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This is one of the better written articles I've seen on the idea that sparring is good for SD.
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I've written plenty concerning my thoughts on sparring, specifically symmetrical vs. asymmetrical tactics and the training I recommend to reinforce the latter.
When I was younger I absolutely loved sparring, in fact I wouldn't stay in a club or school that didn't focus on it! I truly believed that sparring was the pinnacle of training, and that everything else was merely supportive.
Unfortunately, as good as I got at sparring - and I did more than a fair impersonation of someone who knew what he was doing - it seemed when I tried to replicate my sparring prowess in actual altercations it soon became apparent that my 'opponents' had different intentions, namely wanting to 'fight' and not 'spar' and I had to rethink my plans most times - usually adopting roughly what was levelled at me instead, and beat them at their own game so to speak.
After such encounters, I would invariably be disappointed with what I was forced to resort to in order to prevail - not always, but still I doggedly stuck with sparring as being the answer to fighting, and made sure I did more of it to better 'prepare' myself for the next incident - even though it was not what I really needed, just what I thought I did - and I was wrong.
For those that did want to 'duel', and for the others that hung back looking for that perfect opportunity to land a shot, it all panned out as per training, but these instances were firmly in the minority - maybe for not for everyone out there, but it seemed that most of the people I came up against - once it went combative - just wanted to batter me and tried their very best to do so from the off. Occasionally there would be the obvious martial artist, and to be brutally honest these were the easiest to deal with, and still are.
Sparring makes you tough, better conditioned, improves timing and the ability to hit moving targets - this is undeniable, but the entire tactical model is wrong, unless the other person is like-minded and wants to trade shots in the same format. Sometimes they do, but mostly they don't in my experience - they want you out of the picture as soon as possible and generally try to achieve this by completely 'get stuck in' asymmetrical means, and as such having a symmetrical plan falls down at the base level.
If you can be first, and even better - last, then all is well, and sometimes the situation allows for this - confrontations are the best example of a symmetrical engagement initially, until it 'goes off' and then it should be all one-sided for the best chance of survival.
Tactically all combat is fairly generic in concept, regardless of scale - consider then that any notion of symmetry in warfare is long defunct, and not even considered at a personal, let alone strategic, level. Once upon a time armies would form-up to trade various unpleasant exchanges, even up until WWI this was evident, and then a lot changed in WWII with the advent of the blitzkrieg - the lightening war - and every successive battle used this asymmetrical model with one-sided fluid momentum, applying constant offensive pressure as its goal.
Sparring reinforces a certain siege mentality in my opinion, where time and space are present and can be actively manipulated to gain advantage - by both parties, and although there is movement it is to and fro, give and take - definitely not the same as when the assault takes place, until which time nothing is really resolved at all. Trading shots from behind cover is not what combat is all about - sure you can take your adversaries out this way, but you never truly take the objective until you assault it in a determined and committed manner.
Taking these concepts to a personal level, regarding training, finds the usual sparring practices leading the individual away from the actual requirements of fighting - this may sound controversial, but then most things have at some point I submit. Even though sparring will most certainly develop excellent attributes that are always vital in fighting, these same attributes are next to useless if the base tactical model is out of context - so care must be taken when training in such a manner, in order to recognise the limitations of the activity with the bigger picture in constant view, and avoid negative re-programming of the true perspective. Many individuals will swear by their participation in various and extensive forms of sparring making them the effective fighters that they undoubtedly are - but I would argue that this can be in spite of sparring, not because of it. Competitive fighting is different, sparring completely and exactly replicates the event itself and is therefore mandatory - but there is a huge difference between symmetrical sport fighting and asymmetrical real fighting.
One of the problems that many have with taking on-board the above issues is that superficially sparring does indeed seem to resemble fighting - until you look again with a more critical and objective eye, and actually compare the two models. Actually there are moments of fighting within sparring, but the parts in-between ruin the value of these moments to a large degree. The posturing, probing and circling are largely absent from real combat - often completely so, but form major components of every sparring match, unfortunately getting good at these things isn't as useful as some would believe due to this redundancy. To truly develop the exact attributes these need to be 'edited out' of the practice, and instead developed within the management of confrontations instead with a slightly different focus.
