The Kickboxing Trap
If you are a Kickboxer, there is of course nothing wrong with your sparring looking like Kickboxing. That would of course be quite desirable. If however, you are a Kung Fu practitioner or Traditional Karateka, sparring that looks like Kickboxing is quite a problem. Unfortunately, the majority of Kung Fu people and Karateka, do look primarily like Kickboxers when they spar. Falling into this practice is the "Kickboxing Trap". In the following article I’m going to tell you how to avoid the trap altogether, and how to climb out of it, if you’ve had the misfortune to fall into it.

Allowing the ego to feel "I must win", leads to a number of phenomenon that reinforces the "Kickboxing trap". This syndrome, I call the Kickboxing Trap, is primarily the result of one thing in particular, Ego. People fall into this because they fail to see or understand that sparring is a learning and training process, and not a competition. When they see it as a competition, the ego takes over, and they become concerned with winning. When they become concerned with winning, they feel the need to "beat" the person that has now become their "opponent".

When we feel the need to beat someone certain psychological phenomenon tend to affect us. This leads to a variety of small snares, that play a significant role in combining with several other factors to form the Kickboxing Trap. Below is a list of these individual traps, and more importantly, their solutions.

Trap 1: Trying NOT To Lose
The desire not to lose makes our attacks less frequent and more cautious, one might even say, hesitant. This approach leads to non-committed attacks, characterized by a "probing" type of offense.

While this method may be indicative of what’s seen in some major sporting events, most notably boxing, it is generally the antithesis of what happens in a real life situation. It is important to realize that in the real world, when someone attacks you, they are doing so because they want to hurt you! They are not interested in scoring points. They are not interested in not losing1 They are not interested in lasting the full time period to comply with the rules! They are attacking you! They are trying to hurt you, at the very least. They will throw strong, determined attacks, while they might not be over-extended, they will generally be committed. If sparring is to be an effective drill to teach fighting, it must be reflective of this.

When we resort to the "hesitant offense" we severely limit our opponents ability to counter attack. While this is in accord with our wish "not to lose", it does nothing beneficial for the drill, our partner, or ourselves. When we cease to attack our opponent, we deprive him of the chance to truly defend himself. Sparring without the necessity or ability to defend oneself is a one sided drill at best.

As we become the hesitant attacker, we tend to psychologically manipulate our partner into one of two roles. Either he mirrors our approach, making the drill completely useless, or he becomes overly aggressive, in the hope that "something will happen". Creating the over aggressive attacker has more benefit than the passive participant, but not much.

The overly aggressive attacker changes his methods, and ceases to practice "his" art, depriving him of the ability to practice what he needs. Again leaving this as a one sided drill, at best. Furthermore, the aggressive and careless attacks you are likely to get at this point, are of a lower skill level than your partner is really capable of, which decreases the value of the drill for you as well.

Trap 1: Solution
So how do we fix the trap? We fix the trap by subduing our ego. We fix the trap by offering our partner some legitimate attacks to work against. We need to not worry so much if he scores. We need to create an atmosphere where its understood that people will "offer" such things. Hopefully, your partner will begin to participate. When you become non-competitive, he will have nothing to compete against, then the training can begin.

Furthermore, by giving your opponent something he can potentially defend against, it allows you to develop your counterattack skills, and the ability to work from a disadvantageous position. Now we have a drill that is not only beneficial to two sides, but beneficial to those sides on multiple levels of depth.

Trap 2: We Try To Move Faster Than The Opponent.
In our desire to score, or look good, there is a tendency to try to speed up faster than the opponent. At first glance this may seem advantageous and desirable, but it is actually neither.

If we do not examine the concept closely, we may be fooled into thinking that common sense tells us that "beating the opponent to the punch" is ideal. However, if we examine this idea more closely, especially in terms of sparring, we will see that this is not true.

There are two aspects of this trap. They can manifest individually or jointly. They are:

A) If our opponent is moving slower than full speed when sparring, or is a slower opponent than we might face on the street, then scoring a technique by speeding up creates a false sense of success. Had the real life opponent been moving at full speed, the technique would not have worked. Some may argue that you could just speed up too, but this is erroneous, because you are already moving at full speed, and cannot go faster, than you can ultimately go.

When sparring, you must move no faster than the tempo of the present relationship, to do otherwise will lead to an incorrect view of skill, and a false sense of success. If we achieve a false sense of success, then we have received incorrect feedback, and our training will be flawed.

