Sparring With Weapons

[Shaolin Dragon]

How many of you spar with weapons? What system do you use and how effective do you find it?

Full contact with protection e.g. kendo

Full contact with foam/ padded weapons

Controlled contact (i.e. pulled blows)

No contact - prearranged sparring patterns

No sparring, solo forms

Other (please elaborate)

[YODA]

The 1st two options - plus full contact with minimal protection.

[Shaolin Dragon]

How does that work out?

[YODA]

Originally posted by Shaolin Dragon
How does that work out?


It hurts.

Big rattan stick.

Fencing headgear.

Elbow, knee & groin pads.

Full contact - stick, strikes & grappling etc allowed.

[Shaolin Dragon]

I suppose you learn to defend yourself quicker!

[YODA]

It certainly gets your attention buzzing

[Kof_Andy]

You need to learn the technique down before sparring. It can be extremly dangerous if you spar without proper control, or understand of what your doing. Foam weapon sparring is completely worthless, since it cant relate to the weapon in size/weight. I do some degree of bokken sparring, but we do shimeru with proper control, and I still have borken finger to show for. Is usually not recommended, kendo was developed for this reason.

[Anth]

we do pre-arranged when we're trying to make up kata from the bunkai and we do our solo forms when weve finished making them up. we normally end up getting hurt, even with pre-arranged, especially with nunchaku, though :(

[ranger]

i answered others. arnis is a weapon right? so in our practice with arnis we have what we call methods. this is a free sparring with control with no protective gears. It hurts still but to say "ouch" is not allowed. then we have what we call the offensive which is no control, no protective gears and full contact. this time i've to drop the arnis in pain when i get hit and continue with the other hand. i even witnessed sensei and his teacher (which is already 90 yrs old) do this. their cheeks would bleed if scrape by the arnis. :) It gave me chills all over my body

[Stolenbjorn]

Well, I train WMA, and when we sparr with weapons, it greatly depends on what kind of weapons. We use alternative 3 or 4. The following is our way of freesparring:

When sparring with wooden daggers, we use full speed and 50% impact

When sparring with blunt metal daggers, we use full speed and 25% impact

If we ever spar with sharp daggers, we'll probably only tap;)

When sparring with wooden longswords, we use full speed and 25% impact

When sparring with blunt metal longswords, we use full speed and only tapping

I don't think I'll ever freesparr with a sharp longsword. I have one, and I know what it can do...

[xuande]

Mostly choreographed sets but as we get more comfortable we tend to play more on our own.

I do know that there are several weapons that I refuse to spar against though, wolf's tooth club and chain whips being the main offenders.

[Shaolin Dragon]

How would you go about sparring with flexible weapons?

Anybody do any mixed weapons sparring?

[Stolenbjorn]

Oh yes,

...actually; this takes too long to list, to narrow it, I can say that we spar regularely with:
longsword vs. dagger
spear vs. sword/axe and shield

But we spar from time to time between the following weapons:
dagger, spear, shield, axe, sword1h, sword2h, stick

-allso a diecent bit of unarmed/dagger vs. any of the above

[Matt_Bernius]

I think you'll find most Kali/Filipino arts fols will practice at least semi contact with minimal protection and live sticks. In fact I've gone full contact with minimal padding (head gear, hand gear, and groin protector) a number of times. I even competed in a full contact weapons sparring event (mmmm stick hickies).

I also practice with live blades in solo forms.

- Matt

[Cudgel]

I mostly do light contact with only a fencing mask and shinai, but also do full cont full speed with some custom made training knives and usually no gear, you gotta learn how to move you head back fast.
Ive also done some contact with realistically weighted padded weapons and some heavier contact wearing armor using rattan cudgels.

We do lots of mixed weapons pole arm vs single longsword
pole arm vs two swords basically any combination of non-flexible weapons
We also do team battles and fights with one versus many and free for alls.

EDIT: And some solo drills when Im at home

[Shaolin Dragon]

Originally posted by Kof_Andy
Foam weapon sparring is completely worthless, since it cant relate to the weapon in size/weight.

I also included padded real weapons in this categories. Even with foam weapons (and by this I mean that really thick foam, so you still have a little weight behind it) sparring can't be completely useless, any more than semi-contact unarmed sparring is.

[YODA]

The padded sticks I use occasionally are the same weight as the real sticks we use.

I call 'em soft sticks - others have referred to them as "softer" sticks LOL! :D

[Furikuchan]

In the martial arts class, we stick mostly to solo forms...unless we decide to have a little fun.
At a karate camp once, a weapons competition was instituted. For the entire weekend, you had to have a weapon on you at all times. At any time, you could be challenged by any other karateka at the camp. Higher rank, lower rank, didn't matter. If they had the guts, they could challenge you to weapons sparring. You had to fight, whether you had a weapon or not. (Thus, it was rather adviseable to keep something with you at all times.)
A side note: This led to two strategies. First were the guys that would go around trying to catch people unaware. By the end of the weekend, people were even sleeping curled up around bos or with tonfa under the pillows. Then, among the upper ranks, the more devious instructors would try to fool people into thinking they were unarmed, then prove to have a knife, kama, or similarly devious weapon hidden on their person.
An interesting training method, but it takes a setup like a camp to pull off.

[Shaolin Dragon]

I do some padded stick-fighting. Yoda must be insane to do full contact with minimal protection, as even a padded stick can hurt some with a bit of force behind it.
I also do some pulled contact with various weapons, where the blow is pulled at the last moment, and this can hurt even more, as when the adrenaline starts flowing blows are pulled later and later...

[YODA]

Originally posted by Shaolin Dragon
... Yoda must be insane to do full contact with minimal protection...


Guilty as charged :rolleyes:

[Splinter]

Most of the "sparring" with weapons I do currently is in my boy scout troos on week long camping trips,we have unpadded wooden weapons, mostly sitcks found on the ground. We go with light contact but mestakes happen.(But one guy doesn't pull his blows :mad: ) Becuase we have no protectivie gear I hold back, so I lose a lot.

[Louie]

We try to do near enough full contact with the sticks & fencing masks but after watching a Dog Bro Video at Yoda's I make sure I now wear solid knee guards!!

Louie

[Reiki]

With stick fighting we always do full contact & no protection..

ie single & double sinawali, redondo and banda banda etc

However for drills involving body blows it is light contact only.
ie locks, disarms etc

Hurts like hell when u get hit on a hand or finger during sinawali!!

[Shaolin Dragon]

Hell, it hurts bad enough when you accidently hit yourself with a weapon. I wouldn't want to try it with someone intentionally hitting me!!!

[Cudgel]

well as we say over here. "if it hurts dont do it" usally in reference to getting your hands hit during practice because some one botches a block or parry and used their hands. The same thing applies to hitting yourself if it hurts enough evtually you will stop doing it. Pain is a good insentive to not do something.

[YODA]

Originally posted by Reiki
With stick fighting we always do full contact & no protection..

ie single & double sinawali, redondo and banda banda etc

However for drills involving body blows it is light contact only.
ie locks, disarms etc

Hurts like hell when u get hit on a hand or finger during sinawali!!


I assume you're talking about drills in that first sentence rather than sparring?

[Reiki]

yes Yoda I am talking about drills not sparring, however we do them at full power and full speed.

Good incentive to keep the hands tidy and the guard up!

It just isn't practical to try and fit in full-on stick sparring into our syllabus at the moment because we are already doing so many other things being a full mixed MA club with a penchant for weapons!

It is however something that they have been considering doing at camp along with more knife work and a big self defence session for us ladies to beat up on a fully padded man again.

I can hardly wait! :yeleyes: