Pads or no pads -that is the question

[michael289]

At my kwoon, we do not use protective gear for sparring. No headgear, gloves, chest protectors, etc. I've never asked him why.

Recently, when visiting the dojo where a friend of mine teaches Jiu Jitsu, he and I got into a discussion about all things martial arts with the owner of the dojo who teaches TKD and Aikido. He is a fifth degree blackbelt with 30+ years of experience (in training, not necessarily teaching). When the topic got to sparring, he couldn't believe we didn't use protective gear. He said things like: "You can't practice making real contact on a person without gear," and "your instructor is just asking to get sued," and "well, that's not really sparring," and "I don't spar without pads and I'm a 5th degree black belt."

We do make real contact when sparring. -When Sifu and I spar each other, that is. The other students are allowed to go at their own comfort level and thus not recieve real contact if they don't wish to. My Sifu understands that I have prior experience and love to spar and he allows me to go to my max (only when I spar him) and using control, he matches it without hurting me. I have been thrown several feet, and slammed, and kicked and punched fairly hard, etc. but nothing that would crack a rib or leave deep tissue damage. And I love it.

I doubt the Shaolin of centuries past went without sparring practice, and I doubt they had pads. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm making an assumption. But now I wonder if it would be beneficial to practice on occasion with head gear and gloves so I could practice contact strikes to an opponent's head. Give me your opinions, is the TKD instructor right? Am I missing a crucial part of training? Do you guys spar without pads?

[LeiYunFat]

I guess it depends on what your goals are -- you sound like you wouldn't need pads, but your classmates who opt for little contact may be in need of pads to further their training.

[doc]

I'll requote LYF.

I guess it depends on what your goals are -- if you want to get hurt, spar without pads.

I'll be cynical and view this as an ego thing. The "we don't spar without pads" argument offered up by some martial arts teachers, just reeks of on unbridled ego overly tainted with supreme ignorance.

The other guy, in my opinion, is right. You can't properly hit someone without some sort of protective gear, whether it be gloves or what have you, with proper strength or precision. Period. Think about it, some of these blows are designed to really hurt people, in fact, kill them, if the strike is performed properly, with adequate force. How can you really practice them without something to absorb, deflect or minimize the impact?

I train with one of my MT coaches, who occasionally does not use head gear. But, I use 18 oz gloves, which, I consider to be "padding". For body strikes, we have a chest abdomen protection setup. Gloves are a must. We don't use leg pads as our shins are properly conditioned, but, then again, we also don't kick at each other's legs, also for the same reason. Protective gear is a must.

As far as Shaolin training goes, what I've seen there, sparring wise, protective gear is used. Granted, it's shit, but, it's used. Then again, the splints and other devices used to immobilize broken bones are shit too, but, hey, it's China.

[kunoichi2003]

At my school we usually don't spar with protective gear, we use our controll not to seriously injure each other. I hate sparring with gloves and a chest protector on because I feel that it hinders my movements. Sometimes we will wear padding when working on punching each other, just to train punching all the way through. (and it still hurts with the padding) Padding can be very useful when training full power hits, like yesterday when we took turns having everyone in the class do a full power hit to the chest. Boy am I glad I had that padding then. I think training both ways is benificial.


Kunoichi

P.S. Is there a spell check on here?

[doc]

There's no spell check. I had tried to put one in years ago, but I always had trouble getting the necessary library properly installed on the server. I'll see what I can do in the future.

Careful with the full power punches to the chest, even with protective gear. Enough power imparted directly to the heart underneath the sternum during a specific point during the repolarization phase can lead to a not so nice case of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation. Another reason for using protective gear; good chest gear at least tends to diffuse the energy impact, thus minimizing the amount of force applied to the body per unit of surface area.

[michael289]

Good points all around. I'll probably save up and get a chest protector and gloves/boots.

I feel I need to clarify the attitude with which my kwoon approaches sparring without pads: pads have simply never been mentioned to me. When I started taking, nobody used them (or owned them) and I was never told that I needed any -which suited me fine until the TKD guy introduced doubt. There was never an attitude of "we're badass enough that we don't use them" or anything like that. My Sifu is very humble and only teaches students who are also.

One of the reasons for my confusion is that with gloves/boots on, your opponent can't really perform chin na on you and vice versa. Also, while grappling, that stuff is just going to get ripped off. And Kunoichi, I'm with you on hating to wear that stuff, I don't feel like I can move fast enough with it on -plus it's clumsy. But on the other side of the coin, Doc's position about practicing moves the way they are intented to be used is so valid that I think I'll get some gear and use it half the time and half the time without so I can practice both ways.

[doc]

Practicing without protective gear is not a no no, as long as you know the limits, and both people practice within them. And very true, it's hard to do some of this stuff with gear on.

