Finally got to spar!!\(^O^)/
...but it's meant to be non-contact sparring, which feels completely counter-intuitive to me. How are you meant to spar without making any for of contact? When I spar I make _light_ contact, what I call "tip-sparring" where I just lightly tap the target (e.g. face, shoulder, chest, stomach etc.) like when someone taps you on the shoulder to get your attention or when kids play tips at school -- that amount of force (or lack thereof). It's enough for you to feel that I've made contact, but it doesn't hurt. But nonetheless, any time I even made light contact my partners or Sensei would be quick to remind me, "Hey, it's non-contact!"
And I wasn't contacting just to be a Dojo-troll... but as I'm sure you can all appreciate, when you've had some martial arts training, when you go into a sparring situation you just go on automatic instincts based on your training. There's little conscious thought. And my training is to penetrate my opponent, not stop in front of them. So I had to work really hard to pull back all my moves, but it's hard and goes against everything I've been taught! It was a lot like the G1 cartoon - where everyone just shoots around each other like Imperial Stormtroopers, but hardly anyone actually hits their target!
People just stand there throwing punches in front of each other like pew pew pew pew pew pew pew, but nobody ever lands a hit. Or imagine playing a game of Chess where it's against the rules to Check your opponent!
The Sensei from Sunday was absolutely right -- all I had to do was get really close and they just didn't know what to do. Everyone else was just standing in their spots and throwing punches at each other, like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. I advanced in on my partners, so we ended up move around half of the hall (as my partners kept back-pedalling in desperate attempts to distance themselves away from me - but I can walk/leap forward faster than they can backstep!). I decided to give my first partner a sporting chance and I put one hand behind my back to fight him with one hand. He asked me, "What's wrong with your hand?" and I said, "Nothing. I just wanna give myself a challenge."But still, because I kept closing the gap, he just didn't know how to effectively counter me.
With my second partner it was a similar story... so I just started walking aggressively toward her, but otherwise using no technique. I didn't have a proper guard up, no stances, I left myself completely wide open... the only thing was I was walking into her personal space - much like a schoolyard bully does when they want to intimidate you by invading your personal space. That's it. Then she tried to plow a hit into me... not very well, and I grabbed one shoulder and spun her around 90 degrees so that her back was facing me -- a precursor to doing a headlock, but I didn't go ahead with the headlock (being all non-contact and stuff)... I just had my hands on the shoulders... not even tightly -- but it completely freaked her out, so I stopped sparring with her after that.
With my third partner... dear me... she would randomly block and punch the air. Like I hadn't even thrown a punch, she would do a block. What's she blocking?? Then when I throw a punch and stop it front of her, a few seconds later she'd block. Yeah, kinda late.
With my next partner; a brown belt, I just decided to go on the defensive... he kept throwing all these punches at me which were easy to block. So then I used one hand... yeah, easy enough. Then I put both my hands behind my back and started dodging/evading punches or blocking them with my shoulders -- then I went on the offensive (with no hands)... so again, just needed to get in close before my partner started struggling with what to do with me. But even then, I wasn't even charging that hard (because again, I was seriously restraining myself for the sake of "non contact"). Then that was the end of sparring, and we went back to good old rote learning fighting against the air and practising katas (but no applications!) for the remainder of the lesson.
I'm finding this non-contact rule... difficult to work with. Oh, and there was another newbie there today - first lesson tonight, but he'd done Kyokushin Karate before. And after the lesson when I spoke with him he did mention how incredibly easy everything felt. And one of the brown belts I spoke with before class did say that the learning curve in GKR is v e r y slow; and I said that I can see how that would be beneficial for children and people with underdeveloped motor skills (or learning difficulties)... but for adults with average motor skills and learning ability, I find it to just be too slow, and the brown belt agreed with me.
Active associative learning >>>>>>>>>>> rote learning.
Btw... is anyone still reading this? If not, then I'll stop logging my GKR journey here. I won't be offended at all if nobody wants to read about it - seriously. If only 1 or 2 people are interested maybe I can continue it in PM rather than hogging the thread here.
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Originally Posted by Bartrim
) and I got quite a few listings. Now if you do have low standards then one of the schools in that long list should be able to provide you with what you are looking for. If you can't find anything satisfactory then I think your standards are higher then what you initially believe.
Umm... okay?