When engaged in sparring, and all forms of symmetrical competitive fighting, the capability to cover distance and land various strikes is a key factor to being effective - and for this the ability to 'bridge the gap' and be non-telegraphic is vital, and something that is striven for regarding training and preparation. Such engagements invariably take place from 'out' of range and such is the need to be able to 'enter' and place shots without interception or obstruction. Real fighting doesn't place anywhere near the emphasis on this however, as when people want to hurt you they make sure that they are positioned close enough to do so, therefore being able to 'bridge the gap' doesn't mean much if there isn't one!
Sparring may have four 'ranges' such as kicking, punching, trapping and grappling - or whatever terminology is used instead - but fighting only really has the one worth concerning yourself with, and this is 'in' range, if you're not 'in' range you're not actually fighting! This may sound glib and over-simplistic, and it is to be honest, but it's to address the over-importance I feel is assigned to the issue of range in personal combat - obviously legs are longer than arms and kicks have more range potential than punches, but when the sparring stops and the fight starts this extra distance doesn't count for that much at all in truth. Rifles can spit bullets much further than pistols, but if all your combat took place up-close what would be the need? You need to 'bridge the gap' in a real fight? Simple, just blink - your adversary will take care of that 'gap' for you, if there ever was one!
Being able to create space, in order to increase your options and prevent being immobilised, and therefore easy prey for a third party, is a far more important skill for fighting in my opinion - and the exact opposite to what is aimed for in sparring. Even a classic skill such as feinting can have limited use in a real fight, sometimes in a pre-fight confrontation perhaps, but during the intensity of a full-on engagement the various distractions and deceptions afforded by skilled feinting can once again be superfluous.
Try sparring against someone who isn't on the same page - tactically - and see how you get on, you'll find what skills and attributes are redundant, and which are definitely not. By this I mean a committed and purely offensive adversary, constantly applying pressure - not intermittently attacking and defending. Study fights, real fights, and make sure you're training to deal with actual attack formats - both technical and tactical - and not just those of your fellow practitioners. Where is the give and take, the flirting and foreplay, when the fighting is real? Outside of sparring and competition you'll be hard-pressed to find it. Add a third party and try your symmetrical tactics against two adversaries - even if they are following suit you'll be in trouble, but when they both decide to fight, not spar, your only chance is to attack and overwhelm with constant offensive pressure - unless you can grow more arms and legs! Classic and accepted doctrine, such as using one person as a shield whilst engaging the other, is at best an exceptionally short-lived affair when attempted for real - try it in the ring with 16oz gloves on, making sure that both adversaries follow no script and truly try to continuously land shots, then compare this punched-in-the-head-party with the demonstrations of such methods that somehow make it look so easy….
Do I advocate live drills with a fully resisting adversary? Of course, but I objectively aim to prevent it becoming a typical sparring scenario. Just having a stop and start signal, a set and limited arena with a pre-defined start point moves the context away from where I want it to be, regardless of the skillset allowed. Does this limit training options? Unfortunately yes, but taking the easy path and simply adopting a sport-based model isn't necessarily the best answer in my opinion - if it doesn't correspond with your exact take on fighting, you are conditioning conflicting actions and reactions that will become your preferred options under duress. This is fine if everything does correspond however - and an excellent 'pro' argument for those that maintain the fundamental flaws inherent in having skills that you cannot practice in a 'live' environment. Still it is all too easy for such training to become hugely symmetrical in conduct, and this is the real issue - not the various techniques and targets that can or can't be utilised.
Finding simple methods of initiating such live drills, from less prepared and more spontaneous circumstances, and keeping engagements much shorter and intense than normal, adds greatly to building the necessary elements required for fighting. Safety has to feature heavily without doubt, and the question of how much contact to allow raises numerous issues - heavy contact carries with it the obvious risk of injury, but lighter contact is unrealistic from the standpoint of the recipient continuing, when engaged in a manner that would in real application be incapacitating and therefore improbable, and to use such light contact does not lend itself to realistic application in the first place - consider the blistering demonstrations of skill that impress due to sheer speed, but would be far less impressive if the necessary power was applied for a real, not simply aesthetic, effect.
Sparring - a touchy subject to criticise for most, it's challenging, enjoyable - exhilarating, but is it as vital, as directly significant as some would like to think? Not for real fighting, it can and will have certain indirect benefits, but in actual fact it could even be considered counter-productive compared to other training methods. Just remember that ultimately, combat sports are based on combat - not the other way around.
