Point Sparring.

[TonyU]

I placed this in the karate section, but the subject can encompass any other art that incorporates point sparring.

Point sparring is the bane of my existence. I cannot believe schools, particularly karate ones, still run this type of parring. It is, in my opinion, the worst thing you can do in training. It is unrealistic. Bad techniques are being taught with bad habits being reinforced. It is a game of tag that has no place in training.
Now, we do know that it originated with the philosophy of "one punch, one kill". We also know that's an almost impossibility. Real fights and self defense don't work that way.
Granted, we all want and attempt to avoid confrontations, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Or, in my case much less unavoidable.
Fighting where the person stops after one or two techniques is ludicrous. Under stress that's exactly what's going to happen and it gives the opponent a chance to pummel you.
Remember that under stress of a confrontation "one doesn't rise to the occasion, but fall to the level of ones training."
It is a major gripe of mine. Everyone here knows that I've committed more than half my lifetime in karate training with being as real and original as I believe it is when it comes to self defense. I also have been trying to undo the damage in the assumption that is has no value in self defense and that has been proliferated throughout the past years.
Well, crap like this just reinforces those opinions and makes my job a lot harder.
All right, I'm done griping for now.

[Abbax8]

Replace Karate with Judo, replace point sparring with Koka, Yuko and butt flop Ippon. Keep unrealistic and bad techniques due to the rule set.

Ditto !

Dennis

[Cliff Hargrave]

Also applies to Brazilian JJ and tournament JJ.

[jjaje]

The martial arts has really taken a lot of different roads. Some people really like the sport aspect, and others want the self defense capabilities, then you have No Holds Barred which kind of morphed into MMA, which is its own sport now. To each their own I suppose, as long as the schools are not misrepresenting what they are doing (ie saying tournament point sparring will save them from a zombie invasion)

Besides Dennis and Cliff's comments, you can probably apply the same reasoning to many activities today that were derived from other, wartime / defense, based activities.

Seen fencing? Not quite what one pictures when you think of sword fighting.
How about shooting leagues with race guns like IPSC (and doesn't the P mean practical?)
Probably others too.

[CEB]

Realism is painful.

[cejames]

Hi, All:

I tend to think of things like this as to mind-set and cultural influences. Martial arts for China, Okinawa and especially Japan involve budo perspective where death is an intricate core belief for following the way. In the west our culture tends to lean very heavy toward "sport."

When westerners think of anything physical they assume, wrongfully in martial arts, SPORT. The mind-set remains fixated on the sport of any discipline.

There is a new book out I just got that can help in this viewing or disparity within the martial arts western communities, i.e. "The Inner Art of Karate: Cultivating the Budo Spirit in Your Practice." by Kenji Tokitsu Sensei. He speaks with authority on the subject and does cover East vs. West as to Budo vs. Sport mind-sets.

Since our society has been exposed to martial arts in all its forms they have assumed and promoted it using the "sport" facade.

The only way you can fix this is to change our entire societies belief system that putting a martial art into a sport category is not budo but guess what, it ain't going to happen.

So, what would I say if asked, make sure you mentor your fellow practitioners to the differences between a budo and a sport and that this mind-set is critical for self-defense.

Oh, in the majority fewer than one percent will ever have to prove the validity of what they practice be it actual and authenticate budo or just sport.

Regards,

Charles J.

p.s. if we got rid of the sport mindset you can count on having a mostly zero attendance and many closed training halls, facilities and clubs. The amount of folks practicing a true budo martial art will be a very small number vs. the millions of sport martial arts (a misnomer in and of itself) practiced today.

[CEB]

So if you practice Budo odds are you will be more prone to survival than if you practice a sport?

[Jonathan Randall]

Well, crap like this just reinforces those opinions and makes my job a lot harder.
All right, I'm done griping for now.

Or you could say it separates the wheat from the chaff and leaves you, and other serious students of the actual art of karate, to train in peace without the clutter of plastic trophy seeking students who will train for a season, win a few "matches" and spend the rest of their lives talking about their "training" and how good they were at it.

It would be nice if they called it something else. Unfortunately, even arts many times removed from Okinawan disciplines, such as WTF TKD are now thought of by the general population, and, sadly, even many in the martial arts community, as karate. Even worse, hybrid (as in "made up"), modern kenpo systems are seen as karate - you know the type, Billy Bob has a 10th dan in the style and founded his own system after receiving a green belt in American Kenpo, a black belt in TKD from the ATA, and certification in JKD from Dan Inosanto...

