Sparring with New Students

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When students get to the stage where they start to learn how to apply the knowledge they acquired in the dojo it is often asked if the tori, in a tori-uke training model, should be rough on the uke in order to help them gain confidence, etc.?

Q: When sparring with new students, show them they need more work by roughing them up a bit. Is this an appropriate teaching method?

Q: When sparring with new students do you let them gain confidence by letting them get the upper hand on you at first then raise the difficulty level?

In order to answer this set of questions you have to find the goals of the student in taking up the study of karate or martial arts. What they intend to lean and apply are critically important in determine the methods of teaching simply because each student is unique and there are no “one way” teaching models that benefit toward what ever model they aim for such as sport vs. self-defense and so on.

Lets say for the sake of the questions and this article that all things are equal and the student is learning about the more traditional role of karate and martial arts but adjusted for modern society, i.e., self-defense. Then ask if sparring in the traditional sense is beneficial to teach a new student.

Next, what are you teaching the student in that sparring model? If you are focused on a technique based self-defense model then you are going to have to teach them thousands upon thousands of situational scenarios that would cover every aspect of conflict and violence - a really gargantuan task and pretty much doomed to failure. 

Basics, kata, kata drills (some actually use kata drills as kumite or sparring) and sparring (in its form of one-step, three-step and up to free style sparring). Basics, kata and all the other stuff should be about fundamental principles or a principled based teaching and training model. Note that this form is both extremely difficult for beginners yet very simple and easy all at the same time. 

You learn about structure, alignment, centeredness, centrifugal and centripetal forces and so on while teaching about those multiple methodologies of defense, i.e., “tactics and attack methodologies of impacts, drives (pushes), pulls, twists, takedowns/throws and compression, etc”

Learning about the physiokinetics and methodologies brings down the quantity of necessary actions to defend from thousands and thousands of technique response to preset attack techniques (more often unrealistic to reality then realistic attacks) against set patterned attack techniques back to this hand full of methodologies that are trained to act against the attack and attacker rather than a perception of attack techniques, etc.

So, now that all that has been stated and we all know that this is not even close to a comprehensive and complete answer to this set of questions let alone about the subject of conflict and violence especially toward self-defense we can get a start on the question of how to spar with new students.

Sparring with new students: first, make sure the student has absorbed the fundamental principles both academically and physically and with tactile. Second, make sure they know the basics body moves taught in karate and martial arts not just the moves and patterns. Third, start slow teaching them principled based methodologies that will manifest fluidly from applying principles then start to add in a bit of chaos (chaos where the force and power are at levels the student can handle and learn from, i.e., sneaking in moves they have yet to experience but most important in a manner that allows them to have fun and no stress such as roughing them up, etc.). Note I: I have more extensive articles on how to teach self-defense using the tori-uke sparring model, just do a search of sparring, sensei, teaching, etc. on my blogs.

Remember about operant conditioning where fun can be a huge way to ingrain principles and methodologies. Fun being a key word because if they fear you and if they assume a techniques based model, etc. they will be learning things that may not be there when they need them. 

When they achieve a certain level of ability and proficient application of principles and methodologies then you introduce a more reality-based adrenal stress-conditioned training program. 

Note II: It must be understood that for karate and martial arts self-defense for conflict and violence cannot be broken down into just one thing, one model or one set of techniques, it takes a plethora of things to achieve a modicum of success in self-defense, karate and/or martial arts - there are no short cuts and there are no single right or wrong ways to get the job done.

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