 Today, we're going to talk about the three different types of sparring that we see in boxing and how you might be able to use some of those tactics into your own training regardless of what your martial art might be. I believe that boxing is one of the best and most effective striking arts out there. It teaches quick, efficient, powerful strikes, great footwork, and also strategic timing because it's more than just, you know, training punches with a partner. It actually requires a lot of skill, timing, strategy, and I have a lot of respect for boxing. And that being said, too, is that carries over into their sparring drills. And that's not confused sparring drills, we're just getting the ring and just boxing it out with a partner. In boxing, there are three very distinct types of sparring. And of course, those of you who are experienced boxers, you know this already. But I think a lot of these aspects can be applied to other martial arts because I think a lot of schools who do self-defense training and they want to have a good fighting regimen, whether it be for competition or just, you know, they want to be good fighters, sparring and pressure testing is necessary. And I think that the way boxing approaches it, I think is a great, efficient, fundamental way to approach and fine-tune your own sparring techniques and let's see what they are and how they might apply to other martial arts sparring as well. So boxing has three primary types of sparring, technical, conditional, and open sparring. And I'm going to kind of throw my own into the ring for consideration, a potential fourth type of sparring, but we'll get to that in a few minutes. So technical sparring is the first one and it's used for beginners and it's also used for those who are learning new combinations or new techniques. But in essence, technical sparring is a very restricted, limited type of sparring that is used to focus on a particular skill set or technique being learned. So one example of this might be, say somebody's brand new to boxing. So this is like the first, second, third time, whatever, they're just getting new to the sport and the coach wants to teach them how to dodge a punch, how to slip a punch. So the technical sparring drill in this case might be having a partner simply just throw jabs, throw jabs. And the student's job is just to kind of read it and just learn how to dodge it and just try to time a dodge, time a dodge. That would be an example of technical sparring because the drill being focused on is specifically slipping or dodging punches. Now after that too, as that student improves, it could be a dodged counter punch. And if it's restricted to that, that's still technical sparring. So a technical sparring drill is basically taking a cherry picking one particular technique or idea or rule set and just putting that specifically to the test. So how does this apply to other martial arts training? I think we can kind of see right off the bat where this would fit in if you were a beginner in any given art, really. I mean, think about in karate and shodokan, like the traditional Japanese no-canal karate styles where you learn the one step to two step, three step drills versus step back block punch. It's kind of the same thing. You're learning one specific drill, step back block counter punch. And you repeat that over and over. You change up your timing. That would be that drill. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, there could be all sorts of different things. It might just be practicing an escape. You're on the ground, have a partner on top of you, and you're trying to learn how to shrimp and just kind of get your knee in there and get your ears gapped so you can get out. That might be that focus of that drill. So you just repeat that, repeat that, repeat that, repeat that, or learn to buck them off you. But you take that concept of, OK, I'm going to work this escape and this escape only. You have a training partner who is applying that specific tech on you so that you can practice that over and over. That would be a great example of technical sparring applied to other martial arts. Then we have conditional sparring, which is a step up from technical sparring, but not quite a freestyle sparring session yet. And in short, conditional sparring is a sparring session that has limitations put on it. Again, because you're trying to focus on a specific mindset, but it's a little bit more broader than just a technical sparring session would be. And this can include so many different options. It could be a matter of saying, OK, well, boxers can only use their jab, so it might be a matter of just who can get that jab in their quickest and fastest. Or maybe it's just jab punches. Or maybe you're locking down a specific footwork. Or maybe only right side forward. Or maybe you have to start from a strike from a certain range. Maybe it's only close range, or maybe it's only mid range. And of course, you can always keep changing it up and make it a little bit more exotic. You maybe have a time session where maybe for 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, one partner cannot throw strikes. All they can do is defend. And then you rotate around to that. Or perhaps you're trying to do only a sparring against a southpaw. Or you're constantly changing up with different opponents. There's so many different ways you can apply this. It's literally just a matter of taking this particular concept. And we're going to apply it now in a ring setting with free movement. And unlike technical sparring, which is usually, most of the time, fixed in position, in conditional sparring, boxers usually have the freedom to adapt the situation because it's about making something work. Now you have an idea and you have to make it work. You've practiced it over and over and over and over and over on a technical basis. And now you're putting it into application and you're doing it on the fly. But you're not worried about a whole bunch of different combinations or other strategies or trying to win a match. You're still limited to a specific idea, a combination, a drill. But now you're pressure testing it a little bit more to make it work within a competitive setting. And of course, you can see how this translates over to something like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or any grappling art where you can just practice reversals, you know, try to go for that side control. Maybe the goal of the drill is just to get side control and each opponent just keeps trying to reverse each other until they get that side control. Or you're trying to go for a specific submission. And since we're talking about boxing today, guys, don't forget to give that subscribe button a nice little pop in the mouth. Get your notification set so you know when new episodes drop. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I'm gonna throw out a couple of extra boxing tips that I always liked. And I think that you can apply to your, not only your boxing sparring, but any other martial art that you have as well that spars. And then we come to the open sparring. And this is probably what most people are generally associating sparring with. It's basically a competitive setting. You're emulating a match where all your strategy comes into play, your footwork. But the difference is you're not trying to kill your partner. This is not an actual match. You're going for a knockout. You're still working skill sets and you have your coach there that would interfere as a referee or give guidance, whatever. But it's pretty much your typical sparring session where you are trying to win a round or make combinations work. And this is where your real flavor and your real training comes into play because of course you're adding all your footwork, your strategy, your striking, your timing, all that comes together in open sparring. Boxing is a given because it's used in competition and boxing is extremely efficient in self-defense. Any art that does practice self-defense from when they're going to competition, you need to have sparring. And everything we've talked about here with the technical, the conditional, and the open sparring, I believe applies to all martial arts. You have to develop those skills. Even if you're just joining the karate class for the first time and you're a white belt, there's mixed feelings on this. I feel that white belts should spar, but limited, you know, some schools will restrict, you know, maybe a couple belts later before they'll spar. I think it's good to get in there, but restrict them. You know, if it's a person who's just starting, restrict around to just jabs or just a kick, whatever. Build off of that. You have to pressure test, but you have to learn the how before you apply any pressure to it and then get that control. Now, the one I'd like to kind of toss out there for consideration, and I know a lot of you will disagree, but I want to put virtual reality sparring. And we did cover this in an episode where I did try this last year. I tried a game called Thrill of the Fight for the Oculus Quest. And I found it interesting enough that I do bring it up on occasion because I do think there's some value to be taken from it. Now, I know there's gonna be a lot of naysayers saying, okay, no virtual reality, no good first sparring. I think there's pros and cons here. There's obvious limits to it. One is it's not a real fight. It doesn't matter how virtual, how realistic you make the headset feel, it's not a real fight. You're not actually getting hit. You're not making contact with opponents. So the tactile response isn't there. So yes, there's obvious downfalls to it, but I think there's a lot of benefits to it as well. The first of all is it gets your mind working. And believe it or not, if you guys haven't tried it yet, I do highly recommend it, specifically this game, Thrill of the Fight. When I tried it, part of my brain feels like for a second that I'm actually in a sparring match. Again, I'm not feeling the tactile response of hitting or getting hit, but your mind sees a person in front of you, even cartoony graphics, they see those hands come up and you're instantly in fight mode. So you do feel that instinct of having to dodge punches and having to counter. So the strategy is there. The thinking part is there. And even with like in the Oculus's case, when you do hit your opponent, your controller will vibrate a little bit. It's not the same as actually striking an object, but it still gives that signal to your brain that little bit of a tactile response. So it still simulates it enough. And what's cool is the game itself does have your technical conditional and open sparring as well. The technical