Mick Coup.
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I've written plenty concerning my thoughts on sparring, specifically symmetrical vs. asymmetrical tactics and the training I recommend to reinforce the latter.
When I was younger I absolutely loved sparring, in fact I wouldn't stay in a club or school that didn't focus on it! I truly believed that sparring was the pinnacle of training, and that everything else was merely supportive.
Unfortunately, as good as I got at sparring - and I did more than a fair impersonation of someone who knew what he was doing - it seemed when I tried to replicate my sparring prowess in actual altercations it soon became apparent that my 'opponents' had different intentions, namely wanting to 'fight' and not 'spar' and I had to rethink my plans most times - usually adopting roughly what was levelled at me instead, and beat them at their own game so to speak.
After such encounters, I would invariably be disappointed with what I was forced to resort to in order to prevail - not always, but still I doggedly stuck with sparring as being the answer to fighting, and made sure I did more of it to better 'prepare' myself for the next incident - even though it was not what I really needed, just what I thought I did - and I was wrong.
For those that did want to 'duel', and for the others that hung back looking for that perfect opportunity to land a shot, it all panned out as per training, but these instances were firmly in the minority - maybe for not for everyone out there, but it seemed that most of the people I came up against - once it went combative - just wanted to batter me and tried their very best to do so from the off. Occasionally there would be the obvious martial artist, and to be brutally honest these were the easiest to deal with, and still are.
Sparring makes you tough, better conditioned, improves timing and the ability to hit moving targets - this is undeniable, but the entire tactical model is wrong, unless the other person is like-minded and wants to trade shots in the same format. Sometimes they do, but mostly they don't in my experience - they want you out of the picture as soon as possible and generally try to achieve this by completely 'get stuck in' asymmetrical means, and as such having a symmetrical plan falls down at the base level.
If you can be first, and even better - last, then all is well, and sometimes the situation allows for this - confrontations are the best example of a symmetrical engagement initially, until it 'goes off' and then it should be all one-sided for the best chance of survival.
Tactically all combat is fairly generic in concept, regardless of scale - consider then that any notion of symmetry in warfare is long defunct, and not even considered at a personal, let alone strategic, level. Once upon a time armies would form-up to trade various unpleasant exchanges, even up until WWI this was evident, and then a lot changed in WWII with the advent of the blitzkrieg - the lightening war - and every successive battle used this asymmetrical model with one-sided fluid momentum, applying constant offensive pressure as its goal.
Sparring reinforces a certain siege mentality in my opinion, where time and space are present and can be actively manipulated to gain advantage - by both parties, and although there is movement it is to and fro, give and take - definitely not the same as when the assault takes place, until which time nothing is really resolved at all. Trading shots from behind cover is not what combat is all about - sure you can take your adversaries out this way, but you never truly take the objective until you assault it in a determined and committed manner.
Taking these concepts to a personal level, regarding training, finds the usual sparring practices leading the individual away from the actual requirements of fighting - this may sound controversial, but then most things have at some point I submit. Even though sparring will most certainly develop excellent attributes that are always vital in fighting, these same attributes are next to useless if the base tactical model is out of context - so care must be taken when training in such a manner, in order to recognise the limitations of the activity with the bigger picture in constant view, and avoid negative re-programming of the true perspective. Many individuals will swear by their participation in various and extensive forms of sparring making them the effective fighters that they undoubtedly are - but I would argue that this can be in spite of sparring, not because of it. Competitive fighting is different, sparring completely and exactly replicates the event itself and is therefore mandatory - but there is a huge difference between symmetrical sport fighting and asymmetrical real fighting.
One of the problems that many have with taking on-board the above issues is that superficially sparring does indeed seem to resemble fighting - until you look again with a more critical and objective eye, and actually compare the two models. Actually there are moments of fighting within sparring, but the parts in-between ruin the value of these moments to a large degree. The posturing, probing and circling are largely absent from real combat - often completely so, but form major components of every sparring match, unfortunately getting good at these things isn't as useful as some would believe due to this redundancy. To truly develop the exact attributes these need to be 'edited out' of the practice, and instead developed within the management of confrontations instead with a slightly different focus.
