ChrisHein

Hey Josh,
Thanks for your comments/thoughts. Most of the sparring practices and drills we do at our Dojo do not stop after a strike is achieved. And I believe overall that is the most beneficial way to practice, for many of the reasons you describe. There tends to be a mental break that happens when you stop after a "successful" strike, and you feel as if the bout should end. In a "real fight" this is a bad mindset to have.

The other side to that coin is how much do you accept the fact that the other guy hits you. For example at a Dog Brothers meeting, I was talking to one of the guys who fought at the pack meetings quite a bit. He was saying how as time went on, there seemed to be more injuries. His guess was because people were less scared of being hit. I thought that was a pretty astute observation. As your "fear factor" goes down, you are willing to try more and more radical things. With a blade, you can't really afford to get hit even once, because of the damage a blade will do. Training like this encourages you to be more careful, and try very hard not to get hit.

There are good parts to both training methods. As time goes on I become more and more an advocate of constantly changing your sparring dynamic. This keeps the practitioners from getting too comfortable with any one give rule set, and forces them to adapt to new situations and new demands.

Thanks!