 Today we're going to look at different types of sparring. You know the pros and cons of each and which ones should you choose for your goals? So we always hear the topic of pressure testing your martial art usually through the course of sparring with a resistant opponent. But what does that mean exactly? Because not all sparring methods are created equal. So today we're going to do a really quick overview on the pros and cons of each type of sparring and then talk about which one fits the best goals. When it comes to point sparring there's a lot of love and hate, but first let's look at all the good things about it. Honestly, first of all, I think it's a great way to start. If you're just, you know, if you're a beginning student and you're just joining the martial arts and you're just getting your feet when sparring, I think point sparring is a good way to start because it's lighter, it's not it's not a continuous intense brawl, and it's kind of teaching clean individual techniques. So I think it's a definitely a good place to start. That's where we started and when I first joined the martial arts granted it was a little bit of a mcdojo, but my first experience of sparring were point sparring and I think it helps in the long run for certain aspects of the arts. Particularly, I think it's good for finding windows of opportunity and reading your technique. You know, the whole concept of point sparring is land that point before they land one on you. So that means you're constantly reading your opponent. You're looking at their footwork, how they shift their weight, you're looking for telegraphy moves. You're looking for that opening for you to get in there and get that point, while at the same time learning how to protect your centerline, keep your targets away from them and work on your own form. So point sparring really helps fine tune those skills, you know, identify that window of opportunity and then get it in there for that precision strike. It's also a unique strategic approach. You know, it's not a type of sparring that's based on stamina and wearing yourself out or knocking out your opponent so much as it's identifying those openings that we talked about. So it's really more of like a game of martial arts chess. So there's a lot of strategy involved both on your defense and in offense. So yes, I definitely feel that point sparring has some benefits to it, but what are some of the caveats that we have to look out for? Well, the first of all is and it's a more obvious one is it's not a realistic approach to fighting, you know, a real street fight, a real self defense situation is not based on points. It's not based on that one quick shot, getting it out and reset. That's just not realistic. So in terms of realism and self defense, point sparring is not the best preparation for that. And something I don't like about point sparring, and this is just my own personal observation and opinion, but there's sometimes competitions that are a little bit loose on the contact rules. You know, it's not always about getting in there and getting that one shot and coming back. Sometimes some organizations will award points, even if you don't make contact. It's based on a would if or you would have. I'm a believer in if you want the point, you got to get it. You got to show that control. You should have that control to be able to make that contact. So sometimes there's tournaments that will award you a point based on, well, you could hit them. So that's just something that I personally dislike about point sparring. And that's not about the structure itself is specific tournaments, but I know a lot of people frown on that. And it's just that's just not my favorite approach to sparring. And finally, if your goal is self defense and all you do is point spar, you might be setting yourself up for some bad habits only because there's a big difference in pacing and tempo from point sparring and continuous sparring. So what works in point sparring again, does not always translate and work in a real life situation. So if point sparring is all you're doing, you might be setting yourself up for a deficit when it comes to real life self defense. One of my favorite things about continuous sparring is it will build your endurance because you're not stopping after each point. You're not stopping after a judge calls time. It is continuous that you are fighting until either one person gasses out or the time runs out or somebody submits depending on what kind of competition you're doing is. But if you're out of shape, you're not going to be able to continue sparring very long. Great to work on stamina because that's what's going to come into play here. And it does have to be said that even continuous sparring is not a perfect analog for street fighting or real fight, but it's a closer simulation than point sparring would be. Another thing I love is continuous sparring forces you to do more and just look for that opening shot. It's all well and good for you to get that one hit and get that point. But when you're continuously sparring, you have to constantly apply pressure. You can't just stop at the jab. You've got to follow through with a cross or a kick or whatever. You have to keep applying techniques B, C, D, E, E. You can't just stop with the one hit. You have to work combinations. You have to work your defense because in any gaps in your defense, you're opening up a window for them to put that pressure on you. So it's definitely, I think, I don't want to say higher stakes, but it's definitely a different energy, a different flow. You can't just stop with the one hit. Continuous sparring is going to make you pressure and back up your combinations. Otherwise, you're going to give them the advantage and then you're not going to have such a good time. But because of that pressure system, because of that continuous system, I think that continuous sparring is wonderful for learning how to set up combinations or set up expectations, especially if you've got self-defense sequences or if you want to learn how to position a body. You hit your opponent, read their positioning, or if you want to set them up a certain way, this is the time to experiment with it. This is where you learn how the body reacts and