When engaged in sparring, and all forms of symmetrical competitive fighting, the capability to cover distance and land various strikes is a key factor to being effective - and for this the ability to 'bridge the gap' and be non-telegraphic is vital, and something that is striven for regarding training and preparation. Such engagements invariably take place from 'out' of range and such is the need to be able to 'enter' and place shots without interception or obstruction. Real fighting doesn't place anywhere near the emphasis on this however, as when people want to hurt you they make sure that they are positioned close enough to do so, therefore being able to 'bridge the gap' doesn't mean much if there isn't one!
Sparring may have four 'ranges' such as kicking, punching, trapping and grappling - or whatever terminology is used instead - but fighting only really has the one worth concerning yourself with, and this is 'in' range, if you're not 'in' range you're not actually fighting! This may sound glib and over-simplistic, and it is to be honest, but it's to address the over-importance I feel is assigned to the issue of range in personal combat - obviously legs are longer than arms and kicks have more range potential than punches, but when the sparring stops and the fight starts this extra distance doesn't count for that much at all in truth. Rifles can spit bullets much further than pistols, but if all your combat took place up-close what would be the need? You need to 'bridge the gap' in a real fight? Simple, just blink - your adversary will take care of that 'gap' for you, if there ever was one!
Being able to create space, in order to increase your options and prevent being immobilised, and therefore easy prey for a third party, is a far more important skill for fighting in my opinion - and the exact opposite to what is aimed for in sparring. Even a classic skill such as feinting can have limited use in a real fight, sometimes in a pre-fight confrontation perhaps, but during the intensity of a full-on engagement the various distractions and deceptions afforded by skilled feinting can once again be superfluous.
Try sparring against someone who isn't on the same page - tactically - and see how you get on, you'll find what skills and attributes are redundant, and which are definitely not. By this I mean a committed and purely offensive adversary, constantly applying pressure - not intermittently attacking and defending. Study fights, real fights, and make sure you're training to deal with actual attack formats - both technical and tactical - and not just those of your fellow practitioners. Where is the give and take, the flirting and foreplay, when the fighting is real? Outside of sparring and competition you'll be hard-pressed to find it. Add a third party and try your symmetrical tactics against two adversaries - even if they are following suit you'll be in trouble, but when they both decide to fight, not spar, your only chance is to attack and overwhelm with constant offensive pressure - unless you can grow more arms and legs! Classic and accepted doctrine, such as using one person as a shield whilst engaging the other, is at best an exceptionally short-lived affair when attempted for real - try it in the ring with 16oz gloves on, making sure that both adversaries follow no script and truly try to continuously land shots, then compare this punched-in-the-head-party with the demonstrations of such methods that somehow make it look so easy….
Do I advocate live drills with a fully resisting adversary? Of course, but I objectively aim to prevent it becoming a typical sparring scenario. Just having a stop and start signal, a set and limited arena with a pre-defined start point moves the context away from where I want it to be, regardless of the skillset allowed. Does this limit training options? Unfortunately yes, but taking the easy path and simply adopting a sport-based model isn't necessarily the best answer in my opinion - if it doesn't correspond with your exact take on fighting, you are conditioning conflicting actions and reactions that will become your preferred options under duress. This is fine if everything does correspond however - and an excellent 'pro' argument for those that maintain the fundamental flaws inherent in having skills that you cannot practice in a 'live' environment. Still it is all too easy for such training to become hugely symmetrical in conduct, and this is the real issue - not the various techniques and targets that can or can't be utilised.
Finding simple methods of initiating such live drills, from less prepared and more spontaneous circumstances, and keeping engagements much shorter and intense than normal, adds greatly to building the necessary elements required for fighting. Safety has to feature heavily without doubt, and the question of how much contact to allow raises numerous issues - heavy contact carries with it the obvious risk of injury, but lighter contact is unrealistic from the standpoint of the recipient continuing, when engaged in a manner that would in real application be incapacitating and therefore improbable, and to use such light contact does not lend itself to realistic application in the first place - consider the blistering demonstrations of skill that impress due to sheer speed, but would be far less impressive if the necessary power was applied for a real, not simply aesthetic, effect.
Sparring - a touchy subject to criticise for most, it's challenging, enjoyable - exhilarating, but is it as vital, as directly significant as some would like to think? Not for real fighting, it can and will have certain indirect benefits, but in actual fact it could even be considered counter-productive compared to other training methods. Just remember that ultimately, combat sports are based on combat - not the other way around.
Mick Coup.
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