all out sparring?

[jules]

how hard do you MT guys spar?

[Damian Mavis]

I think this depends greatly on where you train.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[S.Anucha]

soft soft soft, no joking, how can you spar hard with knees and shit, I mean what would you learn other than it hurts a lot and breaks shit.

Muay Thai style sparring is usually done softly paying a lot of attention on technique and control, if you can strike someone softly and accurate then think how it would be like when done hard!

Muay Thai sparring is soft, boxing semi heavy.

[Zero18]

Soft!!

You must be out of your mind if you think it is good to train softly! You must not be weened off of a baby bottle or something, or you are prone to pillow fights. You train how you fight. If you fight hardcore train hardcore. If you don't you will get too used to pulling your attacks and lose your fights more often and the wear and tear on your body will be increased being that you have not conditioned your body for full contact.

[grubbogoppoly]

Funny hearing a muay thai guy(?) say he spars light contact. I thougth that was what most of the muay thai guys made fun of "traditional martial arts" for. Just thought it was kind of funny.

[c0bra]

i spar full force when me and my friend train. when i goto kempo classes they do no contact ( )

[S.Anucha]

guys Muay Thai training is hard, pad work is intense, bag work is tough, clinch work is athletically challenging and skillfull, THAI SPARRING IS DONE SOFT!!!! I have trained in 3 thai boxing camps in Northern Thailand (lanna muay Thai not being one of them), they do it softly, there is contact but it is controlled and soft (50%), in fact a good thai sparring session actually looks like a full on fight but each hit is controlled and done to prevent injury, we are sparring with shins here, elbows (if they are even used in sparring as frequently they aint) and knees, my friend going hard sparring in Thai achieves nothing but injuries and if you have a busy fight schedule the last thing you want is injuries. You do not spar in Muay Thai hard, that is ridiculous. We do 5-7 rounds of Thai sparring after pad work then every second day we'd throw in rounds of only hand work which was done hard, we aint fighting we are training and training is going through motions and combos and then applying these in sparring to get the brain programmed to do these motions without thinking, that is the idea behind sparring, the toughness comes from the pad/bag/clinch work and fights!

So please explain to me, guys, who think that Muay Thai sparring is done at full force, where do you train? who trains you? whats his name? is he known? or is it kickboxing you train at?

Yo do not Thai spar at full force, if you do that in any camp in Thailand you will be told to lighten up! trust me on that, if you dont belive me then please go there and try to spar full force with them then try to impose your belief to guys who have 100's of years of expertise at this kind of thing....


....thai sparring full force! damn men you'd have more friggen injuries from training than with the actual fights, guys you are trained Martial artists and making these comments creates a naievity.... hard doesnt necesserally mean that you will become tough, infact it doesnt even mean you'll learn anything other than not to try and spar in Muay Thai full force.

http://lannamuaythai.com/cgi-bin/s?c=0&u=0000pr02l0004cg_training__sparring.html&m=686357500100000

YOU DO NOT SPAR FULL FORCE IN MUAY THAI

Zero18 :

please do not try to patronise me by saying i need to be weened of a baby bottle, I have come to this forum to try and promote Muay Thai art not the big guy attitude, clearly you have shown that you are still learning the basics where Muay Thai is concerned. I do not mean that offensively and I know that you will take it that way, there are a shit load of bad teachers and I only hope you havnt got one of them.

[Thai Bri]

Damien Mavis? Octavious?

What say you?

[jules]

Yea because that's how we spar. About 60%~70%.

[Damian Mavis]

I think when S. Anucha said soft people don't realise his idea of soft is still painful. He's talking about 50% power BONE ON BONE. Only wearing boxing gloves. This still toughens you up a bit and hurts but it does not cause injury (usually). In North America we usually spar with Thai shin pads and we go at it pretty hard because the chance of injury has been lowered, but still I get injured a fair amount when I train like that and I'd rather not because it means I can't train when I'm injured.