Additionally, a false sense of accomplishment undermines self worth, confidence and respect. Martial Arts should build these traits, not destroy them.

B) As we move closer to our fastest speed, the ability to see new things, and emerging opportunities decreases. Our speed of movement is proportional to our "speed of sight". If we move slowly, we see other things move slowly. If we move quickly, we see other things move quickly.

If we can move slower than our partner, we will see more openings and opportunities. We will have a greater chance to explore and try new things. This opportunity to experiment is one of the things that allows good Kung Fu practitioners to apply the movements of their forms to their sparring, rather than falling into "Kickboxing Trap".

Furthermore, when we practice at too fast a pace, we will tend to revert to "what we know". This keeps us from exploring what we do not know i.e. how to use proper Kung Fu applications. In addition, this reduction in the ability to see new opportunities will mentally reinforce our belief that there is no place to insert those "fancy" applications from the forms. We have created a self fulfilling prophecy, that dooms us to the "Kickboxing Syndrome".

C) Attempting to move too quickly during sparring, decreases our amount of mental and physical control over our bodies, and forces us to divert too much of our attention into this regulating process. When this attention is diverted it is frequently taken away from our ability to remember our assigned/chosen roles for the individual sparring session. Ceasing to play our assigned role for the other participant in the sparring session, we in effect become his opponent rather than his partner. This leads to many of the same problems that result from the "Trying Not To Lose Trap".

Trap 2: Solution
There are two very simple fixes for all aspects of this trap. The first is to ask your partner to go as slow as you need to go, in order to keep your eyes open to all possibilities. The second is to always move the same speed or slower than your opponent regardless of the rate he is going.

Trap 3: Undefined Goals
The last major issue which tends to drag sparring down to the level of a poor quality Kickboxing match, is undefined goals. Remember, in a real situation, the attacker has a goal, otherwise, he wouldn’t be attacking you. That goal might be to hurt you, kill you, rape you, kidnap you, detain you, or a variety of other intents. When we spar without defined goals, we once again deprive our partner of anything to defend against.

Some may say the goal of sparring is to win. While that may be a goal for a competition, it is not a goal of proper sparring. Even if winning were a legitimate goal of sparring, it is too broad-based an idea to be of substantive value in training. Winning and scoring points do not represent concrete achievable tasks for combat preparation. What wins a point or match, in a wrestling bout, could ultimately loose you a Judo match, so you see winning and points are arbitrary and theoretical.

When trying to practice productive sparring, it is necessary to have defined, concrete goals, that can be seen, felt or discussed, and that are specific. Only in this way can success be measured, and appropriate benefit be given to our partner. There are an infinite amount of these types of defined goals.

Trap 3: Solution
To fix this trap you must cease to engage in vague sparring practices. Create goal oriented sparring exercises, and practice them. Its useful sometimes to have a referee to secretly assign goals to the participants, as this keeps them from falling into Trap 1: Trying NOT To Lose. Think of it as a game of capture the flag, its always more fun if the flag is a little hidden.

I shall include a few examples, but it should be understood that the list is limitless. These goals are for one of the participants, it usually works better if the second participant has a different, but complimentary goal, however, depending on the circumstances, they could be the same.

Sparring Goal Examples
1. Attempt to get a headlock
2. Attempt to go to the ground
3. Keep from going to the ground
4. Evade opponent with out any contact (and without running away;)
5. Trap or immobilize your opponents arms
6. Defend without moving your stance or legs
7. Try to drag or push your opponent over a defined line (good for anti-kidnap work:)
8. Avoid using any striking techniques, while opponent tries to strike you
9. Avoid using any grappling techniques, while opponent tries to grab you
10. Try to disarm your opponent (for our Kali friends)

Conclusion
Okay that pretty much concludes this assessment of the common traps that people fall into when sparring. If you follow the presented advise you should be able to turn your sparring into a productive practice that compliments, improves, and works synergistically with your forms. As I end this piece, I’ll leave you with a short checklist of the things you need to do to improve your sparring productivity.

Checklist
1. Try to be a partner rather than an opponent
2. Communicate your needs with your partner
3. Move as slowly as you need to
4. Design and participate in goal defined sparring.

© Arthur Sennott 1999, All Rights Reserved