How do you feel about sparring? While some people absolutely enjoy getting to spar, others absolutely dread it when the instructor says that it’s time to put sparring gear on. Some even get to the point where they are absolutely terrified.
Why is this? And what does that mean for these people?
When we get scared and feel nervous, we do so because we feel like there is a threat to something. There can be an instance where we feel as though someone that we are sparring with is a serious threat to our safety (This is actually quite rare if people have the right intentions for training), but many times when we look within, we may feel like the person that we are sparring with is a threat to our pride!
When ego gets involved with sparring, we can become more adrenalized than we need to be. We will lose our fine motor skills, and as a result, we will not spar as well as we should be sparring with our partner. In turn, we will feel worse about ourselves.
I’ve written an article previously on the importance of not negotiating against ourselves. You can read that article here.
When ego gets involved with sparring, we are certainly sparring against ourselves more than we are sparring against our partners. When we alter our mindset, sparring becomes a fun activity. You may ask then, “What must I do to make sparring more enjoyable?”
There are two things that come to mind.
First, when sparring in class, winning or losing seldomly matters. Whether you “win” or “lose”, the outcome does not matter. With a sense of outcome independence, you will not care about being the dominant person, and like we see with many other facets of life, when we do not care about the outcome of things, we actually tend to enjoy the activities more. We also perform at a higher level.
Secondly, we need to change our preposition from sparring “against” our partner to sparring “with” our partner. We need to work with our partner and be of service to them when sparring. We need to ask ourselves what we need to do to make our partners better. As a 4th Dan, I spar orange belts much differently than I would spar a 2nd Dan. Orange belts and black belts need completely different things out of their training and sparring experience. If I spar that orange belt like a 2nd Dan, they will become intimidated and not want to spar anyone. Likewise if I spar a 2nd Dan like an orange belt, the 2nd Dan will get bored and will not improve. When we take a servant leadership viewpoint in sparring, we improve in our empathy for our classmates which is an important skill in and of itself.
So, after reading this article, I will ask you again: How do you feel about sparring? If you still don’t feel great about it, take a step back and see how you can change your mental approach!
