One-armed sparring
Today’s class focused primarily on sparring. We warmed up for 20 minutes or so with the normal types of exercises: pushups, ab work, and some stationary technique combinations. The latter were challenging to me, since most of them involved two arms. I, of course, was still in my sling, so I worked on hip movement without throwing left-handed techniques.
When we broke down into sparring, we had half a dozen rings set up and run by black belts. I was running one of the rings, so I could choose the participants for my ring, as well as choosing people to spar against me. As a minor digression, there is a variety of sparring styles even within Tae Kwon Do. Olympic-style sparring looks like the following highlight video:
As an artifact of the rules, punches are basically eliminated, and combatants drop their hands to their waists. Frankly, I’m not a fan of that type of sparring. In my dojang, our hands are up, and we approach it a lot more like kickboxing; punches are an integral part of sparring, and dropping your hands means that you’ll get punched in the noggin. Not that it wouldn’t be cool to do some of the things that the fighters in the video can do, but I’d rather not work on sparring in a way that’ll get my head taken off in a more serious encounter.
Back to today’s class, I started out light by sparring against a college-aged female black belt who is probably literally about half my weight. She’s good and quick, but the length of my limbs (and bulk) give me a good advantage. And I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. So, I sparred with my right lead, ending up using primarily jabbing techniques. Turning my hips over for a left leg kicks left my bad side too exposed. Next up I sparred against a larger blue belt, probably 6’1″ and 250 pounds. He’s got quick hands and a quick inside-out arc kick, but isn’t very quick with his movement. That match went fine for me, as did my final match against another black belt (who is a bit lacking in speed and flexibility). I worked him hard enough that he was gasping for breath.
All in all, I was pleased. My endurance still seems to be there, and I was able to toss in a couple one-handed fingertip pushups as well. I got an opportunity to try out one-handed sparring, which was new and fun.
That was Saturday class; I was less pleased after Thursday night. I hadn’t planned on going in, but my instructor called me up and asked if I could come by to help teach, since he was short of instructors. I agreed, and helped teach both a beginner kids class and a beginner adult class. The adult class was fine, I worked with three yellow belts on back, back side, jump back, jump back side, back hook kicks, back step arc kicks, and a couple of others. But the kids class is still bothering me a bit. I was tasked with working with a young (maybe 6?) white belt who hadn’t been to many classes. He was not the most coordinated kid, but I thought I was doing okay with him for most of the class. At one point we were working on punches and he told me that he didn’t want to do that any more. I told him that he didn’t make those decisions, and kept him at punching drills a while longer. That was around half an hour into the 45 minute class. We switched back over to kicks for the last 7-8 minutes, and he eventually had a meltdown of the stubborn variety. Fortunately for both of us, that was right at the end of class. At the end, the head instructor for that class asked him if I worked him too hard, to which he replied “Yes”. And I guess I probably did work him beyond what he wanted to do. Had the class been 10 minutes shorter, I think it would have been fine. But I’m left with the realization that a newer student ended up leaving class unhappy and most likely not looking forward to his next class. His father trained briefly in the adult class a couple of years ago (and knew me), so he can probably convince the kid to come back to next class, and hopefully a different instructor will do a better job with him than I did.
Rachel directed me over here from LJ, as she thought I’d be interested in your blog here. (I’m spin1978 over there.)
My first substantive experience in the martial arts was with WTF/Olympic-style TKD – while it definitely is a great physical activity (the sporting aspect definitely does help improve fitness and other attributes) and you get used to taking a hit (albeit through a chest protector), the lack of hand strikes makes it almost like a game of tag at times. Of course, both of my main instructors had boxing experience/training, so lowering our hands around them was done at our own peril. I remember one of them mentioning that given that so many people are used to kicks in competition TKD that knowing how to properly punch can be a godsend at times.
Hope the shoulder is feeling progressively better today!
@Mike
Hey, Mike. Thanks for coming over here, hope you find it interesting. I’d definitely agree with you on the physical activity of WTF sparring. The way they can turn their hips over with such speed is amazing. We’ve had a couple people train at our dojang with WTF experience, and it is an interesting thing. We all pull our techniques so we don’t just blast our partner (note: partner, not opponent). But it is kind of fun to go with the heavy contact at times.
Hadn’t thought of that, though… in the land of no-arm sparrers, the one-armed sparrer is king.
Hi Pete, it’s been interesting thus far! I’ve just gotten back into training over the last ~ two months after a layoff of about three years, so in my efforts not to overtrain right off the bat, I figure I can read MA blogs in the meantime.
The ability to turn your hips is necessary in Olympic-style sparring since you do need to make solid contact, at the very least, to score. The sparring rules in kyokushin are vaguely similar – you can kick anywhere (although you can also kick to the leg in many circumstances), but are prohibited from punching or elbowing the neck or head.