Flipping through any martial arts magazine will yield a bombardment of advertisements claiming to greatly enhance one’s odds of winning a street fight. Of course, no method will work if the student doesn’t spar. Now, some may say that sparring is not a street fight and that is true, but, sparring is the bridge required to develop solid skills and attributes. In order to understand this connection, one needs to understand what martial arts sparring is, what a street fight is, an how to develop the training module to create the bridge.
Sparring is not a fight; it is a learning experience designed to help the student polish strong points, develop an individualized strategy, building conditioning and endurance. Most importantly, martial arts sparring drills are primarily designed to provide the student with the skills of combating a non-cooperative opponent through the safety net of protective sparring gear. In order to be well rounded, sparring should also consist of both isolated stand up, close quarters and ground fighting as well as an MMA style mix of all three.
Keep in mind, the aggression that you will be facing in such a confrontation will be much different than martial arts sparring mainly because street fighting barrels forward aggressively throwing weight behind an overhand blows. The offense barrels in with the hopes of knocking the person to the ground so as to stomp a prone figure. In the absence of sparring gear, such an attack will prove severely injurious.
Keep in mind, the above described street fighting aggressive tactic is also the definition of how NOT to spar because it is absolutely awful from a technical standpoint. However, any type of violent confrontation can prove dangerous even to someone who has decent boxing or martial arts sparring experience if the level of danger and intensity is beyond what the individual is familiar with.
So, to deal with this type of aggression is to spar well and often then to take the skills that have been developed and bring them to drills designed to deal with brutal aggression. This is done in the form of a changing the sparring rules. First, since this type of sparring will be full contact it is critical to wear proper martial arts equipment designed to maintain safety as the contact level of this drill strikes intended for quick knockouts within a short timeframe. (There is a great variety of sparring equipment on the market that can provide adequate safety so there is no reason for unnecessary injuries) In terms of the drill itself, the aggressor’s goal will be to throw all his weight behind his punches “head hunting” with overhand punches. If these knockout blows aren’t working the aggressor has the option to tackle/ takedown and headlock his “victim”. The good guy now must counter the punches and the takedowns while using his high level of skill to end the fight QUICKLY as these rounds will be short (one minute) so as to simulate the ballistic nature of a street fight. There are many variants one can come up with to this described drill so you are never limited to a particular approach.
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AM Caro
September 2007
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