Combat sports require timing, experience and conditioning for fighters to excel. There is no better way to gain timing and experience while also improving conditioning than through live sparring.
There are different types of sparring with different purposes, ranging from slower paced technical sparring where specific techniques are worked and full blown high intensity hard sparring that is as close to a real fight as can be.
Sparring allows you get to hit an opponent who hits back. You get to work on your offensive and defensive skills while wearing bigger gloves and headgear to absorb shots. You get the full conditioning benefits all while working on your fight game. Done properly, sparring is one of the best ways to work on conditioning and honing your fight skills.
Sparring requires you to make the same movements that you would in a fight at a similar intensity. If you have any weaknesses in your fight game, hard sparring will help to expose them. If you need a quicker jab or you have a bad habit of dropping an arm too low, sparring could make it more obvious. Then you can spend some time honing those skills and improving your weaknesses to eliminate them as much as possible.
Is hard sparring necessary to become a good boxer?
How Hard Sparring Might Harm Your Fight Game
While it always is great to gain good experience with quality hard sparring, it also is possible to overdo it. The old adage of “practice makes perfect” more correctly is “perfect practice makes perfect.” That means you need to be on your best fight game and fighting your best to get the most out of hard sparring.
If you are too tired due to already putting in a good workout, hard sparring could just show you are tired and not provide any real benefits. Even worse, it would subject you to potential injuries.
A concussion, sprained wrist or a pulled muscle could make it even harder for you to prepare for a quality opponent. In worst-case scenarios, you might suffer an injury that could jeopardize your fight ambitions, like a detached retina.
Who to Choose for Hard Sparring?
Hard sparring is a potentially excellent tool for sharpening your best fight skills while also working on your weaker ones. The key is to have ideal sparring partners who can push you but are not going to dominate you.
A fighter of about equal capability and who also would benefit from the hard sparring without getting carried away would be a great option.
The best partners for hard sparring are those who have good fight skills and can take advantage of your mistakes. Nothing will help you to remember where you screwed up than taking a blow that you feel but does not cause damage. But you need to spar with fighters capable of doing that.
You cannot improve if you practice against weak sparring partners that you easily could beat. But you also cannot learn if you consistently go against a significantly superior fighter who is less likely to make mistakes like your next opponent would. Your best sparring partner is one slightly under your level so that it’s not too hard but not too easy.
How Often for Hard Sparring?
The best training method is one that requires a high frequency of decision making and high frequency of feedback but where you don’t get hurt. That means quality sparring that tests your skills and forces you to improve or get hit more than you should in a live sparring situation.
Someone who doesn’t get punched much could spar every day, so that is what you aspire to accomplish. The better your defense, the more you can focus on your offense and devising a strategy to beat your opponent.
Someone who gets hit a little, can spar two or three times per week. Someone who gets hit a medium amount of time should not do hard sparring more than once a week. And if you are someone who gets hit too much, you shouldn’t spar until you improve your defense.
Beware of Toxic Gym Wars
Boxing is not a sport for timid people. When you have high-level fighters working out in the same gym, some natural competition is bound to happen. Gym wars could turn training into a competition of ego, which might have a negative effect on the quality of hard sparring.
Gym wars can be very bad for training by something that doesn’t have anything at stake into something huge and very personal. That increases the chances of injuries and could force you out of the gym. A gym needs to be supportive and develop young fighters. That does not happen if gym wars are getting in the way of productive training.
The Finite Game
When you are preparing for an upcoming fight, you need to maintain your focus while at the gym. That focus needs to be on the finite game. The finite game is the competition in the bout the counts the most for you. For all fighters, the next fight is the bout that counts the most, because you cannot advance without winning. Even a quality loss against a fine opponent could prove beneficial to your fighting career.
With your focus on the finite game, your entire goal is to win it at all costs when the big fight date arrives. You need to keep your mind on that end goal, which is the finite. If you fail the finite game you stand a much stronger chance of losing against a quality opponent. In the finite game, you’re willing to get hurt and you’re willing to injure the opponent.
The Infinite Game
The infinite game is the training at the gym. You cannot win at the infinite game, you cannot win at sparring or training. The only goal of the infinite game is to last as long as possible in order to become as good as possible. The goal is to maximize your potential.
If you injure your training partners, and you find yourself alone to train, you will fail the infinite game, because you’ll have no one to practice with. To last in the infinite game, to maximize your potential, you need to help your partners get better. So you get better fight practice later on.
Minimizing the Bad Effects of Hard Sparring
You do not want to make hard sparring punishing for you or your sparring partners. It is important to give a breather to the weakened sparring partner who might be worn out and needs to heal up from a recent fight or excessive hard sparring.
Unlike in a fight, you don’t have to win at all costs, you can give a break to a stunned partner. Avoid sparring with much better boxers who have bad intentions but do work with those who are willing to help you to improve aspects of your fight game.
Calibrating the amounts of sparring sessions will help to minimize the potential for taking punishment that is similar to a live fight. It also will help you to focus on competitive sparring with other fighters of similar levels and similar weight classes.
