Last week, I dipped my toe into the strange world of WTF sparring. When I say dipped my toe, I mean repeatedly clashed my ankle onto people’s knees, elbows and much to my horror, groin: and as we all know, banging your ankle bone is up there in the pain stakes along with waxing and paper cuts. I didn’t look too elegant either; I looked more like a mini weeble that wobbled back up every time I was pushed over. However, this experience got me thinking about the merits of semi-contact verses full contact sparring. Which is really the better style to practice and which better complements the art?
As a student of ITF Tae Kwon Do, I am trained in semi-contact sparring. This is also my preferred area as basically, I am both very vain and a bit of a weed. Nature has blessed me with a good set of teeth and the thought of doing full contact has always scared me; but it is also a little fascinating, watching people voluntarily face an opponent and risk hurting themselves can be both voyeuristic and sinfully entertaining. After all, who can admit to seeing through open fingers the recent gladiator scene in the recently shown series Rome and witnessed Pullo slaughter opponent after opponent and Vorenus rescue his friend by slicing through one of the bad guy’s legs. It was violent and bloody (now that really was full contact!) but you just couldn’t help having a peek. However, one doesn’t feel quite so entertained when you see a friend cop a nasty one in a competition, much less being stretchered out to the nearest casualty department.
So what purpose would full contact serve in Tae Kwon Do? At the risk of sounding obviously biased from an ITF perspective, not a lot. I first had a chance to see a live bout of WTF sparring at the world championships in Cardiff last year. From a stylistic perspective, I thought I was watching Tae Kwon Do through a pair of goggles. With the rules being totally different, I felt that although it was a full contact contest it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. There was a distinct lack of dynamism in the kicks and in the case of the ladies’ competition, it became the battle of the bouncing pony tails as there was very little action. Of course it is easy to criticise when you are being an armchair expert and actually having a go made me realise that it is much harder than it looks. However, you are not able to extend your kicks to the extent that Tae Kwon Do wants and this is where I feel that we have the advantage in ITF. As the object of ITF sparring is to score points and not a shuddering blow, the action is faster and there is a lot more of it. You are also able to do more; there are many more kicking combinations which in itself can be quite breath-taking when you see world class sparrers perform them (although mine have apparently provided my Tae Kwon Do colleagues with some of the best comedy moments of 2005, some of my flying kicks have been compared to that of a “hamster in flight”!) and you are simply allowed to punch to the head. Although WTF provides Tae Kwon Do with the full contact option, it is highly stylised and the rules, I believe, prevent it from having any realism; after all, the majority of street fights usually start with a right-handed punch to the face.
I decided to consult an expert in the matter and asked a 5th Dan for his opinion. He’d done a lot of full contact sparring in both training and competition and so I asked him about the difference between a full contact and semi-contact match to which he replied, “In full contact you need to keep the techniques at a more basic level due to the fact that more advanced techniques are riskier and could mean losing points or even the match”. So this explains why from the viewer’s perspective WTF appears to be much more static but from the competitor’s point of view, you’re absorbed in finding a gap to stick in a shot. Waving your leg around and keeping mobile doesn’t have the same use as it does in ITF. As defined by our expert, “you have to take a lot more care with your guard and use fewer combinations and more power shots.”
After having a go myself, besides making the mind shift into a different set of rules, one of the most difficult adjustments was not wearing foot or hand pads. Despite the body armour, it didn’t feel particularly comfortable trying to strike a blow with nothing protecting my feet from either the other person or myself. Although the target area is clear from the red or blue areas on the chest, accidents can happen from a tired leg dropping to strike a low kick or scratching the face or eye with a nail. We are used to seeing our modern fighters from various marital arts wearing protective hand and/or foot gear and I couldn’t help but think that at some stage in the game, fighters must have done without. Indeed, it wasn’t until the Queensbury rules that were introduced into boxing in 1867 that fighters started to wear gloves. Up until then, prize fighters fought bare knuckle. The era of prize-fighting from the 18th to the mid 19th century was extremely popular and would attract a frenzy of betting from the aristocracy and would even draw royal patronage from the future George IV, try to imagine our Prince Charles at a boxing match now! Fighters such as John Gully, Henry Pearce and Tom Cribb fought epic matches with the rounds lasting anywhere between 20 to 50 rounds until there was either a knockout or one of them dropped, sometimes fatally. It certainly makes our 1 to 2 minute rounds look pretty puny! It would have been interesting to see how they fought their battles, either these men had heads made of toughened steel or they had to play a more basic game in that they couldn’t just plough in with lots of fancy combinations but pick their moments to pop in a carefully placed shot. Oh, and being desperate, mad and really hard probably helped as well.
Of course, these prize-fighters didn’t have the option of using their feet as well as their hands, so bare-knuckle Tae Kwon Do probably isn’t going to catch on any time soon. However the nearest full contact version of ITF, kickboxing, seems to show that fighters can’t maintain their competition career for the length of time that we can doing semi-contact. You simply cannot be kicked in the head for a sustained period of time at full pelt without it having a detrimental effect. Also, the 5th Dan I spoke to told me he had sustained broken ribs, toes, fingers, his nose and damaged his jaw and unless you are going to earn serious money from the sport, it isn’t something I’d fancy doing at the weekend as a hobby. Semi-contact may lead to the odd bruise and even black eye, but it is also the most effective way of sustaining a long career in an art that is both adaptable in its outlets through sparring and patterns and when demonstrated by an expert, beautiful to watch.
|
|
|
Techniques and Tutorials 
(0 vote)
