We repeat, sparring isn't fighting
There are a million blogs, social media posts, and videos about sparring. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to add one more to the world, but here I am. I’m going to focus on something I don’t hear often about sparring but that I think is more important: a different way to think about the same things you’ve heard about the phrase “sparring isn’t fighting.”
Most of the time when you hear “sparring isn’t fighting,” it’s because you’re going too hard and you need to chill out on the power. I agree with this. Sparring isn’t fighting. If you want to fight, sign up for a fight, train, and fight. However, sparring is meant to work on things. Sparring is for getting better at Muay Thai. It’s working on composure, balance, timing, range, and reflexes against someone who isn’t telling you what they are doing. We do drills to practice these movements and techniques while our partner lets us. In sparring, your partner is resisting.
For the reasons you often hear, you don’t go hard in sparring. Most of us have work or school the next day and don’t want to be sore or injured. Or maybe we just want to be able to train the next day. Going hard makes those things next to impossible. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for hard sparring, it's just not what you should be doing most sparring sessions. There’s no prize for “winning” a sparring session. It’s not a competition. It’s just one more thing we do to improve at Muay Thai.
Too often I watch people in sparring do the same things. They don’t take any chances, they don’t try new things they learned, and then they go home. When I spar, I always try to do well, but if I don’t have at least one “what the heck was that” moment, I question if I was really trying things. We’re going light, so mistakes don’t cause injuries. It’s the optimal time to try things. I see so many of my students run away from their partners because they think they’ll get swept or countered or who knows what. I say “who cares?” Get swept, get countered, etc. You’ll learn that way. I mean, if you just want to run away from your opponent, we have a treadmill. Get your miles in that way.
If you and your partner are treating sparring like a fight, there can’t be that much growth. The brain has a harder time learning when it’s in fight or flight mode. On top of that, you’re going to be a lot less willing to try new things if a mistake could cause you to lose a few brain cells. We have other ways than just sparring to build toughness if that’s what you’re trying to do.
I want everyone to try to win their fights. You’re not supposed to win sparring. There aren’t any judges scoring the rounds, so try to work out some of those things you want to improve. I’ve said this a lot in class: If you go into sparring with a goal, it’s easier to feel like a winner. If you struggle to check kicks, make it your goal to check as many kicks as you can. This way even if your partner hits you 100 times and you don’t land a single strike, as long as you checked a few kicks, you were successful. You improved at a weakness. Over enough sparring sessions you will have improved more than you realize.
The only purpose of sparring is to get better. It isn’t a concrete barometer of how good you actually are. Remember, it’s sparring not a fight. There are countless people out there who are really good at sparring but don’t do well in fights and vice versa. So stop judging yourself on sparring and stop making sparring a competition. It isn’t.
Sparring is where you work on your skills, and fighting is where you unleash your power, toughness, and physicality. So maybe if you were to fight the sparring partner that always lights you up you’d still win due to your power, toughness, and cardio. Maybe not. Who knows? My point is you won’t learn that answer from sparring so you shouldn’t worry about it. Just worry about improving! And then if your coach says you’re ready and you really want to know if you have what it takes to win a fight, then take a fight. Just please stop treating sparring as fighting.
