Difficulty sparring with gloves?
I often find that when I am required to wear gloves when I am sparring in my (karate) class, I can’t do as well – I’m a lot slower and hesitant in my attacks, because I’m not allowed to actually hurt the person… unlike in street fights/fights outside of class, where I don’t have to worry about injuring them, and I can do whatever combos I like. Also, I’m a lot faster as well. Sometimes we spar without gloves in class, but there are still rules we have to abide by such as no breaking bones or blows to the face… I feel that I’m limited by this, and thus I usually do poorly in such, because I’m left wondering, Oh, here I could trip them and follow up with a punch directly to the face… but I’m not allowed to. Any advice for those who have had to go through this? I know, some of you will yell "McDojo!" because it’s not full contact or because we have to wear gloves occasionally, but it’s not like we can have students killing other students. And we are a traditional goju ryu dojo, just to let you know.
All sparring is like that. It’s a game. That means in a real fight, you want to set up combos for simultaneous attack/defense because you don’t want them to hit you cause it’d hurt or damage you. In sparring, it’s a game. You can let yourself be hit and NOTHING will happen to you.
That means you can treat it like a game and use those restrictions as a training handicap. Since you can’t do the stuff you’d normally do, find the stuff you want to improve in, that you would never try out on the streets cause you know you don’t know it well enough. Open up your defenses, let loose weird and strange attacks that you’d never use, just to see how it works against your opponent. Open up your defenses to see if you have the reflexes to close it again when the opponent goes for it. See if your opponent even notices your guard being on or off.
These are the "games" people play in sparring because there are rules. They couldn’t do them if the rules were unknown.
With gloves, you aren’t going to hurt others, and they can’t hurt you. Getting hit is not something you should be worrying about. Drop that from your shoulders and focus on using sparring as it was meant for: to test skills that cannot be safely tested in real fights.
You’ll get used to it.!
sounds like you just started first give it time you will get use to it second LEARN give u some points i learned not much but ill help u some first try leaving your fist open until it gets close to target a sharp point goes through air faster than a blunt object second i found i kicked faster with my right leg so for sparring i would turn into a southpaw fighter this made it easier to throw kicks off my front leg and faster for blocking and striking so in the end you have to learn new ways to fight which is what training is
I’ve finally found someone that feels the same as me! I also train in Goju karate, but I am a 4th kyu purple belt. You will find that as you progress through your belts, things will become much more physical. Sparring will become much more interesting
What I’ve found though, is that karate is probably NOT the best martial art if you want to get full on into it. To me at least, its being able to defend yourself well and ably.
Hi all,
I understand what you mean I think. The best way I overcame the clumsy feeling was to try with open hand gloves. I understand that there are many different types of gloves and regulations but I am only saying what was best for me.
Oh i hate that as well, i do ITF taekwondo,
last tournament i went in, i got 4 warnings for making full contact.
and that is just bullshit!
and when i do sparring in the gym, i have to hold back cos we ain’t allowed to go all out.
em, i don’t know what to say to you cos i understand how you feel and im not the pro, yeno. lol
anyway, here what i tried, i’d say try punching the bag with constant speed and power with ur gloves.
but don’t go all out though, try keep it light and focus on the power you put to it. imagine that the bag was ur classmate in the gym, imagine and think if u hit the bag at this power, would it do anything to hurt the bag (ur classmate in imagination lol). and then when you do the sparring, try control it if u could.
but i get annoyed though, it’s just so frustrating sparring but u gotta hold back a bit.
i was told in one of the days i went to training, that sparring is different from fighting.
sparring is like about techniques, self control, using ur skills and rhythm you’ve learned, you never wanted to kill anyone in sparring or to hurt them badly. But fighting is different, cos it when it comes to real situation
then you gotta defend urslf and kick the shit out of the person who is gonna give u harm and all that crap.
Good Luck!