what moves you do can cause what reaction is to set up your next shots. So I think it's a fantastic opportunity that continuous sparring presents. And depending on the school, of course, a continuous sparring lends itself to a little bit more flexibility in what you're allowed to do. And again, this goes by each school. Everyone's different, but some schools will let you do the elbows and these and traps and takedowns to go right down into ground fighting. So continuous sparring, I think, ups the ante greatly from point sparring. It's not full fighting, but it definitely simulates it a little bit more and it's going to pressure test you and it's going to make you push. It's going to make you work combinations and not let you stop at just one point or one hit. It's you can go until the match is over. Continuous sparring also, I think, is an opportunity to moderate the strength of your strikes. This is a good time to learn control because you're now in the hit of the action. You're in full motion. You better work that control. You know, if you're going to hit, you make contact, know what your intended contact is. If it's full contact, it's full contact. If it's light contact, you better have that control. So continuous sparring is a great place to practice that moderation of your strikes because you should have, especially if you're a black belt or above, you should have that precision control on how hard you hit. And it's all about intent at that point. And if you don't have that kind of control, then you need to work on it because this is where you apply it. Okay. So what are some of the cons to continuous sparring? Well, we were just talking about control. Beginners don't always have that control. So you got to watch out for brand new students who don't have experience yet. They might be a little bit spazzy. They might flail around a little bit. So that control might not be there. And a lot of people don't know their own strength. So if they're just starting off with continuous sparring, you know, you might have to work with them and keep that in mind that they might not know how to control those strikes, which also means there's an increased risk for injury just because of the nature of continuous sparring. It's not just one hit. It's a whole flurry of stuff. You know, it's easy to, you know, bump an eye or bump a forehead or bingsons together. It's nature of the beast. So sometimes you have to monitor who gets partnered up with who, especially with children. You know, we had, we've had instances where we've had kids who were on the spectrum and didn't quite know their own strength yet that we were working with. They didn't have that control. So we couldn't have them working with an equal age group because they were just hitting too hard until we worked them long enough where they got that control. So when it comes to continuous sparring, like I said, it's very easy to get lost in the flurry, get easy to get lost in the moment. And if somebody who doesn't know their own strength or you've got two people who might be a little bit mismatched, you kind of have to keep an eye on that a little bit, at least in the classroom setting. Just, you know, you don't want anybody getting hurt unnecessarily. Let's transition into knockdown fighting, which you don't see as much in a school as a sparring method. It's really more employed as a training for an upcoming fight to prepare for a full contact tournament or competition. So the best thing about this is, it's going to condition the hell out of you. If you're familiar with any heavy striking art, boxing, Kyokushin karate, Muay Thai, you know firsthand, this is the best way to learn how to take a hit because you're going to take several of them. Knockdown fighting teaches you to be more focused, direct, and practical. You know, there's not a lot of room for experimentation here. It's not about fancy combos. It's not about points. It's about getting in there and doing what works and doing as much damage with as little effort as possible because if you don't, they will. And this is more of a closer analog to a real fight because there is pain involved. There are submissions involved. It's not about running out of clock. It's not about points. It's about doing enough damage to make them stop. And ultimately it forces you to learn to read your opponents more carefully because any misread technique, anything they land on you has greater potential for damage. So you really have to look for those telegraphs. You really have to read your opponent and find those windows. It's a little bit more critical in this type of fighting. So what are the cons to knockdown fighting? Well, like the last thing I just said, whatever they land has more consequence. They're out there to hurt you and put you down. So anything mistakes you make on your end, you're going to pay for it. There is a considerable increase of risk to injury just because of natures. You guys are now fighting full contact and going for knockouts and knocking down. So the potential for injury is greater. Okay, so now let's move on to rolling or grappling. Now I want to put this in a separate category because this is honestly quite different than point sparring or continuous sparring or stand-up sparring. It's its own category in itself with its own pros and cons. The first pro, the main pro is learning how to ground fight. That's always a good skill to have because the last thing you're going to do is be on the ground with somebody who knows how to ground fight and you don't. It gives you a fantastic understanding of body mechanics and it gives you the opportunity to read your opponent through tactile response. It combines looking for windows of opportunity like you would find in point sparring but with the flow of continuous sparring. So it's kind of like a chess game in itself. It's very easy to moderate. That's the great thing about arts like DJJ and wrestling is that you can go half speed, full speed, very light speed. You can moderate it to any speed and intensity that you want and still have it be a fantastic workout. And the best thing too is grappling skills translate extremely well to a real-life situation. If you're in a fight with somebody and they go to the ground and you