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Are Semi Contact Martial Arts Dying Out ?

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Sparring is for learning and practice, you do neither if your sparring full out, we never do this at our gym, we spar hard but never trying to knock the other person out... semi contact is ok. suppose its each to their own...

 

That makes sense as well Craig.

I can relate to that. This is the big paradox. When you spar at a Full contact based gym such as Craig's Kapap gym or my own AFK gym, Sparring is actually very controlled. As Craig said earlier , "sparring is for learning and practise" if you are getting knocked about/beaten up then you are neither learning nor progressing/practising much apart from how to take a punch :hihi:

but even with that there is only so much of taking getting beaten up you can do realisticially speaking!

 

Sparring at professionally run Full Contact gyms is controlled while in the semi contact gyms they actually are more competitive and act as if they are actually trying to beat you! In a semi contact club, if they land a few shots on you they then go round talking as if they "beat" you in sparring LOL. They also tend to spar at full pace (which for most semi contact fighters doesnt matter as most of them dont know how to kick anyway :hihi:).

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In this modern day and age, everyone seems to be crazy about the UFC or about the big fights in Boxing. Everyone also seems to train in either BJJ, Boxing , Muay Thai or Kickboxing.

 

Fighters are cutting weight and getting their stamina up to scratch as they endeavour to compete over 3x2 mins of kickboxing, 5x1.5 minutes of Muay Thai , 2x5 mins (or 3x3 mins) of MMA to step into a ring or a cage against an opponent who has been pre matched on experience and weight.

 

Fighters sell tickets to their friends and family and enjoy a percentage of said ticket sales and travelling expenses or sometimes even a set Fight Purse dependant on experience.

 

The days when you turned up to a sports centre , pay something like £10 or even more to compete and just step onto the scales and then have your name put into an envelope and take pot luck which Weight division (sometimes with a 5kg or 10 kg spread LOL) you will take part in seem to be a thing of the past.

 

Back in the 1990's and early part of this century , people would pay £10 or £12to enter a competition and fight often over a single round of 2 minutes or even 90 seconds (yes really!!!).

The rules were not often clear and sometimes the rules on contact levels would vary as to which club you came from.

 

I have met many competitive martial artists from many different disciplines.

You still seem to get the odd Tae-Kwon-Do competitor who fights either Full Contact under WTF Olympic rules or the Semi Contact Continuous as done by the T.A.G.B, but these days stand up martial artists seem to want to fight

K-1 rules while those who have a Grappling background are happy to "go the whole hog" and do MMA.

 

Could this be a sign that Martial arts are going back to the source so to speak? I.E. Competitive Martial Arts returning to their roots of Pankration as the Ancient Greeks and many other ancient civilisations did before us?

 

No, they're just getting the chop

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Sparring is for learning and practice, you do neither if your sparring full out, we never do this at our gym, we spar hard but never trying to knock the other person out... semi contact is ok. suppose its each to their own...

 

Thing is you can't go too soft in sparring specialy if you are fighting its just not realist enough for a fight but I do agree you do have to start slow and light learn the technical side of it then put it in to practice I say but you don't have to no one is pushed at afk nor kapap Craig is a little bold man naturally :D

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Thing is you can't go too soft in sparring specialy if you are fighting its just not realist enough for a fight but I do agree you do have to start slow and light learn the technical side of it then put it in to practice I say but you don't have to no one is pushed at afk nor kapap Craig is a little bold man naturally :D

 

Superstuch, the main reasons for not sparring too hard are the cracked ribs inflicted in sparring!!!

I wonder whose body kicks/knees are responsible for those eh ?

:huh:

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Little bald man... cheeky **** LOL...;)

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Superstuch, the main reasons for not sparring too hard are the cracked ribs inflicted in sparring!!!

I wonder whose body kicks/knees are responsible for those eh ?

:huh:

 

Well yeah there is that im sick of my ribs being broken ha I dont hit hard enough to brake ribs hit like a girl sorry Craig had to get that one in about being a baldy naturally too

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I like the Thai approach - spar light and technical, fight hard like a b*stard. Works for them.

The concept of light sparring doesn't exist for semi-contact people because, for them, the full on competition fight would be classed as 'light sparring' by the real fighters.

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As long as most of the sparring sessions r supervised in some way, its all good n safe. I've never met an instructor who would encourage pple to hit harder (as in HARD!!) during a sparring session.

 

And no I wasnt having a dig.

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Obviously a few here are in need of a sense of humour transplant regarding my earlier comment!

 

 

That video is really a fine example of my underlying point.

 

I genuinely think it's dangerous to teach semi contact "martial art", predominantly to younger people (kids or teenagers, maybe early 20s) which seem to be the target audience of the more "traditional" martial arts, explain that it's the ultimate super duper fighting style and is too dangerous to do full contact, and make them all think they're superman.

 

Lets be fair, if they get into a fight with a boxer, they're gonna get seriously hurt, and amongst others, the instructor is going to be to blame (in my eyes).

 

As for lotar, etc. have said, obviously sparring 150% all the time is lame, and a recipe for pain/injuries, but that isn't what chefkicker was talking about - what I should have said is semi contact martial arts are for wimps. :)

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Obviously a few here are in need of a sense of humour transplant regarding my earlier comment!

 

 

That video is really a fine example of my underlying point.

 

I genuinely think it's dangerous to teach semi contact "martial art", predominantly to younger people (kids or teenagers, maybe early 20s) which seem to be the target audience of the more "traditional" martial arts, explain that it's the ultimate super duper fighting style and is too dangerous to do full contact, and make them all think they're superman.

 

Lets be fair, if they get into a fight with a boxer, they're gonna get seriously hurt, and amongst others, the instructor is going to be to blame (in my eyes).

 

As for lotar, etc. have said, obviously sparring 150% all the time is lame, and a recipe for pain/injuries, but that isn't what chefkicker was talking about - what I should have said is semi contact martial arts are for wimps. :)

 

Semi contact martial arts have their place i guess? But people who practise them should be able to recognise that brass is not gold.

Im not going to say that Semi contact martial art is for "wimps" as I know of a big name Semi contact world champion who actually killed someone in a street fight with a single punch. He was cleared of manslaughter and then a few years later arrested for a while for another charge :suspect:

 

The point I was trying to make is that the semi contact martial arts seem to be dying out as a whole. People are losing interest in them.

Nobody really cares the minute you say "semi contact" .

LOL

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Nobody really cares the minute you say "semi contact" .

You wish Chefkicker!! If that were true then no-one would care about this video any more! :D :D :D

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Im not going to say that Semi contact martial art is for "wimps" as I know of a big name Semi contact world champion who actually killed someone in a street fight with a single punch.

.

LOL

 

to be fair, a drunk could kill with a single punch, its not a real test of your lethality....... its more **** luck.

 

and as for the vid above, it makes me smile everytime i see it...... cresent kicks love it

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