[TonyU]

I'm talking about point sparring specifically. Sport vs Budo is whole 'nother subject.
One can have a good sport sparring component with some self defense value and budo, IMO, but that's not the subject of this thread.

[CEB]

Most definitely. I have a little 18 year old son who has done nothing sports since 6th grade. From my travel to different dojo and impressions I get from tournaments and seminars my gut insticts is he would destroy most 18 year old American "Martial Artist" in a forced H2H confrontation.

I have seen a lot of fights ( occaptional hazzard of being a piano player), the thing I keep coming to is the ones who win seem to be the ones who have the greatest propensity to be mean. It isn't easy for a normal person to up and do extreme harm to another human at a flip of the switch.

39 years ago dojos used to be a little scarry. Dojo today seem to be very nice places. There is too much chat and not enough splat But that is OK if that is what people want. I don't think you can teach anyone to be a fighter anyway. They either have the propensity to get mean or they don't.

50 years ago people who wanted to fight went to Asian MA based dojos because that is where the action was. Today the action is found elsewhere. There aint enough mean people to train with anymore to keep you honest.

[Jonathan Randall]

I'm talking about point sparring specifically. Sport vs Budo is whole 'nother subject.
One can have a good sport sparring component with some self defense value and budo, IMO, but that's not the subject of this thread.

Understood.

I do think that point sparring is symptomatic of the greater problem, though.

[Cliff Hargrave]

The problem with all sporting aspects of martial arts is that they were created a training tool, but evolved into the only thing people practice.

Point sparring is a great tool to develop quickness, foot work, etc. and it is a good tool for beginners and kids to get their feet wet before advancing to other types of sparring or drills. But many schools only do point sparring and now they have lots of bad habits like keeping their hands to low, throwing things with lots of speed and no power, and diving techniques that leave you off balance and in danger of counters.

One of things I liked about BJJ when I started was the three pronged philosophy of self defense, sport, and vale-tudo (anything goes). You had to learn all three. There are certain ways to do a guard pass with punches flying, and certain ways to do it for sport, etc. Now 15 years later it seems that everyone is specialized, most schools are strictly sport, a smaller portion are MMA, and an even smaller portion are self defense. You rarely see a BJJ school now that still does all three.

[cejames]

Last comment, in the fifties and early sixties on Okinawa they used "bogu gear" and you went at it until Sensei actually observed a technique or set of techniques he felt would stop the opponent. In other words, just because you tagged someone in a vital spot, etc. it didn't wash. You had to really use karate to get Sensei to actually acknowledge the technique.

So, points smoints, a technique that is effective in bogu gear gets the acknowledgment. :-)

Regards,

Charles J.

p.s. where oh where had the bogu gear gone!!!!

[kbarrett]

This is a great threat, the only thing I could add is that during my training years there where always 2 kinds of sparring, dojang and tournament (sport) they where not considered to be the samething, and contact was the norm for both. And as an instructor I make sure my students know this rule.

[gmtkd]

I'll share my opinion on the matter in the form of an excerpt from a book I am writing:

"Back when I used to referee, I had a little bit of experience refereeing and judging AAU point-style sparring, in addition to Olympic style. I really used to wonder which was more related to self-defense. In point style, there are hand strikes to the head. I know those happen in self-defense situations. But, as anyone who does both styles knows, a little back-fist to the forehead doesn’t do near the damage a full force side kick to the ribs does, even though, when they happen at the same time, the judges almost always score the back-fist instead of the kick.
I think I was a corner judge in a match when it finally hit me that neither style is remotely related to what a woman needs to know if she is dragged into a dark alley. I hope I didn’t miss any points while I was daydreaming.
Some readers might be starting to wonder “What style of martial art does the woman need to know?” Depending on what you are imagining happening in the alley, you can probably think of a martial art that could be of help to her. But, the bottom line is that there is no martial art in the world that could, even with months of study, prepare her to fight for her life like a 20-hour IMPACT Women’s Basics Course would."

The subject of the book, by the way is how learning to teach reality based self defense opened my eyes to the beauty of taewondo as a sport.