know what you're doing on the ground, bingo. It's going to be very similar to rolling in class. You will have those skills. So those skills do translate very easily to the real-world situation. But like I said, not all sparring methods are created equal and of course there are some caveats that come along with grappling as well. The first thing is if you're only a grappler and that's all you're training, I feel you're missing a lot out on striking capability especially if you're up against a striker. You might be the best ground fighter but if you have not trained how to take a hit or deliver a strike and you get clipped or you get hit before you can do a takedown, you're at the disadvantage. So especially if you're up against someone who knows what they're doing, striking wise, just because you're getting on the ground, just remember in a real-life situation it's not going to stop at rolling in a real fight that's going to be punches, kicks, knees, elbows on the ground as well. So if you don't have any experience in that, that's at your detriment. And while it is very easily translated to a real fight, it's one of the last things you want to do in a real fight. We've covered this many, many times but on the ground is the last place you want to be in a real-life self-defense situation because of all the added dangers, including terrain. Because you're training in class on a soft mat in a controlled environment, outside is different. Could you be on hot pavement or gravel or stairs or uneven ground? So there's greater hazards in a real-life situation. So you don't want to be on the ground if you don't have to in a real-life confrontation. There's also a greater risk of injury, especially considering that you're now focusing on techniques that control joints and the neck and spinal column. And when working with the neck, any technique that goes slightly wrong or you do something slightly off when you can easily greatly hurt your opponent. Rolling sometimes is more of a softer way to fight because it's not all striking-based, but there's still a risk there. There's still damage that can be done there. And if you're practicing in the classroom, you just got to be really careful with your partners because the last thing you want to do is hurt somebody by accident. Yes, I hope so. So those are the main types of sparrings. It's not by far a complete list because you can also get into more deeper stuff like scenario-based types of fighting such as the Marine Corps program, the McMap, or if you want to get into weapons training. So there's always other avenues you can take, but I would say these are your primary types of sparrings that you would see in the majority of schools. So which type of sparring is best for you? If your goal is self-defense, my personal opinion would be start. If you're just starting from scratch, start with a little bit of point fighting. Just kind of work on that control, work on that targeting, look for those openings and opportunities. Get kind of like your basic finesse down first. But then I would say the majority of your training should focus on continuous sparring because if you really want to learn to protect yourself against an opposing person, got to go continuous. You know, learn your takedowns, learn your counters, learn your combinations, learn your openings, learn to protect yourself, get that control in there, and then throw in some grappling there. Learn some at least basic grappling, if not extensive grappling because if the fight's going to go to the ground, you're going to know what to do, do your damage to get back up on your feet. So if your goal is self-defense, I say a small fraction of point sparring, the majority of your time in continuous sparring with a healthy dose of grappling. But what if your goal is competition? Let's be honest. If it's a karate tournament or a basic point fighting tournament, well, there's your answer right there. Focus on point fighting. If your goal is only competing in tournaments, point fighting is the way to go because you're going to get that precision. You have to be sharp because judges look for specific things. And if that's what you're training for, well, then that's what you're training for and that's where your focus is. So if it's a point sparring tournament, focus on point sparring. But if your goal is MMA or a UFC type fighting, go continuous all the way. Point sparring is not going to help you much here. Go continuous because you're going to need that endurance. You're going to need that stamina. You're going to work on that conditioning. You might even have to throw in a little bit of a knockdown. But you're going to want to add focus on to grabbing and takedowns and low leg kicks and all that stuff because you're going to see that in the ring and absolutely devote a lot of time to ground fighting because unlike a real self-defense situation, you're going to want to take the fight to the ground here if that's what you're good at because this is the controlled environment to do it. So continuous sparring all the way with a healthy dose of grappling if you want to do any sort of competitive fighting in the ring or MMA style competition. But if your goal is just to get in the shape you just want to exercise, you just want to move, then honestly, I'd say a healthy mixture of point sparring, continuous and rolling. I mean, there's a good mix there. They're great workouts in themselves. You don't need to invest or spend any time and knock down if you're not going into the competition. But if your goal is exercise, rolling and continuous sparring and even to some degree, point sparring is going to burn a lot of calories and a lot of fat and build up that endurance. So if that's your goal, I would say throwing a healthy mix of each in there. So that's just kind of a quick look at the different types of sparring where I feel each one has their own pros and cons. Of course, I want to hear from all you guys. Let me know what you think. If you disagree with me or if there's any particular sparring combinations that you would recommend for different purposes, by all means, share them in the comments below. Guys, I appreciate you all so much. Thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time.