Sparring is a fun cooperative activity that allows our members to develop and refine their martial arts skills in live practice. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone, we have a few rules in place that need to be followed.
1. Appropriate Levels of Contact Must Be Used At All Times
Whilst sparring is inherently risky, ensuring the safety of yourself and others is everyone's responsibility. It should be made clear that sparring is NOT a competition and there are no winners. Injury, especially head injury is to be avoided at all costs, and so the following limitations are in place for levels of contact.
The colours visualised on the above image represent the MAXIMUM allowed contact to each target area, however your sparring partner has the right to request that you go to a lighter contact level at any time, for any reason. If your partner asks you to go lighter with your strikes, you must do so without question.
Tap/Touch Contact means that the strike should go to the target and stop immediately. If your partner's head snaps back, you've hit them way too hard.
Light to Firm Contact means that you can strike fast and land the strike, but there should be no follow through.
2. You Must Only Use Legal Strikes To Legal Strike Areas
When sparring, you must only use legal strikes on legal target areas on your sparring partner. Below is a list of all the ILLEGAL strikes and strike areas in sparring. Some of the banned strikes or strike zones may be legal in competitions or other formats, but they are not permitted in sparring at Ascend.
Illegal Strikes:
Any elbow
Spinning kicks to the head
Quad stomps or teeps to the top of the quad
Stomping on the other person's feet
Illegal Strike Areas:
Groin
Neck or throat
Any part of the knee
The spine
The back of the head
Chest area on Females
Furthermore, you must never throw any techniques that you cannot control. If you can't throw a punch to the head without pulling it up, you are not permitted to throw any punches to the head. If you can't do a spinning kick without pulling it back, you many not throw any spinning kicks, etc.
3. Communicate With Your Partner Before and During Sparring
Whilst it is absolutely your partner's responsibility to adhere to all the legal strikes and levels of contact mentioned above, it's your responsibility to let your partner know if you are uncomfortable or if you'd like to tone it down even more. Your instructors will be monitoring your sparring rounds to ensure that everyone is acting in a safe manner, but if you still feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, then you need to mention that you'd like to go lighter to your partner. This can be as brief as "Can we go a bit lighter please" or "Can you please go lighter with the kicks". As the person on the other end, if someone asks you to go lighter, you must do so without question or fuss.
If you find that your partner is for some reason ignoring your requests to go lighter, mention it to an instructor as soon as possible and they will address it.
4. If You Make A Mistake, Apologise
Unfortunately, poor communication and one accident can result in a sparring match going south. So often, one person will accidentally throw a punch a little too hard but say nothing about it. This will then result in the other person punching harder and so on until the spar gets out of control.
You must recognise when you've accidentally hit your sparring partner too hard and acknowledge it immediately. It only needs to be as simple as "That was a bit hard, sorry I didn't mean that". This simple communication can help avoid sour matches and animosity between members that should all be here to enjoy the fun activity of sparring.
Remember, it takes far more skill to pull a punch a few centimetres from the target than it does to send it through at full force.
5. Always Listen to the Monitor/Instructor Without Question
When you are sparring, you must be listening for any instruction from the monitors or instructors. The role of these people is to keep you and your sparring partner safe, so if they ask you to do anything such as go lighter or stop using a certain technique, you must do so without delay. If you continue to disobey the instructor or monitor, even if it's on accident, you may be asked to sit out from sparring. Repeated accidents demonstrate a lack of control, which needs to be addressed before you can return to sparring.
6. Acknowledge Good Technique
If someone performs a great technique on you, and does so safely, you must acknowledge the technique. For instance, if someone throws a head kick and pulls it up safely a few centimetres from your face, you must acknowledge with something to the effect of "Nice kick" or "Good shot" as a recognition that in a full contact scenario, that technique could have done serious damage.
Not Acknowledging the technique may be upsetting for your partner, especially if you take advantage of them controlling their technique in order to strike back at them. We want to incentivise not having to hit each other hard to practice technique!
To Sum Up...
At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is treat your partner how you want to be treated. If you show them respect and are controlled with your sparring, they will be too.
If you have any questions about sparring, you can always ask the team at the gym, or send us and email to info@ascendmartialarts.com.au
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