I'm short-sighted. About -4-5 in both eyes and I take my glasses off for sparring. Downside is that it takes me about ten minutes of sparring to adjust though, but the transition time is decreasing. In the meantime, my kicks and punches fall short of my target until I've warmed up!

I spar in class (light stuff) with my glasses on and my partners are respectful of them. When we really bang or in tournaments I wear contacts.

Geocitiesuser wrote: »

Getting off topic, but all of my sparring has been pretty light lately

Now that I'm a red belt I find myself more and more taking a bit of a leadership/instructional role where I am working with young kids and lower belts. It's okay, I am honored that I am trusted enough and seen as skilled enough to do that. But at the same time my skills will not grow if I do not start getting my *kitten* handed to me once in a while.

When I was a colored belt going through the ranks, we had "Friday night at the fights" - which was 1.5 hours sparring class... it attracted a lot of talent, for sure. It wasn't uncommon to see green belt through 4th dan show up. Do you have a weekly class like that? If so, perhaps start asking high ranks to come play...?

We had black belt initiation in that class too. First class after getting your black belt, you had to spar every black belt that showed up for your initiation.. starting with the lowest 1st, and ending with the highest that showed up... so first class right after every testing was usually packed with black belts eager to spar.

It was an unspoken tradition that some students who were too cocky would attract a large crowd to provide some sense of "humble reality" to the new black belt. Good times!

Hmm. Righty-ho. I've never been in a WTF club, and I might very well be missing aspects of the culture and subtleties to how you learn to spar WTF-style. I watched it on the Olympics, I know it's explicitlyheavier contact than what I'm used to, and that head-punches are disallowed and that's about it! But I think that if you suspect you might be scaring off fellow adults, you should sit down and assess whether that's actually true and if so, why.


Are they just judging you by your height from across the room, or have they actually sparred you? If it's the former, you can't do much about looking like a skilled martial artist. Sucks for you. If it's the second though, you can work on getting what you want- willing sparring partners.

Sparring isn't my forte, but I genuinely love sparring classes because, well, it's an opportunity to learn, isn't it? It's exciting. There are loads of six footers, including army guys, at various levels, from 1st dans to 4th dans, and I'm not worried about sparring any of them, even though I shop in the petite section. Except for one guy...

That one is a young guy in my usual class who refused to hold back for a while. He is fantastically skilled, strong young man and he simply does not get the safety aspects that apply when you are sparring someone who would be in a lower weight-class, because he's never been on the other end of that equation. To be fair, at his age, I didn't get it either until the day I used too much force against someone who turned out to be 30-40 pounds lighter than me. That was a learning experience.

He's careful with the kids, but he thinks anything goes with the adults. Let's just say he became unpopular to spar, as the injuries totted up. (I personally missed out on what would have been my first sparring comp, which I'd been looking forward to for months, because of a concussion from him the previous week. I'm still bitter. And that's small fry compared to some other incidents!)

His full-power punches and kicks became a running joke across the school and believe me, I go to a very big school.

You don't need to go full contact to learn from sparring. The person I've learned most from sparring in the past year is an instructor from a sister school who is my own height with impeccable control. I was totally uninjured at the end, but I still learned far more about effective sparring techniques in a couple of minutes against her one weekend than I do in any of my many encounters with the heavy hitters in my usual class. It might have been a match controlled in power, but it was full-speed.

There are six-foot men of the same grade who cheerfully admit to hating sparring her, for her skill alone. You just can't get a hit in! I was pushed to my limits during that.

So, never think that the only way to be a challenging opponent is to hit like a tonne of bricks. Or that it's only a good match if you're trying to break each other. Even in a proper competitive match, surely it doesn't have to be FULL contact to score a point?

Most people have got work in the morning, after all.

Back to topic, for the goggles...you can reach out to your optometrist and get your kids prescription and order the goggles online at another site..I think it's called Zenni. My sister swears by them. She has her own goggles for her sports. They are very inexpensive.

I too wear contacts. My kid wears glasses but since she only spars at tournaments once a year I haven't gotten her goggles. Class sparring is no head contact (just simulation). We don't wear head gear, just gloves and shin.

Geocitiesuser wrote: »

"But I think that if you suspect you might be scaring off fellow adults, you should sit down and assess whether that's actually true and if so, why."

I'm a big guy that hits hard. A lot of the adults are not fit. So I worry I'm going too hard on some of them.

WTF sparring is weird. It's more about making clean contact than raw power, but we are taught to hit with power to open their defenses so we can blast them with a combo to the hogu. The other weird quirk is that knocking your opponent out with a head kick is an instant win.

WTF still does the knock-outs? Huh.

Anyway, seems like this is an easy fix. Just dial the power back a bit. If you're worried about dialing it back unnecessarily, open up a dialogue and ask people to let you know if you're going in too hard.

My daughter wears glasses. She has a face shield attached to her helmet. The face shields are required for kids.

Bianca42 wrote: »

mom2kateRH wrote: »

My daughter wears glasses. She has a face shield attached to her helmet. The face shields are required for kids.

Required for all kids or only if they wear glasses?

required for all kids. this is a recent change. A bunch of our kids went to Battle of Atlanta a few years back, and face masks were required to spar for kids. so all our kids had to buy face masks that day from vendors (much more expensive!) and fight with facemasks when they never had before. and I guess they do take some getting used to. My daughter doesn't mind it too much, though.

Not required for adults, though....I guess we are not as precious

I can't even get my kid on board to wear the arm straps on her glasses to keep them from sliding forward. I can't imagine the protesting if she had to regularly wear a face mask.

Another big trend right now is no longer allowing head kicks in kids tournaments.

Our culture is so .... wussed out.

When I'm an old man we are going to get invaded by a bunch of cavemen with sticks and lose. Hopefully Generation Z is tougher than what their parents are letting them be.