Post by WARRIOR on Aug 4, 2009 13:02:05 GMT -5
Premature Sparring
Zubair Khan
August, 2009
Have you ever come across a sparring partner with terrible technique but….lots of ring experience? The sort of athlete that can get by during sparring but has a very unorthodox style? Often, these are athletes that entered the ring too soon, having missed out on basic, fundamental training. With poor footwork, weak defense and sloppy attacks, these “premature” fighters will have a hard time unlearning their bad habits and in some cases may never get it right.
Can lots of sparring make you a better fighter? Yes, but with a lack of fundamentals, premature sparring can hinder the development of your technique and enforce bad habits.
How We Form Habits
Habits are formed in a number of ways. One obvious way is when a behavior is repeated over and over to the point that it sticks.
Another way is when a behavior results in either a positive or negative reaction. When we experience positive reactions to our behavior, we are instinctively inclined to repeat that behavior. Similarly, when we experience negative reactions to our behavior, we are less likely to repeat it. These are basic principles of Behavioral Psychology.
Forming Habits During Sparring
Apply this to sparring. Imagine that you don’t like throwing high kicks, but one day you take a chance and land a nice high kick on your sparring partner. The satisfaction of making a new technique work is a very positive response and you will surely use this kick more often from now on. If your hands are low and you get hit by a punch that makes your nose sting, this is a negative response and you will quickly learn to keep your hands higher. If sparring was always like this, if it was always a process of trial and error that would lead athletes to perfect technique, then the earlier athletes start sparring the better. In reality, sparring does not always give you negative responses to wrong behaviour and does not always give you positive responses to correct behaviour.
What if you close your eyes and duck your head at the same time you punch? Clearly this is poor technique, but what if it actually works for you during sparring? You will be making a bad habit permanent! Maybe your sparring partners are not skilled enough to take advantage of this habit. Maybe you are simply strong and fast enough to make it work against your particular sparring partners. However, the day may come that you will face a sparring partner or even an oponnent in an actual fight that will have the skill to punish you for your bad habit!
It will not matter if you know it is wrong and it will not matter if your trainer tells you to keep your head up and your eyes open because it is not the understanding of a technique that makes it a habit, it is actually doing the technique, repeating it and receiving a positive response for it that makes it a habit!
So don’t be a premature fighter! Be patient and take the time to develop clean and orthodox basics before you enter the ring. In the long run it will put you ahead. Sparring too soon can also be looked at like building walls and a roof on an incomplete foundation. Build as much as you want and it will still be shakey.
Key messages to remember about sparring:
Try not to use techniques that you have not learned yet. If you are not doing them correclty, you will form bad habits. They may work in your sparring session, but if they are not correct, you will eventually pay the price.
Unorthodox technique can work but only up to a point. Some fighters can get very far and even win titles with poor technique, but there is only so far they will ever be able to go, just as there is only so much weight that a weak foundation can support.
It is not the fancy moves that win fights. It is mastery over the subtle basics, such as timing, speed, accuracy, range, etc. So don’t jump ahead to flashy technique without mastering your basics. Students at our school rarely even learn how to catch kicks until they have 5+ fights and they do very well!
Consider sparring with limited technique before going freestyle. This is because focusing on too many techniques at once slows the development of any one of them. Going back and forth between drills and sparring is a wise idea. See my article on “Making technique work” for more information on this.
We all know the saying “Practice makes perfect”. Unfortunately, this is only true if you are doing something correctly. It is more accurate to say that “Practice makes permanent.” In other words, practicing a correct behavior makes perfect and practicing a wrong behavior, achieves nothing other than making a wrong behavior permanent….
Zubair Khan
August, 2009
Have you ever come across a sparring partner with terrible technique but….lots of ring experience? The sort of athlete that can get by during sparring but has a very unorthodox style? Often, these are athletes that entered the ring too soon, having missed out on basic, fundamental training. With poor footwork, weak defense and sloppy attacks, these “premature” fighters will have a hard time unlearning their bad habits and in some cases may never get it right.
Can lots of sparring make you a better fighter? Yes, but with a lack of fundamentals, premature sparring can hinder the development of your technique and enforce bad habits.
How We Form Habits
Habits are formed in a number of ways. One obvious way is when a behavior is repeated over and over to the point that it sticks.
Another way is when a behavior results in either a positive or negative reaction. When we experience positive reactions to our behavior, we are instinctively inclined to repeat that behavior. Similarly, when we experience negative reactions to our behavior, we are less likely to repeat it. These are basic principles of Behavioral Psychology.
Forming Habits During Sparring
Apply this to sparring. Imagine that you don’t like throwing high kicks, but one day you take a chance and land a nice high kick on your sparring partner. The satisfaction of making a new technique work is a very positive response and you will surely use this kick more often from now on. If your hands are low and you get hit by a punch that makes your nose sting, this is a negative response and you will quickly learn to keep your hands higher. If sparring was always like this, if it was always a process of trial and error that would lead athletes to perfect technique, then the earlier athletes start sparring the better. In reality, sparring does not always give you negative responses to wrong behaviour and does not always give you positive responses to correct behaviour.
What if you close your eyes and duck your head at the same time you punch? Clearly this is poor technique, but what if it actually works for you during sparring? You will be making a bad habit permanent! Maybe your sparring partners are not skilled enough to take advantage of this habit. Maybe you are simply strong and fast enough to make it work against your particular sparring partners. However, the day may come that you will face a sparring partner or even an oponnent in an actual fight that will have the skill to punish you for your bad habit!
It will not matter if you know it is wrong and it will not matter if your trainer tells you to keep your head up and your eyes open because it is not the understanding of a technique that makes it a habit, it is actually doing the technique, repeating it and receiving a positive response for it that makes it a habit!
So don’t be a premature fighter! Be patient and take the time to develop clean and orthodox basics before you enter the ring. In the long run it will put you ahead. Sparring too soon can also be looked at like building walls and a roof on an incomplete foundation. Build as much as you want and it will still be shakey.
Key messages to remember about sparring:
Try not to use techniques that you have not learned yet. If you are not doing them correclty, you will form bad habits. They may work in your sparring session, but if they are not correct, you will eventually pay the price.
Unorthodox technique can work but only up to a point. Some fighters can get very far and even win titles with poor technique, but there is only so far they will ever be able to go, just as there is only so much weight that a weak foundation can support.
It is not the fancy moves that win fights. It is mastery over the subtle basics, such as timing, speed, accuracy, range, etc. So don’t jump ahead to flashy technique without mastering your basics. Students at our school rarely even learn how to catch kicks until they have 5+ fights and they do very well!
Consider sparring with limited technique before going freestyle. This is because focusing on too many techniques at once slows the development of any one of them. Going back and forth between drills and sparring is a wise idea. See my article on “Making technique work” for more information on this.
We all know the saying “Practice makes perfect”. Unfortunately, this is only true if you are doing something correctly. It is more accurate to say that “Practice makes permanent.” In other words, practicing a correct behavior makes perfect and practicing a wrong behavior, achieves nothing other than making a wrong behavior permanent….