Consider Alternative Sparring Methods
Shadow boxing, using the heavy bag and the speed bag also are good ways to improve you fight skills. It also helps to adjust how you use hard sparring in your training. Much more skilled boxers often throw only jabs to the head and all body shots, while less skilled boxers throw everything.
When you watch movies or TV shows about boxers, you probably see hard sparring in the ring. There’s always some drama associated with it, some animosity or competition. But those portrayals of hard sparring may have given you a faulty view of what sparring is, what it’s used for, and what types of sparring are typically the most useful for training and growth as a boxer.
While sparring can be an effective way to learn skills and practice fighting strategies and techniques, hard sparring may just go a little too far. It’s always possible that instead of getting a really great workout, you’ll end up injured or worse.
What is Sparring?
Sparring is usually considered a form of practice for boxers. It’s when you go through all the motions of boxing, but in most cases, you don’t land heavy blows. Your goal is not to destroy each other. Instead, it is usually a way of preparing for a fight in the ring, whether it be eventual or imminent.
Here are some of the most frequent reasons you might undertake sparring.
- It supports your growth as a boxer, but more importantly, it allows you to develop skills
- Sparring helps you build speed while beginning to get a sense of the cadence of blows in the ring.
- It allows you to build up stamina, as you gradually build to longer sparring sessions with more experienced partners, etc.
- Sparring encourages and requires situational and tactical awareness.
It doesn’t matter how much you’ve been learning in your time at the gym. If you’re not able to implement that knowledge and use it in the real world, it is useless and hopeless. You need to take the theory and apply it to your boxing style in real-life scenarios.
Why is Sparring Important?
Sparring is important because you’re able to test your skills, put your theoretical knowledge to the test, and prepare for upcoming battles, tournaments, or other boxing events. Sparring is a way to learn from your fellow boxers, since you can carefully watch and emulate every move they make. It’s also a way to test out new moves and evaluate how and where adjustments still need to be made. Here are a few top reasons to try sparring.
- Sparring gives you a taste of what a fight will really be like, albeit in a controlled way.
- It allows you to practice your skills and techniques against a live-and-moving target.
- You will accept the realities of the fight, with the inevitable conclusion that anything can and will happen.
- Sparring allows you to prepare for the idea that you must defend yourself.
Sparring is a great way for boxers to learn and push beyond those preconceived notions of limitations in a safe and controlled environment. It’s also a great way to let off some steam in a high-intensity workout situation that releases endorphins to make you feel better, more relaxed, and energized. That’s also part of why sparring can be used as a positive for mental health.
How Does Hard Sparring Differ?
Hard sparring necessary boxing is usually how you refer to a more aggressive, even violent form of sparring. Even hard sparring should not be an excuse to try to beat up your opponent, but it may be misconstrued in that way. It’s often used to prepare for a big fight, because with hard sparring you can get a sense of what it’s really like to fight.
Hard sparring can also give you a better sense of timing, speed, and distance. It’s designed to feel more real, which may lead you to perform in ways that are a bit more uncharacteristic for you. If you’ve been training, you should expect that you will rise to the challenge and perform as you’ve been trained to do. While hard sparring should not be undertaken on a regular basis, coaches sometimes recommend hard sparring as a way to knock out the cobwebs and get the boxer in the right frame of mind for a fight.
Top Tips to Achieve Success in Sparring
Sparring is a great way to build toughness and resilience in what feels like a real-world scenario, but it should still be a safe, learning environment, where you still get a great workout. Here are a few top tips to consider when you start sparring.
- Get the Basics Down: Initially, your primary goal with sparring is to get the basics down. You have a lot to learn, and one of the best ways to do that is to watch other boxers in action.
- Practice: Remember that sparring is all about learning and growing as a boxer. It’s a way to practice skills and learn from mistakes as you see how to improve.
- Listen: Sparring is always more effective if you have a coach who is walking you through the process, encouraging you with tips on when and where to land punches, how to move, etc.
- Breathe: You can’t just hold your breath the whole time, so sparring is a great way to learn when to inhale/exhale, how to regulate your breathing, and when to take a break to catch your breath.
- Keep your eyes open: You should be watching what’s going on and learning. So, don’t close your eyes or daydream. Pay attention and learn from the entire sparring experience.
- Think defense: Particularly as you are starting out, you should be on the defense. You can’t be effective in your offensive strategy until you know more about how to defend yourself.
- Pace yourself: Don’t exhaust yourself, take on more than you can handle, or throw yourself so completely into the sparring experience that you or someone else who we know get burned out, injured, etc.
- Visualize: Can you visualize what will happen when you are able to land punches on your opponent/partner for sparring.
- Pick the right partner: For the best, most effective sparring experience, you need the right partner. It should not always be a partner that you can easily get the upper hand on. You should vary your sparring partner to incorporate a variety of skill levels and experience.
Sparring really is effective as a way of testing your knowledge and skills as a boxer. You can push those boundaries to prove to yourself and others that you really have what it takes to succeed as a boxer. While no boxing scenario is completely devoid of risk, it’s a fun and high-intensity way of training to become the boxer you’ve always dreamed of becoming.