Open Sparring

First, what is it? “Open Sparring is about physical interactions of a more or less violent nature with no judges, no points, no time limit, and no stopping after a strike.” ~ (some additions in italics added by me) Marc MacYoung, Taking It to the Street: Making Your Martial Art Street Effective.

I will continue with this in a manner that is more personal as to experience and implementation rather than the martial arts community as a whole. How I see this is from my personal experience and note that this occurred in a dojo type environment, i.e. a training hall, room or outdoor setting. This is how Henry sensei taught me to fight using karate. 

Open sparring is closely related to the concept of jiyu kumite or “as it pleases you to grapple by hand.” What is considered important especially in regard to self-defense is that it is a step up and away from the sport oriented type sparring. It is a natural step in martial arts heading toward a more realistic stress training regimen. Depending on the intensity it can cross the line whereby one or both participants can experience injury or injuries. 

If the participants can achieve a stress reaction during open sparring then they can achieve a closer relation to realism in a physical violent encounter, self-defense. 

Henry sensei used almost exclusively an open sparring regimen in the dojo, Okinawa 1979, and I followed that model as I began to teach Isshinryu after returning to the states. The idea was to hit hard, get hit hard and all the while avoid injury if possible. We depended on sanchin to create through that systems dynamic tensioning to build a body that would protect against such possible injuries. Add in the fitness of a Marine along with the attitude of a Marine you get a decent mixture of fighting capability. Even so, it still is not as realistic as you would need to truly train for stress situations that involve chemical (adrenal rush) type dumps and so on but it will be closer than a lot of sport oriented martial systems. 

Cracked teeth, broken ribs, pulled ham strings and groin muscles, knee stresses just shy of bad injuries, toes broken, foot bones bruised badly, hands/knuckles bruised and injured are just some of the frequent injuries from open sparring practice. As stated, not a true street violent type regimen but it does get you a bit closer to reality.

One of the reasons why Henry sensei would not let anyone open spar until they reached some level of proficiency and that meant, in most cases, the level of green belt or go-kyu. What we did was practice using real actual karate techniques from basics and kata in a drill type fashion, i.e. drills with one step, three step and five step controlled sparring. We considered it a natural progression to then move to open sparring at the go-kyu level as that pretty much was a good indicator that they could create technique on the fly.

This is pretty much a simplistic description to convey what it is I feel open sparring is and is about for the system of karate, martial arts, I practice and train in but the actual progression to really implement and apply martial principles is a bit more involved but this gives a good idea and a means to pursue it as a model of training and practice for the early kyu's.

Jiyu Kumite [自由組手]

The first two characters/ideograms mean “freedom; liberty; as it pleases you.” The first character means, “Oneself,” the second character means, “wherefore; a reason.” The next two characters/ideograms mean, “paired karate kata; wooden joints; belt-work.” The first character means, “Association; braid; plait; construct; assemble; unite; cooperate; grapple,” the second character means, “hand.”