Knife Sparring My Mindset

[amok_hodges]

First let me say this is how I do it not saying it's how you should or the only way but if you read something that you feel you could incorporate into your training then fight it out and see if it works for you.

To me 99% is learning the right right mind set to bring into your sparring to be able to achieve the other 1% of skill you will take away from it each time. The worst mistake you can make is sparring by picking up your blade facing you partner and mindlessly whacking it out with each other for an hour feeling in the end I won because I hit him more the he hit me. Sparring without knowing what you want to accomplish and and how this Sparring relates to an actual knife attack is just a waste of time and unproductive abuse to your body. And to me the reason so many in the knife world discount sparring and dueling as they never understood the mindset they should have to get anything out of it they felt worthwhile pertaining to an attack.

First I go in realizing that I am training the second part of an attack. In my mind I know that this person I am facing now has already, surprised me with and ambush, that my reflexes have saved me from, I have cleared distance ,created time, and have accessed my blade,and that now we both face each other with a knife in our hands. It's important that you know how you got to this point and more important to train how to get to this point. So your starting point in sparring is actually the second or third strike in a knife attack.

Second it's important to understand the difference between sparring and dueling. Tom ( Sotis * from Amok ! ) says sparring is where you develop good judgement from your poor judgement. Dueling is where you put that good judgement to use.

In sparring especially as a teacher I may let myself get hit in order to set up a response I am looking to get from you so that I can work a specific skill in myself or you. Maybe I let you snap cut my arm a few times tell you man your fast I can't get away from that so that one time I can bounce over it and hit you in the face. In sparring it doesn't matter if you are getting hit what matters is that you are working on a skill set. That being said When ever i spar in my mind I always duel first. I want to make sure I get the first hit on him. Now In my mind he is a dead man and I can train on him. I will tell my students this and how it ruins my day when they hit me first . I put that in their mind so that every time I face them sparring I know that they are trying their very best to hit me first and i am getting the very best from them right at the start.

Third Every time I spar I am clear on the specific skills I want to train in that sparring session. Most of the time for me it's how's my snap cut working. Can I bounce over his snap cut when I bait him. how's my body hit can I catch him flat footed and get in AND OUT cleanly ( hate those you got me in the arm but I stabbed you body so I won kind of guys) if I can't get in and out cleanly with my body shot I'm not satisfied with it. How are my fakes can I fake and enter on him. Can I pick up his fakes and jam him. There are a ton more of course but these are a few of the ones I try to work every time I spar. Learning how to set your sparring partner up for these in sparring to bring a true response out of him is an art in itself.

Fourth When I sparr I don't look at it as oh I sparred joe for half and hour today. I look at it as each clash we have is a separate knife fight did I win that clash or die and then in my mind I'm fighting a whole new fight with a whole new guy. not one long sparring match that oh he was getting me in the beginning but he got tired at the end so I won. But that in that half hour i had maybe two hundred knife attacks with two hundred guys that i either survived or didn't. Also I'm aware that all the dancing around and maneuvering is not there it is empty space and time to me the only time that maters is the instant of my attack or his. That dancing around is not going to be there in a real knife attack if it is you should be dancing home.

Fifth Am I fooling myself anywhere one example of this I often see is a guy can't get in on you so he starts letting you attack him taking the hit most of the time but then quickly comes back at you trying to get you on the way out now that he has you close. Easy to fall into this habit. Countering attack is fine but if you are just taking that hit and using this tactic as a crutch to cover up a weakness in other areas it can be disastrous in a real attack.

It's late and that's I have in me right now.

* = Edité par Serge pour clarifier.
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