Boxing Sparring + Drills without an Instructor?

I am currently practicing JJJ and I am happy with the kicks, the takedowns and the groundwork.
I am not happy with the head strikes, punching and blocks though.

For head strikes, when sparring, we are only allowed to use Haito and Uraken Uchi and contact is not necessary if the strike is really good, but not forbidden completely, semi-contact is allowed.
Many strikes are left out though.

For punching, when sparring, we are only allowed to use jabs and crosses, straight punches generally, on the body of the enemy.
That's fine for me, but again it leaves many other strikes out.

For blocking, we do the usual Karate ( I think? ) blocks, I don't know their names because I pretty much hate them. You know, the ones where you either block overhead, or do a semi-circular motion with your arm to block a head strike and drive the enemy's arm out of your face etc.
The thing is, I never used these blocks in sparring. This may be because I haven't practiced them a lot yet, but still, I never saw a black belt who practices 7+ years use them in sparring. Everybody mostly tries to avoid the hits by moving or with more convenient and natural blocks ( see MMA blocks ).

So, I have a lot of people I can spar at boxing to enhance those skills.
First of all, there are my brothers, one of them is practicing JJJ with me, and the other has 1-2 months experience in Kickboxing / Muay Thai. Secondly, there are 3 friends, 2 with no experience in Martial Arts, the other doing Boxing 8 months I think but he's in Romania now, so..

Is it okay to do that? I know a lot of you say "Do nothing without an instructor" etc, but will it hurt doing sparring 1-2 times a week with those people of limited/almost no experience?

I'm talking about light sparring and / or drills to learn the hook,uppercut, blocks and just get used to really defending my face and head during sparring.

Our gear will be a mouthguard and gloves.
Also, how many oz gloves is the best for sparring?
Furthermore, we have been thinking of a headgear for each player but the cost is too high and I think that light friendly sparring will not result in anything dramatic.
I know that there will be strong hits though.
What's your opinion in this too?

I'm waiting for your answers people!

P.S.: Currently, I can't cross-train in any full-contact striking art, I already searched for this option and it's impossible right now.

 

NO! YOU MUST NOT DO ANY SPARRING WITHOUT AN INSTRUCTOR PRESENT!

Now that I've got that out of my system...when you get a bunch of beginners sparring one another, you tend to get a lot of flailing and a lot of moving backwards with your eyes shut. That's obviously not helpful. If you're going to do this, you need to do technical sparring where it's not about landing shots, but about pulling off your combinations when your opponent is also trying to do the same. Normally when I do this we spar at about 2/3 speed with no power behind the shots at all. It's all about drilling your movement, your combinations and your defence. Really it's like shadow boxing with a person.

 

It's not that you need an instructor, it's that you're suggesting a willing case of the blind leading the blind. If one of your friends or siblings had significant experience in sparring then it would be fine as they could help point things out to you and teach as you go, but you don't seem to have that.

What you're going to end up doing is developing bad habits, especially when it comes to striking.

 

Thanks for the advice

Well, technical sparring, light sparring, name it however you want, we're mostly talking about the same thing.
The people training will try to just improve their punches, blocks and reflexes, not hurt the other person and win, it won't be a competition as I think of it.

 

I've lost count of the amount of times I've had a playful spar in the back garden, lol.

 

You're right Ero, I was thinking of that too.
The thing is, will I really only develop bad habits by sparring / training differently than usually or will the pros outnumber the cons?

 

Sure, if you have a bit of experience it's fine, but until you've drilled some fundamental good habits, I'm not convinced it's a good idea, more from a training benefit point of view than a safety one.

 

Yes and no, it depends on how fast you've been able to pick things up. To use some of my own experience in Boxing I've seen guys who can throw a jab after their first time being shown, and other guys it takes weeks to throw it right. You should probably ask whomever is instructing you if you're doing a few things really good, then only work on the things he said you're doing well so you can refine those things a bit more.