really being more there's sparring, you have the heavy bags and there's like, you know, the speedball, the speedbag that's there, but there's certain rounds you can do too where you have to focus on just defending or, you know, you've got the virtual opponent and you're waiting for them to open up so you can get that counter punch. So the conditional sparring is there, but it's the open sparring that's really, really fun because I don't know, there's just something about it in your mind, it feels like you are in a sparring match. Like they call it like you're fighting a ghost, but you do find yourself practicing technique. And I think the benefits are, it helps you with your timing, it helps you learn how to read your opponent, it helps you with combinations and it also helps you with endurance because, you know, you do work up a sweat playing this game. It's not like you're sitting in a chair, you are standing up throwing punches. And even though they're virtual punches, it is still a workout. And there's a lot of videos out there on YouTube too of boxers playing this game, liking it and getting the work out of it. So if you guys have not tried that yet, I do recommend it. It's on the Oculus Quest. It might be on some other virtual platforms, I'm not sure, but it's called Thrill of the Fight. Check out our other episode where we covered it, but I do believe that virtual reality has its place and can have some benefit into your own training, especially in the pandemic days when we're all locked at home, but you don't even need a partner. If you wanna just practice a couple combinations, if you wanna practice an idea, throw it a headset on and do it for a couple of hours. You don't have to go find a partner and go to the gym, go in your living room, you know? So that gives you a little bit of extra freedom in your own training to do that. So I would check that out if you wanna give something new a try. Now here's just a couple of other tips too. If you just wanna enhance your own sparring drills, again, whether it be for boxing or karate or whatever, this is a couple of things that you can keep in mind while you're doing this. The first of all is, and I always like this one, practice in slow motion. Work with a partner in slow motion, half speed, quarter speed, practice your counters and punches. And it's not about outsmarting your opponent on this, so you wanna maybe throw a slow motion jab and your partner's gonna slowly parry him with a counter, so kinda go back and forth to that. And the idea is not to outsmart your opponent or your partner, but try to read what's coming at you, but it's in the slower motion so that especially if you're a beginner or you're trying a new technique, the slow motion can help you study the movements a little bit better. And then little by little over time, you build up your counters and then you can do it faster and faster. So it's great for learning a new technique. It's great for enhancing your on-the-fly thinking. We used to do that in Kemple classes all the time. We would do have one partner attack the other and we just do a slow motion back and forth and we tried all sorts of stuff, blocks, kicks, parries, locks, and the other partner would just work to get out of it. It just gives you time to think about what you're gonna do so that you can keep refining that and eventually be able to do it at a faster speed. So I think practicing sparring in slow motion is a great idea. Also, watch the person's chest. And I wanna hear from experienced boxers on the channel about this one. I keep hearing this tip a lot for boxers and we do it in Kemple. We do some other arts, too, is a lot of times people tell you to watch the eyes. So watch the person's eyes. But I've also heard that if you watch the person's chest, you get a better view of their peripheral motions or their limbs and you can see the body a little bit more. So I wanna hear what you guys think about that. I like the idea because you can watch the person's eyes and unless they're gonna start looking at other parts of your body, that's not telling you a whole lot. But if you're focusing on the body, that gives you a bit more of a wider picture of what movements that might be coming or maybe some techniques that you can read ahead of time. This one, I'm curious to see what you guys think about. So if you do have experience boxing or sparring using this technique, please put those comments down below and let's talk about it because let's see where this, I wanna see where people fall on this one. So that's just a quick overview of the three different types of sparring we see in boxing, the technical, the conditional and the open sparring. And if you'd like my idea of throwing in the virtual sparring, I think there's just, and it's a simple idea and like I said, those of you who are experienced already know about it, but I think it's great to revisit and great to see how it can be applied in other aspects of training. So as always guys, I would love to hear your opinions. Please let me know down below what you think about this, what your experience with this is. And if you've tried the virtual sparring, let me know what your experience was below on that because I wanna see if anyone else out there loves it or if I'm just kind of alone on my island. Anyways guys, thanks for watching and check back in next week.