You like to spar. Working your thing. Perfecting your skill. Let those pre-trained combinations flow and counter whatever is thrown at you.
That’s great work. You develop your timing and movement. Your combinations get some practice. The offence and the defence in your art is tested and you get a sweaty workout.
It’s controlled. It’s designed for your skill level. No one gets hurt.
Just don’t expect real life to be anything like it. And - this is the IN FOCUS top tip this week - never rely on your ‘fighting personality’.
You may have developed a certain procedure in sparring. Because the speed and controlled environment allowed you to. Maybe you like to stay back, seeking out an opening at your choosing. Perhaps you like to move a lot, confusing and adding dynamics you control into the sparring fight. You certainly always want to control the distance to suit your best ‘weapons’ at all times.
Nothing of this applies in most violent, sudden encounters. You won’t be setting up a sparring session.
You already know this. You will not control the real thing - and the sparring rules are out the window.
The ambush in the dark or from behind leaves you on the back foot from the first blow, seeking to make sense of anything as further strikes land all over you.
The predatory interviewer set the onslaught up by an interview, or maybe a charm social mode set up to get really close.
The scared guy caught by you in the criminal act may just lash out wildly because he’s lost control and feel he has no other intelligent options available.
The point is, you don’t set up your fighting personality to match the encounter. The encounter sets you up - mostly by lack of time, often by lack of space or an environment different to the dojo sparring session and the rush of adrenaline and fear, now faced with real life legal and medical consequences, is more important than any comfortable sparring ‘rules’.
Your fighting personality is now to enact maximum damage with optimal energy and speed put into it, before the same concept renders you out of the game. Can you hit? Do it. Then do it again. And again. Hard. Fast. Are you being hit? Ignore it. Close the range, if you can’t get away, avoid the swings and use elbows, head butts, eye gouging and groin attacks. Then you keep going until the target is neutralised. Now, stop, check area, check your body, make yourself safe.
Maybe all your sparring went out the window. Or maybe it didn’t? If your sparring involved sudden, unexpected attacks and short, improvised defences against these, you’ve done some sensible preparatory sparring. If your sparring was also about moving close and switching styles to up-close techniques, or indeed far away to kick, you’re ahead again. If your sparring happened in unusual, everyday environments with dark lighting and weapons being deployed, you’ve accustomed yourself somewhat to other real-life factors.
The morale of the story? There’s sparring and there’s sparring. There’s fighting styles and there’s adapting to fighting styles.
Being comfortable and complacent in sparring is your enemy. Because real life violence is anything but.