Free Sparring with wasters?

[Jaron Bernstein]

Hi all,

Got a question about sparring with wasters. From some of the photos I see, it looks as if decent speed sparring with wooden wasters is a common practice. Jamie and I tried this last week and I found a few problems:

1. All those carefully practiced drills pre-planned drills went out the window, which is more of a "muscle memory" thing for me to remedy.

and more importantly:

2. I found that safety concerns (to not thump your fellow ARMA member on the head with a waster) severely inhibitied the willingness to earnestly commit to the cuts. This problem is much less evident when sparring with padded weapons.

I was wondering how to make sparring with wasters workable, since it looks like y'all have managed to do this somehow.

Thanks,
Jaron Bernstein
Columbus -ARMA

[Mark Peters]

This is an interesting point, we practice ways to kill and wish to do it in a safe enough way not to effect too many other areas of our life (like using your fingers, being able to walk <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> )
Of late we've found that even during drills the exchanges can start to fly - more then once we've noticed a waster tip in inch away from an injury.
I think the only way to spar with more energy would be with the padded weapons, wasters are pretty solid and a full force blow with one can do some damage - the more you want to spar full out with solid weapons (like a waster or blunt) the greater the need for solid protective gear and control - which can by itself start to change techniues.
Bottom line, the 4 ARMA tools make more sense when you start to see the limits of each one. Take each for what it is: padded for real power exchanges, wasters for drills and lighter sparring, blunts for a more realistic feel and controlled sparring, sharps.....OK don't spar with them - not unless you have a very long line of partners!

[Ryan Ricks]

we spar with our wasters, and have tried to pad them somewhat. we've taped .5 inch closed cell foam to the edges of a couple. this seems to work pretty well, although it'll still bruise if you get hit.

i usually come out of practice with at least one or two bruises per week.

if someone doesn't have protective head gear, we try and stop the strikes short of making contact. yes, i know that ARMA considers this very bad, but without padded weapons or protective head gear, i'm not sure what else we can do. we very much want the head/face to remain a target.

ryan

[Matthew_Anderson]

We do free play with wasters all the time. We wear fencing masks and maybe some pads here and there like elbows and knees. You can go at a pretty high level of speed and intent if you also develop some control. If I throw a big cut at your rib cage and it's apparent that it's going to land, I'll pull it a bit so I don't smack you full force. I won't go for the hands as hard as I would with padded weapons, etc. There will be some times when you hit each other too hard or smack somebody real hard in the fingers. It smarts, but in all the sparring we've done over the past few years, we've never had anything more serious than a bruise or swollen finger. You won't be able to hit as hard as you can with padded weapons, but you can certainly do some meanigful free play at a lighter contact level and you'll be able to do some things better than with padded weapons such as binding and using the cross.

[Shane Smith]

Matt and I agree on this point.We spar with wasters alot in VAB and as a matter of fact, it is much more common for us to suffer a minor ding or bump from padded weapons than from wasters. The interesting thing is that our practice bucklers are often splintered on the edges from impacts so we're obviously developing speed and oomph in our blows,but when one is about to strike home,we have enough control to not splinter one-anothers bones.That said,we are also sticklers for using all four of the tools in the proper place and order. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Guest]

First a big hello because it is my first time on the forum of ARMA.

We are a small reanacment group in the Netherlands and are part of a larger group to put on a show each year on the first of april in Brielle. When we train we normaly use blunts to get our routine's and drills up to speed and more acurate.
For sparring we wear normaly a closed fencing mask with padded gloves and a padded coat. We just started to use wasters in sparring training and we must say that due to the fact that a good placed hit and bad block leave some bruhses and some minor cuts but the experiance we get is much greater.
We noticed that our speed and acuracy is getting better by each training. Also we train people to not flinch on a hit but take it and learn from it.

Sorry for the bad english but i am dutch and it has been a long time since i wrote it.

Greetings
Harry

[Shawn Cathcart]

Its mainly a question of trust. You mention specifically the pulling of blows and this is something that will have to be overcome with time. There are only 2 people I feel completely safe waster sparring at a high rate of speed with, and it took some time. Developing control takes time, and as you see people develop that control, you also develop trust in them to exercise it when it counts, and therefore you'll find the speed and intensity of your waster sparring increasing. But as Shane says, it has its inherent drawbacks the same as padded swords. So long as you realize what they are and keep them in the forefront of your mind while you spar, I think you'll be fine.

