In my recent purusal of various sites and forums, I've seen the words Free-play and Sparring being used in many different ways, and was wondering what you all think of when you use these two words, and any possible information about their historical use (if any) and origin.
For me, Free-play is what we usually do with wooden or steel weapons, not using such force that we cannot strike our oponent without seriously hurting them. It is slower than full speed and force.
On a few occations someone has come trained with us who was new, and had fairly extreem fear of hurting / hitting me as I was teaching them. If they came out again, remembering from the last session they had problems, I would get out padded swords and ask them to "free-play" - that is, moving very slowly as if using wooden weapons, but using padded ones they could get used to the idea of hitting someone, and would be more ready do drills and counters with wasters.
Sparring, to me, is what is done with only padded weapons, using strong, fast, hard blows (but still controlled.) "Sparring" with a waster or steel would probably get someone hurt.
Now, I have brought my free-play speed up to fairly fast with advanced partners, and observers who haven't seen us spar or doesn't have experience in martial arts may have thought our blows would have / were stricking with full force. Even though we brought the speed up, however, we were still slowing, pulling our blows and had enough control to tell when a strike was likely and react accordingly, sometimes (such as with pommel stikes) not making contact but calling it out. The difference when using the padded weapons is we are slightly faster, and allowing our strikes to hit harder than otherwise safely done.
I hope that made sense, and please point out if there is anything I said I am doing that could be done better.
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