Sparring and Fighting: Keys to Successful Training (Part 1).
Sparring and fighting training is a crucial component of skill development for any Krav Maga student. Students learn to improve their footwork, offensive and defensive capabilities, timing, distance management and improve their ability to cope with physical and mental stress, all of which better prepare us to deal with the reality of a violent attack on the street.
But like with any other training, learning how to fight is a gradual and progressive process. Subjecting students to contact too early in their development can have many negative side effects, including injuries, loss of confidence, and inability to learn and practice new skills due to overwhelming amount of stress.
Hence both instructors and students have a role in making sparring a safe, enjoyable and educational experience for all.
In this article we will discuss what our roles as instructors are when it comes to teaching and regulating sparring sessions. And next months we will focus on what our expectations of you as students are in relations to fighting and sparring.
What’s expected from the instructors?
- Maintain safety.
Design drills that are as safe as possible and explain the safety considerations to all participants prior to start of any drill. Among many things, this includes specifying the pace and power of the sparring; limitations on the types of strikes you are allowed to use and the types of targets you are allowed to strike. During the drills instructors will monitor each student’s performance to ensure that everyone is working within the expected norm of safety standards and make the necessary adjustments to the drills and corrections to students as needed.
- Do not throw students in the deep end of a pool.
We don’t allow students to start sparring until they have met the minimum requirement of Practitioner level 1. Usually this is achieved after about six months of continuous training. This base level of training gives students the necessary technical, physical and mental skills to start their sparring training. Without this baseline, students are more prone to injuries, mental and physical overload, stress, fear, and many other factors none of which are conducive to learning.
- Set clear goals for each drill.
Learning how to fight is not about putting gloves on and trying to land as many punches as possible on your partner. This definitely contradicts the first two considerations we discussed above. Rather, it is the job of the instructors to create meaningful drills that focus on a particular aspect of fighting and have the students practice these in a controlled and regulated manner. For example, the drills may focus on improving the offensive and defensive capabilities of the partners. This means that one partner will be instructed to attack with a particular set of combos while the other will be instructed to defend only. Other drills may focus on improving counterattacking skills. This means that one partner will be instructed to attack with a particular combination or a choice between several combinations and the other partner will capitalize on the opportunities created by these combos to counter whenever appropriate using defined set of counters. In all of these cases, and many other drills we do in our fighting classes, we as instructors will clearly define the goal of the exercise and the roles of the participants to ensure that students are learning in a safe and progressive manner.
- Train students to fight from a position of disadvantage.
Getting better at fighting requires constant practice. And most of the training we do focuses on on-one type of scenarios to better pinpoint and practice the individual skills that improve our fighting capabilities. But sparring cannot always be about fighting on equal terms. Krav Maga training prepares students to overcome surprise attacks, defend against armed attackers and fight off multiple attackers. All of these aspects need to be trained with some level of contact and resistance. Hence we occasionally do fighting drills where one partner may be armed. Or we do sparring drills against multiple attackers. We also train to overcome surprise attacks, such as being hit while initially having your eyes closed to better prepare ourselves physically, mentally and technically to fight against a surprise attack on the street. Still all of these drills are done with the strictest attention to safety, with clear and concise instructions to the participants so that each student understands the limitations and the regulations of each exercise, and as before the drills are progressive in nature to ensure gradual exposure to more challenging scenarios.
- Allow free sparring.
When learning how to fight we setup training drills where each exercise is focusing on improving a particular aspect of fighting. But ultimately students need to piece all of these skills together and perfect them under conditions where the restrictions on themselves and their partners are minimal. Hence we have free sparring. Free work is crucial to the overall development of the fighter. This is a chance for each student to challenge themselves and use previously learned skills against a partner that is doing the same. These drills are not about winning or losing, but rather about helping each other get better (we will talk more about this concept in the next month’s edition of the article). Again we, as instructors, set the pace and power of the sparring sessions and dictate and regulate safety requirements and parameters of the exercise. And as students get more experienced with fighting and Krav Maga, free sparring becomes a bigger component of their training, as it is in our advanced Krav Maga classes.
Krav Maga training must include sparring to better prepare us to deal with the reality of a violent altercation. But this type of training must be done in a safe and progressive manner that will facilitate a good and enjoyable learning environment. It is up to us as instructors to set the proper tone for these activities. But it is also up to each student to adhere to the set standards, and have the appropriate training attitude that will enable them to learn and train with each other without letting ego and pride get in the way of the learning process. These and other expectations of students participating in sparring classes will be the focus of our next month’s article. Stay tuned!
