Playing the Game

In our school, we start sparring relatively late compared to other schools. Basic sparring techniques are introduced at orange belt level, limited to movement in relation to the opponent, defence against slow and predictable arm swings and breathing techniques.

About a week ago, maybe two, I had my first sparring session with our master, which to me is always a daunting (he is freakishly fast and his technique is awesome!), after my promotion to green belt, so unlike the “usual” arm swings I was expecting, he started laying it on me good and proper with kicks (some/most of which I’ve not even been taught yet) and punches. I was a bit overwhelmed to say the least. At least I managed to avoid a major catastrophe, but I recon that was more a result of my physique (I am after all about 20cm taller and 15 kg heavier that our master) than my technique.

Last Sunday’s training session saw me sparring against our master again. This time however he said that I can use (or better: try to use) a centreline punch as a weapon against him. (I must have done something right the last time we sparred to deserve this). Anyway, about 2 minutes into our session I hadn’t fired off a single punch and my master stopped to ask me why I wasn’t attacking, so I told him why. I simply couldn’t get myself to do it. Not because I was hesitant or afraid of hurting him (although that was part of the reason; there was no way I could properly control my punch in the midst of a sparring session), but because I was more focused on not getting the sh*t kicked out of me. I put all my focus on defending and wasn’t even looking for a way to land a punch.

At this stage my master made a really good analogy. Sparring is like playing numerous games at once. The main game is how you move in relation to your opponent and the environment. Then you have the game of defending against strikes, which is going on at the same time. By allowing me to attack he just added another “mini-game” to the mix. Attacking basically involves finding an opening (while still playing the other two games) and then going for it at the right time and then going back to playing the other two games; or, if the opening closes before you can profit from it just resuming with the other two games. My guess is that this “mini-game” will expand a bit, once I can (and I mean when I’m able to, rather than allowed to here) use a few more techniques, and probably include opening/creating a gap in addition to finding one sooner or later. But these are things I’ll not worry about for now. At the moment I’ll need to learn how to play the games’ basics.

I survived...barely

Training was very interesting today. We had a few guests with martial arts experience to join our class. Furthermore, my instructor thought it was time to start me out on basic sparring exercises, but more of that later.

We started off with our usual warm-up, which seemed to be a lot harder than usual after this morning’s cycle. We then did a few applications for the basic straight punch, this time using the theory of the punches life cycle. We’ve done this before, but this time we started the punch along its usual flight path, rather than finishing it “premature”.

After that we did front kicks and some close quarter defence, all of which I’ve done before but needed practice in, so practice is what I got. I was quite happy not to do anything too challenging, like a new technique, due to my less than perfect form.

My instructor thought differently though, so, with the benefit of having two experienced martial artists as guests, he started us with some very basic sparring exercised. First of all we covered how to move with respect to the opponent and how to avoid running forward into a kick or a punch; sounds simple, but isn’t for someone unused to this sort of exercise. Then my instructor added some very obvious arm swings with the challenge to us to block them with the elbows or lower arms (not the hands). We did this for a couple of rounds each. Despite building it up very slowly by using basic techniques I felt a bit overwhelmed, particularly because I was still a bit tired from the bike ride in the morning. However, on a good note, I apparently (this coming from my instructor, because I wasn’t really in any position to notice) I kept my breathing under control quite well. This made me feel a bit better about myself. I guess sparring is just like everything else when it comes to TKD, practice makes perfect; well, maybe not perfect, but better at least.