SPARRING (KUMITE)

Sparring is a way for students to practise their Fighting/Self Defence skills in a safe environment while promoting situational awareness and building self confidence.

As students become more skilled and physically conditioned, the level of difficulty and the amount of contact between opponents may increase if mutually desired.

There are two main types of sparring:

1. Pre-arranged Yakusoku

2. Freestyle sparring Kumite

Pre-arranged sparring Yakusoku

This is often taught as a one-, two-, or three-step combination to keep practice focused on a specific technique or combination. Typically, one person will attack with a single technique and the other will respond with the one-, two-, or three-step combination they are currently practicing.

Freestyle sparring Kumite

Freestyle sparring is where you have the freedom to choose for yourself the techniques you want to use in attack and defence. Students start to ‘pick up’ on subtle cues that their opponent may give during their attack and learn to respond intuitively rather than with a pre-set strategy in mind.

During freestyle sparring students must wear all safety equipment (mouthguard, mitts, shin & instep, etc)

Students bow to their opponents (eyes forward) then step back before starting the ‘round’. (Stepping back is showing respect for each other, stepping forward to start a ‘round’ is considered an aggressive/challenging move)

Students must show respect for each other during sparring, with No Contact on ladies or juniors. 

Students trying to “bully'' others during sparring will Not be tolerated.

Sparring is usually conducted on the Dojo floor with a time limit. While general assessments of how well a student spars can be made from the side-line, the student themselves should also spend a few moments after the round to go over what happened, in their head, specifically:

1. What worked?

2. What didn’t work (and why)?

3. What could have been done better?

4. What steps can I take to improve?