First Point

A note on point sparring...

Anyone that knows anything about point sparring in the martial arts is more for sport than it is for actual self-defense.

First of all; it has rules. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that anything goes in a real fight. Then there's the rules themselves: only light contact permitted; only specific target areas are allowed to be hit; only certain techniques can be used for striking and kicking; protective gear must be worn (some exceptions apply depending on the style); and the list goes on. As my original instructor once told me, while point sparring does have its uses, it's NOT real fighting; it's more like fencing in which you maneuver to get the quickest and clearest shot on your opponent.

Fast forward to nearly 10 years since I first heard that statement from that instructor, I'm suddenly having a revelation and realizing that there is one very important thing learned in point sparring that is probably the 2nd most important rule to a real fight (in case you're wondering, the 1st one is to do whatever possible to avoid the fight in the first place). Almost every time he's conducting sparring sessions in class, my current instructor is always saying to "be fast, be first, and make it clear," which brings us to that 2nd rule: strike fast, strike first, and strike decisively.

To make the correlation, in point sparring, the first to strike and strike decisively is usually the one that scores the point. In a real fight, when the fight itself becomes imminent, the first to act decisively is usually the one that comes out on top. Unfortunately in too many cases it's the attacker and not the victim that acts first and is therefore the victor more often than not.

The other important correlation from point sparring to real fighting lies here: once you move in to score, do so and then get out of there, mainly to avoid being scored upon yourself, and also to regroup and plan for the next attack. On the street, ideally by striking fast, first and decisively (side note: by "decisively" I mean striking in a target area or such a manner that ends the fight immediately) the fight should be over; if for some reason it's not, hopefully it did enough to buy time to escape, or if escape is not possible, to reassess the situation to try again.

And people say that sparring has nothing to do with real fighting...

Continued Growth

Getting a black belt seems to be one of the main goals of anyone that begins martial arts training (at least it should be if you in a belt-ranking style), along with other things like self-defense, spiritual develepoment and so forth. The black belt is looked at as the epitome of training; it's similar to getting a high school diploma (you're not going to school juist to get to the 8th grade are you?). Just like graduating from high school, many people stop training after getting their black belt because they think "that's it," or they're done learning. In other words, they're done growing.

As we see more and more these days, more and more young adults are going to college and/or some kind of schooling/training after high school, much more than people did during my parents' generation. There's numerous reasons for this, but the main reason I'm hitting on today is continued growth. People are realizing that in this competitive world, many of us are obsolete if we stop growing after high school. This isn't to say there's anything wrong with not wanting to continue your education after high school, but no matter what the field of profession, you have to at the very least do some kind of training that wasn't received in high school or before in order to succeed at said profession.

To tie this back into the martial arts world, once that black belt rank is achieved, it doesn't stop there if you want to succeed as a martial artist. My original PaSaRyu instructor once told me that "earning a black belt doesn't mean you've gotten there; it means you've earned the right to get there." I'm not necessarily saying that you need to train until you a 10th dan, but realize that your growth hasn't ended simply because that cloth around you waist is now black.

One of the best ways to continue growth is to teach others. Anyone who has ever taught anything in life will agree with that statement. When you have to teach someone else something that you've learned, it makes you apply what you've learned so you're no longer just going through the motions.

One of the things I love about the PaSaRyu style that is unusual to other styles and schools I've been to is that it is very common (almost required in some PaSaRyu schools) for colored belts to teach lower colored belts. In addition, there's an unwritten rule that the highest ranking person in class--even if that person happens to be a blue belt--runs the class (granted I've only witnessed this maybe twice in my 9 years of training, and even then it was only because the chief instructor was running late). In fact, we actually have an Instructor ranking (technically, it's called "Brown Belt Instructor") that falls between brown belt and red belt. This may cause those that are accustomed to black belts doing all the teaching cringe at the very thought of this, but it does help the colored belts reinforce what they've learned, and as a result are much better instructors once they become black belts themselves. They also learn something I learned from my instructor they very next class after I myself earned the Instructor rank, what I call "The Golden Rule for Instrutcors,"--put the needs of others before you own. This ties into the traditional Golden Rule, in addition to treating others as you want to be treated, teach others as you want to be taught.