What makes the average boxer a more competent fighter than your average kareteka (average being key word)? What makes your average BJJ fighter better than your average taekwondo fighter? Again average being the key word? Now some would say that it’s in the styles or schools of fighting themselves. That say a boxer is a naturally better way of fighting than most forms of karate as taught in the West and while there may be something to this, it’s about far more than just that. The fact of the matter is you have guys who are beasts and can kick ass from pretty much every martial art that there is out there.
Which might lead one to say well then it’s about the person and not the fighting style and again there is obviously something to this as well but still not what we’re getting at here. So yes 100% the person practicing the martial art matters and to a lesser extent the martial art matters as well as different martial arts were created for different purposes and some are going to be better for certain things than others. But like we were discussing before, there are bad asses from every martial art and it has more to do than just the person practicing it.
The Critical Component
Here’s the thing that if missing in your martial art training will greatly hamper how much you get out of it by an exponential amount. And that is full contact sparring. It’s one thing to learn techniques and another to apply them against an opponent who doesn’t want you to. At the end of every boxing session and BJJ class we always sparred and rolled. And while many karate classes have sparring unfortunately it’s usually not full contact and instead once contact is made a point is given and the sparring stops. Again there are exceptions but that seems to be par for the course as far as the average karate dojo in the West goes.
Full contact sparring is when everything comes together and the techniques and such that you practice actually “count”. A martial art that doesn’t have full contact sparring as a daily part of it, is incomplete for your training. When I say spend time in the ring or mat (preferably both) this is what I mean. It’s not enough to practice some punches on the bag or techniques on a willing partner. You have to apply all of that to real “live fighting”. Obviously sparring isn’t the same as a street fight but you get my overall point.
You Must Spar
Or roll, or fight, or whatever your martial art calls it. But it has to be there. Technique, bag work, and all of that is obviously essential and great. There’s rarely ever been a time when I’ve entered the gym and not done bag work and some mitt work but that is all secondary to stepping into the ring and fighting with a live opponent who is hopefully bigger, stronger, faster, tougher, meaner, and more skilled than me. And that is where the fighting skill truly comes from, the sparring. That is where the rubber meets the road and everything comes together. The lack of this is why you can have a guy who has done a martial art for a year and yet do nothing in an altercation.
But then the guy who has been doing a martial art for three months but sparring every session can clean a guy’s clock in an altercation. This is why the average boxer is more feared the average karteka. It’s not necessarily that boxing in and of itself is a better martial art than karate (though than can obvious be debated) but rather the fact that the boxer is truly fighting each and every time he gets into the gym while the karetaka is not. In order to develop true fighting skills that translate to the real world you have to have full contact sparring whether it’s sparring, fighting, rolling, or whatever. You have to go against a live opponent who wants to defeat you. This is when you learn and things click into place.
Don’t Spar, Don’t Learn
You don’t do real live sparring you don’t learn, plain and simple. You have to fight, preferably each and every session. Take a group of 4 guys who box in their garage but fight each other and a group of guys who are coached by a skilled boxer but never actually get into the ring and spar and the 4 guys in the garage are going to whip the others each and every time (just about, obviously always exceptions). So if you want your training and martial art to count for anything you have to actually spar with a live opponent who wants to beat you.
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-Charles Sledge
