The Sparring Class
Sparring is a hugely important part of any serious Martial Artists training regime and should be given as much time and effort as any other part of your training such as forms or self defence techniques. It is all very well moving great in forms class or flying perfectly through umpteen techniques in the line when you know the attack but if you are not used to someone getting in your face and attacking you with their own agenda then all the training in the world will be for nothing if you are attacked in the street. Obviously, we can’t practise our self defence on our training partners with full power or we would soon be out of training partners and probably find ourselves in front of a Judge too so what is the answer? We have to be able to make some kind of realistic contact to enhance our muscle memory! Simple, strap on the pads and get into the sparring class.
The sparring class at Portlaoise Kenpo Karate is a very popular class with all the participants eagerly awaiting for it to come round, where they get stuck into some serious physical conditioning with the warm up and fitness section of the class which can include calisthenics, aerobic and anaerobic exercises, muscular endurance and development and pad work. Other times we will run a fitness circuit to include the medicine ball, skip ropes, strike pads and aerobic and muscular exercises etc. We often then expound on developing hand-eye co ordination, combination drills and street and competition sparring moves with the focus pads and kick shields. Boxing, Kickboxing and street fighting drills abound in this section of the class.
After making sure everyone is well warmed up and stretched out we will commence the battle. There are many different aspects to sparring and we look at different ones in our class. E.g. if there is a tournament coming up we will fight under the tournament rules and look at ways of point fighting defensively and offensively and coach the tournament hopefuls to improve their game. Other nights we might spar in a more full contact kickboxing type of manner allowing heavier contact etc but still with some rules in place. We also address street fighting and will allow grappling and no holds barred sparring. This can be great fun however, we like the participants to still exercise control of their technique as we don’t want anyone to be harmed. This can be great for looking at street attacks and addressing them in a safe and analytical environment.
In my humble opinion, sparring is a great tool for many reasons. It improves hand-eye co ordination and exercises the brain. It gets you used to making contact and having contact being made on you in a safe environment so you don’t freeze up if it ever happens for real. It allows you to practise self defence with a live attacker who does not have a pre determined set of moves and so improves your spontaneity. It allows you to self-evaluate your skills (if you are constantly getting your head punched off you know you need to work on your defence !!). It improves your fitness and endurance; no point being a 25th Degree Black Belt if you throw a punch and need to sit down for 5 minutes to recover and very importantly it’s plain and simply great craic (that’s fun for any non Irish readers).
So, the bottom line is, if you are serious about your training and want to be a well rounded Martial Artist who can handle whatever is thrown at them, come down to the sparring class.
Darren Mahony
Head Instructor
Portlaoise Kenpo Karate