I like sparring without shin guards at about 50% because it keeps you honest. You don't block round kick to the torso with your arm when it's bone on bone because it hurts! When I spar with shin guards I get lazy and block with my elbow/tricep/forearm but you simply can't get away with that bone on bone, it will disable your arm. You have to shield. Sparring 50% bone on bone keeps it real and forces you to spar like you fight, with concentration and proper defence. Also it forces you to kick at the proper range, if you are too far away with shin guards on you can avoid injury but if you are too far away bone on bone and you kick someones shin or knee with your foot you can seriously hurt yourself.

In Thailand they are even more concerned with injury because if you are training at a camp you are probably going to fight and getting injured during training is just sabotaging your chances of winning when it really counts (in the ring with a stranger who wants to cut you open or take your head off). Keep in mind that most fighters fight once a month or sometimes more, you try to stay injury free to keep up your figth schedule.

Sparring with knees and elbows has to be done relatively carefully or you will definately be in rough shape for your upcoming fight. You don't even want a bruise on your shin if you can help it because the first solid kick on that bruise is going to feel like hell and you might become timid about shileding or kicking with that leg when you fight. Best to go into a fight completely fresh and bruise free.

If you're training for fun and never going to fight then have fun and kick the crap out of each other at the academy you train at, but if you are a fighter you wouldn't want to get injured before a fight.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[OctaviousBP]

Sparring

In Thailand, at the camps I was at, the pad holding was like sparring. For anyone that has done the instructors test for the TBA, a regular pad session is like that in Thailand. Except the rounds are longer, and there are up to 5 of them.

This is where you get used to being hit, and since the holder where's shin guards, the kicks come in fairly hard.

However, sparring is done controlled and light, and very playful. Remember, in Thailand, you're more than likely talking about kids. By the time these guys aren't kids, they have atleast 100 fights under there belts, and don't really spar at all. At least that was my observation.

I think one of the reasons sparring in the West is harder, is because of the lack of an active pad holder during training. Since class sizes can be large, in the West, students generally hold for each other, and therefore, the caliber of padholder varies greatly and can not be expected to exercise the control necessary to be a good active feeder. So when sparring time comes around, people feel less relaxed, and more liable to really crank into their partner. This is just what I noticed about myself. After having the piss beatin out of me during pad sessions, sparring seemed alot more fun, and easy.

D

[lssanjose]

thanks for sharing those insights into muay thai sparring guys. It was an opener.

[Thai Bri]

See how I bring the experts in at the right time? Bow down to me!

Thanks guys.

[Khun Kao]

Zero18, you obviously have no idea what you are talking about...

S.Anucha, Damian Mavis, and OctaviousBP are so very correct!

You train hard, hard, hard on the pads and the bags. But when you spar, you go light and "play". And quite often, despite the "soft" sparring, you STILL wear all the pads and body armor JUST IN CASE! If you spar Muay Thai full contact, you will get hurt. If you're hurt, you can't train OR fight.

The only full contact sparring is Boxing... HANDS ONLY!

To add to this discussion, I also train in Boxing. My current boxing coach comes by every now and then to check out my Muay Thai classes. He saw us "playing the game" and was asking why we did that, and I explained that when we spar, we ratchet it down a few notches so that students and fighters can practice putting their techniques, combinations, and defenses together properly to work under safe, but REALISTIC, circumstances.

He called me today at work to tell me that he has started experimenting with having his boxers do the same thing. Normally, their training AND sparring was all out! But lately, he has been having them tone down their sparring and start "playing the game".

He told me that it is working WONDERS for his boxers. It slows things down enough so that they are beginning to see their mistakes, to understand why they are getting hit, and they are now able to make the proper adjustments because they are no longer "just being told" what they're doing wrong, but are now able to see their mistakes in practice and what the results of those mistakes are.

Khun Kao

[Tim Mousel]

Great thread!