You really need somebody who knows what they're doing in the start of martial arts training, just like any other discipline.

 

Then, would it be wise practicing it with the terms I described?
I am trained at Jabs and Crosses in a Sport Ju Jitsu enviroment and I know a part of the basics of punching, like most people I will train, it's not that we have never been supervised by no-one.

 

If you want to keep blocking simple, the "double comb hair (boxing call it crazy monkey)" will be a good one to train. You pretty much hold both hands into a big fist and hide your head behind that big fist and both forearms. After you feel more comfortable, you start to let go your big fist, replace your big fist by your palms, open your arms a bit so your eyes can see through between your hands, you get yourself "double comb hair (crazy monkey)".

IMO, 1-2 times a week is far from enough. You need to spar 15 rounds daily. As far as "build bad habit without an instructor", I won't worry too much about it. Not sparring is a bad habit by itself. If you want to learn how to fight, fight.

 

Do you actually do martial arts? Because I don't see how someone who does could give advice as bad as that.

 

I'll always encourge people to spar as much as possible when they are still young. They will have the rest of their lifetime to make everything perfect. The window to accumulate their sparring experience is very small. The day that they have fulltime job, mogtage to pay, family to feed, ... their window of sparring may be gone.

I'm a strong believer that "If you want to learn how to fight, fight!"

 

I have no problem to change "If you want to learn how to fight, fight!" into

- "If you want to learn how to spar, spar!" or
- "If you want to learn how to wrestle, wrestle!"

The name is not important but the action. The number 15 was just the number that I used back then. It can be changed into 10 if needed. I like 15 rounds because it made me so tired that I had no more "brute force" to waste. I then started to truly understand the meaning of "relaxation" after that. I have heard some Judo coaches had used that approach too (force his Judo players to be so tired).

When I was young, I had formed a sparring group with 5 members. A TKD black belt, A Okinawan Karate black belt, a Hapikido black belt, a MT professonal fighter, and myself. In that group, we had no style boundary. Everybody was learning from everybody. I really had a good time back them.

How can I not to encourage someone 19 years old (hasn't had a fulltime job yet, hasn't married yet, no kids, no mortgage payment, ...) who tried to form his own sparring group (to "accumulate" his sparring experience) which I had benefited so much out of it from that experience?

 

Anyone else? I'd like to hear as many opinions and thoughts as possible!

 

Oooh your videos! I have watched them!
Thanks, appreciate that

 

Something that would probably do you some good is looking at some boxing videos of head movement and parrying with your hands. Just learning how to paw a jab or a cross takes hours of good sparring/mittwork to do and it's pretty simple stuff. With the head movement, it's good to start getting used to moving and I think it would be beneficial whether the person you're drilling with knows how to throw a good punch or not. Getting your head out of the way of a limb is getting your head out of the way of a limb. Thinking about self defense, not everybody is going to know how to throw a good punch so I don't think you would learn anything detrimental from working on it.

The best way to structure those kinds of drilling and sparring would be to have one person throwing the punches, the other just focusing on head movement. If you add parrying in, one person just throws straight punches. You can follow a regular sparring format and just switch roles every round.

 

Hello MAP!
So, I've been looking for boxing gloves and a simple punching bag to start things out!

The gloves will be used for this technical / shadow sparring we've talked about and the bag will be used to practice whatever I learn at JJJ, like kicks or hand strikes.

My first question is, how many oz should the gloves be?
I'm thinking that more oz (14 or 16) means more padding, so safer, and more weight, so slower hits and more stress on the shoulders which can be a good thing ( if not overdoing it of course ).
What do you think?

And second question, should I take a 1.0m punching bag or a 1.8m punching bag?
I'm thinking that the 1.8m punching bag might be too heavy for a start, but on the other hand it depends on hard YOU hit it at the first place AND it can be used for low kicks.
Your thoughts?

Thanks