My trainer and I were having a discussion tonight about novices sparring. There's two main clubs in the town I train in one trainer believes sparring shouldn't be to hard although they do have tough sparring the main trainer will always be there telling then to go easy lads don't kill each other. He believes you should save it for the fights and risk ageing fighters to quickly. Now the other gym lets the lads to go town on each other they basically have fights every night but with 16's on and headguards, even the young lads 12 13 years old have really tough spars. To be fair this club is producing some champions all the kids from the gym are renowned for going like lunatics in there fights and over the 3 rounds they get alot of wins. Personally I think abit of both is needed think it shouldn't be brutal hard spars every single time but I do think the best way to prepare for a fight is to quite simply have a fight. What is people's opinions on this subject?
the same **** is happening in my town.. but, the easy sparring trainer has also some champs here. The thing is, with hard sparring you will have many champions in teenage years and some young ones. If you build fighter slowly with easier sparrings (once a week hard), he will last longer and he would be healthier.
Good question. I guess there's benefits to both. IMO, I think let em go to town for the first few times and then teach them to ease up. This'll teach them that getting punched hurts. No sugarcoating or handholding here...nothing but a wake-up call. Then you can weed out the guys who are wusses and let the real men play. Then once they appreciate real pain, they can be motivated to avoid getting hit and also work on their cardio, once they realize how crappy it feels to be gassed after 2 rounds. That's just me tho, i'm far from being a seasoned coach...and could definitely learn a lot more. On the other hand, we always assume guys who can't take this trial by fire approach are just being pussies and will never make it anyway. But I also wonder, how many of these guys who are scared off could actually make for a decent fighter if they were "eased" into it. I guess i'll never know. I guess what i'm trying to say here is......I don't have a bloody clue! LOL.....when I first started, I started with a couple of other novices, and everytime we sparred, it was certain SOMEONE was gonna hit the canvas....ha ha...reckless....good times...
Enough with the trial by fire stuff. Starters need some confidence. Plus it's amatuer boxing you're not supposed to break a kid. At my gym, it was all out from the get go pretty much.
I find it personally hard to go under 50% during sparring. If I try going to light, then I end up making mistakes by "trying to go slow" instead of just doing what I know to do. Anything under 50% I dont even like to spar, I'd rather do drills. As far as I am concerned, the only difference between a fight and sparring should be what happens when one fighter gets hurt. Let them get their legs back underneath them in sparring, then get some more work in. In a fight go for the finish, dont ever let them get mentally back into the fight.
on light sparring i meant drillsm or regular sparring with some limitations like only body, or left hand head, right only body (orthodox), only clinch, one attacks - other only defends etc.. also, you can release tension in your fists, that makes punch lighter and hands also faster
I prefer to spar with snap to the punches, not loading up power to take someone's head off. Problem with going hard too much is we all kept having head aches for days until we found a better rotation for it.
just go 60-80 percent but with headguards and 16 oz gloves, stop if you hurt the person thats all dont keep going.
Novices should do plenty of block and parry with comb drills to get used to impact ,mainly to stop hitting yourself in the face using a double arm block, at leased 6 months learning the basics of boxing before you take a shot to the face . If you no nothing every punch in the face will hurt, once you've learned the basics your concentration moves to trying to hit your sparr partner and not really feeling alot of the shots your taking . alot of people cry off way to early if pushed to soon never to be seen again
