September 23, 2006

The Truth about Sparring

After promotions this week, my instructor asked if I’d like to start learning my new material or if I’d like to do something else entirely. After spending the past few weeks doing almost nothing but testing material at the dojo and at home, I was ready for a break.

We worked on self defense against kicks for a little while. I paired up with the teenage black belt and we took turn throwing kicks at each other and defending against them. My advanced class was only me, the teenage black belt and our instructor. After we worked on kicks for a while, we geared up to spar.

We sparred against each other round robin style for three minute rounds, and here’s the thing. . .

No matter how many drills you do, or how you’d like to look when you’re sparring, the truth is that when you’re in the heat of the moment, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to look like you want to look.

You would think that after spending a good 20 minutes working on how to defend against a kick, I’d be able to, I don’t know, defend against a kick? Not a chance. Instead of moving in, as I had just been taught, I stood there and threw my arms around trying to block.

When my opponent quickly figured out my one move that had been working to my advantage with my husband (roundhouse kick, followed by two punches, the last one to the head), I froze. It was like I couldn’t even begin to think of something new to do. Mr. M quickly saw what I was doing and would just throw a kick up there to prevent me from moving in. If I was capable of translating the drills into sparring, I would have avoided the kick and moved in, but no. I stood there and took it.

It didn’t help that when sparring the teenage black belt, he revealed his super powers. Think I’m kidding? Let me explain. When he spars, his stance is sideways. He holds his fists out in your direction but rarely moves out of that stance. He is tall and very lean. When he turns sideways, he practically disappears, thereby eliminating any potential target. It really messed with your head as you try to figure out exactly what kind of opening you have. In situations like this, I guess you have to make him move and give you an opening, but unfortunately, I’m just not there yet.

With kata, I can think about it and in my head work on the moves, rehearse it so that when I get up and do the actual kata, it’s already been mentally rehearsed many times. With sparring, it’s impossible to do that. One can’t possibly imagine all the techniques and combination of techniques

that an attacker might throw at you. Preparing for sparring, as you can for kata, is next to impossible.

That’s the thing about sparring. You can’t anticipate too much. If I think my opponent is going to come at me with a right punch and I get into a position to deal with that, and then he comes at me with a left kick? It’s not going to work very well now is it? This is exactly the thing that got me punched in the jaw a few weeks ago. Moving into punches-not good.

I need to get to the point where it’s just natural, where I just know what to do and can attack and react accordingly. That is only going to come through practice, endless hours of practice.

My instructor said that he could see improvement in both me and the teenage black belt. I hope he wasn’t just saying that to make the old lady feel better.

If you spar at your dojo or have in the past, what’s something that you’ve done to get better?