I've been reluctant to write about fighting in any capacity. Sparring was always something that I found the hardest time detaching from my own romantic ideals of what it should be and what it actually is. I think I have finally found the words to write about sparring in a constructive way for my readers. Control is something that for the most part, I've always had a great deal of confidence in talking about. My students are going to be familiar with a lot of this, but this is the first time I've decided to write about it and put it all in one place.
To me sparring is a collaboration of the art at its most dynamic and should be a give and take between two practitioners -- with control being the highest priority. In my opinion, I believe that everyone who walks in the door of any martial arts school already has the ability to beat up another human being. Though they may not realize it, and may not believe it; striking another human being with their fist or foot is really not that difficult. Chances are if you have ever sparred with a white belt you've found that they've hit you too hard at some point, usually in the arms, or sometimes low. They lack control, but they can hit you after one or two classes, and they can hurt you if you are not careful. Conversely, when I sparred in my first ever tournament, it didn't take but a few seconds to learn that I could hit someone as hard as I wanted to, even though I was trained to have good control. I view my real job with sparring to be to teach people to have control --
which is something no one has when they walk in the door.
Control is a lot of things, but contrary to the oversimplification, control is not hitting soft, or being able to miss on purpose. To have control at the physical level means to be able to stop any technique, at any time, during its flight path. With true control comes the realization that I can hit someone to any degree of power that I choose. This is an important distinction, because many can only hit people hard. This can cause them many problems if they go to hit someone too hard and miss. Conversely, some who are taught control improperly may have a hard time ever hitting someone who is a threat to them.
Control encompasses many layers of a given martial art and is not just a physical ability. Control is what allows you to continue to spar when you are being outclassed and should be exercised when you are outclassing a person. People without control, when being outclassed, will sometimes resort to either indifference or to anger. Neither of these lead to a good place, as the former often ends with students not wanting to fight at all, and the later leading to any number of negative attributes including potentially criminal behavior outside of the school. For the fighter that has the ability and experience to outclass another fighter, having a lack of control can lead to mocking, embarrassing and or overwhelming of the lesser fighter, which can in turn create a systemic pattern of bad, or negative control. Control, is thusly, paramount to a healthy student body and effective program.
Control starts with trust. If a practitioner trusts their partner will have control, then that practitioner can relax. A relaxed martial artist doesn't force technique, and can find finesse and finesse, is the nursery of real skill. In a relaxed state, a martial artist is able to draw entirely from the art and should be able to use any technique they are familiar with to make appropriate contact, and they should be successful if all other things are held equal. This is the pathway to being a great fighter, because the more relaxed fighting you can do, the bigger the palatte of moves you can convert to instinct and the more you can do, the harder you are to fight against.
An abundance of trust will also lead to fighters being able to comfortably fight harder and longer. If two fighters know they can go all out together and not end up in an emergency room (barring anything unfortunate) then they can really take their sparring ability to higher levels. This is also where the training starts to be able to transcend the classroom, and leads to proficiency in self defense matters. Additionally, a fighter with good control should be able to push a lesser fighter to the peak of their ability and hold them there. So that they can grow comfortable fighting at higher levels.
If there is no trust, then a fighter reverts only to what they know by instinct. In a case where control is bad, the amount of techniques a person has to use at their disposal is going to be smaller. In the case of someone who really isn't picking sparring up, they could find themselves with a palatte of techniques that they find completely ineffective and can lead again, to bad performance, low confidence and an eventual unwillingness to even fight.
The above though is where I slip into my own romantic ideas of fighting and are why I still have my own struggles with fighting to this day. There are fighters who are super, highly effective with a small number of techniques in certain regards. Those fighters swear by it, and shun people like me, who want more than a good reverse punch, side kick and ridge hand. I don't think there is a right and wrong, as sparring is the art in motion - it stands to reason that there is more than one possible way to be an effective fighter. If I were into guns though, I'd be the guy with a basement arsenal, as "just in case" is my motto when it comes to fighting. I want to be prepared to use anything I've learned, after all, I didn't get into this to be really good at three techniques, but I realize that my mindset may be the very reason I didn't have a very successful tournament fighting career.
Your fighting circumstances are going to dictate a lot of what you get good at and what tool set you are looking to make (classroom, tournament, street). I've been called a good fighter by many, but yet, I never had much success in tournament fighting. The times I've won, I've kept a very business like mindset - "this is what I have to do to win" - and thus, I followed very stringent guidelines. I never found it fun to fight that way though, and a plastic trophy won by stopping a charger with a perfectly timed reverse punch was no where near as satisfying an experience as scoring in class with a spinning hook kick to the head -- a move I would probably never throw in a tournament. At the end of the day though this is control also. To control yourself and stick to a plan is something that I could definitely get better at myself. The best tournament fighters in our school show an amazing amount of self control and patience. I could learn from them and their example if I wanted to be a better tournament / point fighter. At the present time though, that doesn't align with my goals.
Mastering control is what the martial arts are all about in my opinion. By trying to master your physical body, under proper guidance, you learn to master your inner self as well. There isn't mention of a lot of spirituality to Taekwon-Do, but it is there, in this simple form. Whether you call it spirituality, or just a relationship, control cuts across the physical with sparring as the bridge to the mental. Having good control is a keystone to having the ability to fight proficiently in any capacity.
