Sparring with PUNCHES

[Lindsey Loewen]

I am curious: How many people that frequent this forum practice live sparring on the ground with strikes, either open palm slaps or gloved punches? If you do, what is the mindset of these sessions? Do you go 100% and try to really hit your partner or light?

[AJ Camacho]

If you want to be toothless and get brain damage, go nuts and do it at 100%. Bas Rutten totally defends hard training so I'm not saying to be an ass, as it's a valid method of training.

Personally, I just go 30% and then react to the punches as if they were hard. Even though I can eat a 30% punch in my guard I will react like it's 100% to gain the benefits of the defensive training. Additionally, if you rely on rubber guard for your offense, you just don't get hit that much.

[Aab]

Most of the time just light punches. However the guys that are training for a fight throw harder prolly at 70 percent.

[bobby rivers]

Definitely changes the game. Everything is much more urgent and important. On the bottom my objective is the practically the same(without elbows). Top game has so many more options with punches, but im still hunting for go-gos, spiderweb and truck.

[Tyler Frazier]

Don't think you need to go 100% on the punches. Just light taps to let the other guy know that he's open for that split second. I think rolling with punches is great for building a tighter defense.

[Lindsey Loewen]

I usually establish a punch intensity that I am comfortable with ahead of time with the partner and go from there, depending on my mood and energy levels its usually 10%-70%. I actually am much less urgent once im set-up somewhere (RG, guard, mount) because the other person will be out of energy pretty quickly. About 3 minutes tops usually. I do believe in actually making contact though, some people like to throw off-center punches, I think this screws up the realistic punch angles.

Does anyone find that too much non-punching sparring makes different reflexes? I recently was sparring with someone with punches and they established a decent base, I found myself going for an open guard sweep instead of focusing on the upcoming GNP. Lesson learned but I was a little alarmed.

[Kevin Gibbs]

I started in luta livre and we pretty much went close to 100%, especially during takedown practice, one guy would throw strikes and try to avoid the TD and the other would attempt to get him down. Instructor was a big proponent of tough training. He was a beast though and now I'm at 10th P, so generally 100% on strikes isn't really fun for practice.

[stlnl]

Since you shouldnt even punch 100% in a fight (100% is for finishing/taking a guy off queer street to the finish), sparring its dangerous. They should be full speed, but 50-70% contact.

[Tyler Timmermans]

i fight my friends then let them throw punches just to see how it is to beat someone with jujitsu in a street fight.

[Tyler Timmermans]

^^^i don't always win thou