple and avoid any temptation to get clever.
Use fight-stopping techniques
It is also important to emphasize techniques that will have the greatest effect. A head shot will have a greater effect than a strike to the body. A strangle will finish the fight, but a joint lock might not (you can’t fight when you are unconscious, but you can fight with a broken joint). Methods such as body shots and joint locks still have a role to play, but priority should always be given to the techniques that will end the fight the quickest.
For street sparring, stick to techniques that are simple, have the best chance of working, and are likely to have the greatest effect.
Vary the numbers (real fights aren’t always one on one)
This is a big one. Dojo and competitive sparring is almost always one on one. Street situations aren’t like that. They can be one on one but they can also be loads of other things. It’s therefore very beneficial to mix up the numbers when sparring for the street.
Techniques such as this can work really well in the dojo or competitive arena where the fight is guaranteed to remain one on one.
Real situations frequently involve more than one person, Sparring with multiple opponents will teach you which methods are most suitable for the street. If you do go to the ground in a street situation, don’t try to finish the fight from there. Do your utmost to quickly regain your feet.
Fighting vs. protecting yourself
Successfully fighting off two or more assailants isn’t anywhere near as easy as depicted in the martial arts movies. With enough commitment and ferocity, it is possible to take on more than one person successfully, but it is never advisable to do so.
The subject of multiple opponents is frequently overlooked in the martial arts world with most training focusing on the one-on-one scenario. Practicing against multiple opponents will help prepare you should the worst happen. Such training also brings home some really important lessons about how you should face street situations. Some martial artists attempt to justify the lack of training against multiple opponents by stating that successfully outfighting multiple opponents is impossible. It is true that outfighting committed multiple opponents is extremely difficult (not impossible); however, it should also be understood that you don’t need to outfight them in order to protect yourself.
A few years ago, I was teaching street-based sparring drills to a mixed ability group. As part of this session we were practicing two-on-one sparring. At one end of the room was a young, relatively inexperienced martial artist who was visibly nervous at the prospect of having to simultaneously face two opponents. At the other end was a group of extremely experienced martial artists. The members of this group had multiple black belts and were all skilled fighters. This group was actually excited at the prospect of getting to test their skills against two opponents.
When I signaled for the fights to begin, the experienced martial artists went off with all guns blazing … but invariably were quickly taken off their feet and beaten up by their colleagues. By contrast, the inexperienced martial artist did not want to test his skills. He wanted out of there! He ran all around the dojo and hardly had a punch land on him.
The moral of the story is that when faced with more than one person, don’t stay and fight them but instead run away the instant you can. As I said earlier, you don’t need to outfight multiple opponents to protect yourself from them. Sparring with multiple opponents really brings this lesson home and lets you practice your escape skills.
Spar two to understand how to spar one
Sparring with multiple opponents also teaches you a lot about how you should face a single opponent in the street. What begins as a one-on-one situation in the street or bar can quickly escalate. Criminals frequently work in gangs; just because you can’t see them doesn’t guarantee they are not there.
As an example of how the possibility of multiple opponents changes things, let’s briefly discuss ground fighting. In the dojo taking the opponent to the floor and trying to finish the fight on the ground can work great. However, if you use the same methodology in the street, a second person could get involved and you would get stamped flat. Fights can go to the ground so it’s something you need to include in your training and sparring, but it’s never the smart choice in the street.
A friend of mine was once mugged at an ATM by what he initially thought was just one person. He’s a big guy and told the mugger to leave him alone (well, that’s not what he said, but Loren Christensen’s writer’s guide said no swearing). At that point the mugger pointed across the road where his previously unseen colleague opened his jacket to reveal a huge knife. My friend wisely decided to hand over his cash. He could also have hit and run, but I feel he undeniably made the smart choice. However, what would have happened if he’d decided to fight? Or worse yet take the fight to the ground? I think we can safely say that the initial one on one exchange would not have stayed that way for long and my friend would have been stabbed.
In your street sparring be sure to play with the numbers: one-on-two, one- on-three, two-on-three etc. You’ll learn a lot about how to approach real situations.
Spar when exhausted
Real situations are very stressful. Your heart rate will go though the roof, you may feel nauseous, your muscle control will be greatly reduced, you will want to be anywhere else on Earth, and you may feel frozen to the spot. Being mentally and physically able to deal with these sensations is a key part of preparing for the street.
A good way to recreate these sensations is to fight a fresh opponent when you are exhausted. I don’t mean a little bit tired, I mean exhausted! Your heart rate will be high, you may feel nauseous, your muscle control will be greatly reduced, you will want to be somewhere else and you won’t feel like fighting. Not wholly unlike a street situation.
There are a great many ways to exhaust yourself. You can do some intense exercise before sparring, do a lot of pad work, or just spar back to back with a number of fresh opponents. However you go about it, sparring when exhausted should be part of your street sparring. You may not want to go to extremes every session, but you should do it frequently enough that you get used to functioning under stress. If you don’t get used to it, all the skills you posses will be rendered redundant by the intensity of the situation.
There are lots of different ways to spar and all have value. Most martial artists train for a wide range of reasons aside from self-protection. However, when training for the street, it is important that your training methods accurately reflect the nature of street situations. I hope the 10 tips we have discussed will help you structure your sparring in a way that is as realistic as possible.
Iain Abernethy is one of the UK’s leading exponents of applied karate. His numerous martial arts DVDs and books have sold worldwide and have been translated into several languages. Iain holds 5th dan black belts with Karate England, the official governing body, and with the British Combat Association, one of the world’s leading groups for self-protection, close-quarter combat, and practical martial arts. Iain is one of the few within the British Combat Association to hold the position of Coach; their highest instructor qualification.
Iain regularly writes for all the UK’s leading martial arts magazines and he is a member of the Combat Hall of Fame. He is in great demand on the seminar circuit where he teaches his practical approach to the martial arts both in the UK and overseas.
Iain’s website is an extremely popular resource for the practically minded martial artist. In addition to numerous articles, a popular message board and free e-book downloads, the website also has a free monthly newsletter which currently has over four thousand subscribers. Check it out at www.iainabernethy.com.
Thanks to Tim Kendal for posing as the attacker and to Fred Moore for his outstanding photography.