But, I believe the first question had to do with "full contact" training. That's different than just practicing.

[michael289]

You're right about the first question being about full contact. The question sort of evolved with the different answers from you guys. And we don't always do full-on contact. Sometimes we do slow sparring for fluidity practice and when we're tired, we might do light contact sparring. It just depends on the group's mood any particular evening.

[kunoichi2003]

Careful with the full power punches to the chest, even with protective gear. Enough power imparted directly to the heart underneath the sternum during a specific point during the repolarization phase can lead to a not so nice case of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation.

Not exactly sure what ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation means, i read something about fast heartbeat. But I will be careful about that in the future.
Let me clairify my training, as the person reciving the punch we are not supossed to just stand there and take it, we learn to go with it. But if you get tense and don't move with it the right way the contact can be hard. This way both people are training, one trains to punch full power and all the way through a target, the other trains to go with it to diffuse the strike.

Kunoichi

[Uwe]

For us its very simple: No protective gear = No Sparring.

The risk for injuries is way to great, especially with younger students. The real issue is that people get into it too much, the adrenalin goes up and you hit or kick a lot harder all of a sudden without even realizing it and the damage is done.



For adults like doc stated it's a ego or macho thing.

My philosophy is very simple in that respect:

"Not on my watch" to use a typical american euphemism.

Enough said!

[Rob_Hollett]

Finally something I can reply too...we do both at our school, however sparring without gear is pretty much limited to extremely light contact. Anything involving impact to the body and head should be considered deadly and should require as much protection as possible. Some of you might know that I have been an avid Skateboarder for 30 years(only if you read my lame intro). and I can tell you without a doubt that head protection will save your life. for the most part you can survive a lot of punishment to the body however that may end your fighting career but a hard blow to the head can potentially end your life. I am a member a group that advocates for free public skateparks ( www.skatersforpublicskateparks.org ) and while the jury is divided on the helmet issue( i am for helmets) without a doubt helmets save lives. We track skating deaths and last year we had 48 the vast majority were head trauma due contact with a hard surface and brain edema caused death. To me it only makes sense that even at a high level of skill it is possible to slip and hit your head or to step into a punch and see the same amount of force applied to your skull as a colision with pavement or a vehicle.

I used to spar without headgear but realize how foolish it was and no longer do that.

[doc]

Read this about head injury:

http://www.russbo.org/vb/showthread.php?t=1737

and this

http://www.russbo.org/vb/showthread.php?t=3137

This about heart issues:

http://www.russbo.org/vb/showpost.php?p=2013&postcount=6

I've written somewhere about blunt trauma to the chest causing cardiac arrest: I can't seem to find it at the moment.

As for skateboarding without a helmet, true idiocy. Since people tend to skateboard on concrete surfaces, a posterior fall resulting in hitting the back of your head, from five feet plus up to the ground, on concrete, can result in all sorts of different slight to severe brain injuries. Just one instance can really cause problems.

[Carona]

I strongly agree on wearing protection when sparring. and I'll illustrate why:

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit a friend who was still lying in bed. So I thought he had been partying all night long and wanted to talk to him anyway and saw he had a serious black eye.

It turns out he had played rugby on monday and got tackled. And when he wanted to get up another player ran into him and accidently hit him in the head with the knee.

Result: a fractured skull and a visit to the hospital where he needed some morphine to kill the pain. Now he's in bed with a headache that's killing him. Luckily for him only the forehead broke and not the second bone that`s situated more inwardly so he didn't loose any brain liquids (doc can tell us the exact scientific name of those bones and liquids). The doctor told him that if that would happen they would have to open up his skull in Frankenstein style.

But he will have a slighty deformed forehead, as you can't poke into the eye to pull the sunken part back to the same level as the rest. And he'll have to wait to see how things heal and hope he doesn't have too serious brain damage.

Just seeing him looking like when terminator gets his head ripped up sent shivers down my spine.

I guess you can compare the rough rugby players with sparring without protection and american football players with using protection. So think: when you see a 7feet guy storming straight at you and you're holding an oval shaped ball, would you like to be the rugby or the american football guy????? And if a well trained martial arts practitioner is going to land a technique on you??????


And for the issue of not being able to perform chin na, you can always use gloves that leaves the fingers free or do training on striking with protection and seperated qin na training without.

[doc]

Heres' the post about chest punches:

http://www.russbo.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2207#post2207

[Carona]

full contact prepares for self defense

I just remembered that I saw a video of two guys doing "full contact stick fighting" in order to get some reality based pratice of self defense. I believe it's from the dog brothers.

Well, one of these broke the other's kneecap so I'd love to see him using his reality based self defense techniques on crutches when he get's mugged the next day.