As for the drills going out the window, that's not all that surprising at first. Again once you become comfortable with a group of fellow group members whom you trust enough to waster spar with, you'll find you are more likely to start concentrating on executing proper drills and techniques. I think its normal to be a little gunshy at first. Plus, I've found that most people have a lot of trouble reacting properly, or purposefully when sparring. It takes, in my opinion, a lot of individual time drilling and understanding what your doing, rather than just repeating a drill robotically that someone has shown you, before you can remember by reflex to do proper techniques in open sparring with padded, wasters or blunts. Some people simply commit more to understanding what their doing than others.

[Stuart McDermid]

Hi Guys,

If all your drills are going out the window when you spar then IMHO you aren't drilling properly. When drilling a technique you should start out slowly and with a rhythm and not use faking. As you get more and more comfortable with it during the session you should start increasing the difficulty by changing these factors.

By the end of a drilling session, you should IMHO be in the realm of limited sparring with the guy who is training you trying to break your technique and you trying to make it work against maximum resistance. This type of work makes sure that you can use a given technique under pressure by putting it under a goodly measure of pressure before you attempt to use it in all out sparring.
Cheers,
Stu.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Hi all,

Thank you very much for you input and advice on this. Next Sunday I will try to put it into action and make it work.

Thanks,
Jaron
Columbus-ARMA

[Webmaster]

Stuart,

The style of drilling you describe is a good way to do it, but in my opinion it only really works well with more experienced students who already have things like basic footwork, movement and cutting committed to reflex. I've worked with a lot of beginners, and when they're still trying to get a feel for how to handle this strange object, that's not the time to be trying to break their techniques because it can inadvertently reinforce bad habits that haven't been broken yet.

That said, not executing the things you drill at when sparring is not necessarily a sign of improper drilling, just not enough drilling. It took me a year before I could use the hanging guard in sparring without having to think about it first. I could execute the technique properly enough when I knew what was coming, but neural pathways don't streamline themselves overnight. Nonetheless, once someone is reasonably comfortable with the fundamentals (say, after six months of regular practice on average), I see no problem moving drilling to the next level you describe.

[Stuart McDermid]

Hi Stacy,

You are dead on that the method just gets better as the practitioner does, but I use this even on rank beginners. With rank beginners, the drills normally involve weaponless drills that eventually have them trying to either avoid shots through footwork or to touch another person who is trying to get away. With a beginner, a drill of this type can take a full 10 minutes to develop but the beginner is left with a functional skill rather than a theory.

If a move is too complex for a beginner to do, I don't abandon the method but I make the action simpler.

A good example is teaching someone to slip back and countercut. For alot of beginners, this can be difficult so I usually take the weapon from them and just practice the slip in isolation right the way up to doing it against unscripted attacks. The beauty of this system is that by watching the person you are training and their performance in the drill you get an instant idea of whether you should be increasing, decreasing or leaving the difficulty at the same level. Once they have the slip down nicely, you can add the weapon back in and start again with the drill. By the end of a session, a practitioner will have a few new functional skills that they know they can do rather than a whole bunch that they know in their head but cannot transform into physical movement.
Cheers,
Stu.

[Jake_Norwood]

I think that both Stuart and Stacey are right about training. Stew Feil used to say "Practice makes permanent," and that's a fact. I was having a chat with a guy that I started with and haven't seen since I was a "rank beginner," and he was commenting about the joy of seeing hengen come out in sparring. I thought, "damn, I've really come a long way...I can do just about every non-sword-taking technique I've ever learned while sparring now...cool." There comes a point with enough fanatical training that you really can do this stuff--even the "crazy" stuff. I mean, I've only been training really seriously for about 3.5 years--not really all that long. But I train hard, often, and meticulously. I learn something at every practice, and I work on integrating it right away.

An excercise that I'm fond of is free-playing with wasters at 1/10th speed. You have lots of time to bring technique out, but you have to keep the rythm and motion of a fight. It's a good starting place.

Jake

[Webmaster]

Stu,

What you're describing is very similar to the touch drill we start every class with as a warm-up. The only difference is you're using it to teach technique, whereas we use it to develop a sense of timing and distance, along with working on footwork. Ours is a bit more like a weaponless sparring match, and everybody does it, beginners especially. It's not a big stretch to take that drill in either direction, and you've got a good use for it there. I think we're both covering the same territory, just using different drills to achieve the same results.

[Jeffrey Hull]

As others have said, so I second, regarding wasters in sparring: control, trust, intent.
Good luck! JH

[Ryan Ricks]

i got stabbed in the hip and it really hurt.

hits to the hard parts of the body seem to hurt lots more than hits to muscle tissue.