Sifu Freddie Lee Safe Sparring Kung Fu Demo
http://www.FreddiesModernKungFu.com
Email: FreddiesModernKungFu@live.com
Blog: http://freddiesmodernkungfu.blogspot.com
In this video I spar Oli and then right after I spar Hassan. This video I make more contact than usual, out of all sparring videos, this video would probably be the one where I made the most contact. Normally I take time to get to know my students and develop a relationship with them before making this much contact, as I don’t want them to take it personal or get angry or upset.
But during this phase of the school, I wanted to experiment. I was very disappointed that I spent over 2 years training certain students to get to a level of competency in sparring and then they would just disappear, I felt it was just such a waste of time. With this two new students I wanted to go harder right away to see how they would handle it and respond.
I learned that going too hard too fast is a fast recipe of getting students to quit. So I just learned to accept that advanced sparring demo’s is something that is unlikely going to happen anytime soon.
But as far as Hassan is concerned, he had surprised me very much. Strength wise, he is very weak, he can barely bench press 65 lbs. But he is a soccer player as well. His legs are pretty strong and he has good endurance. He does not weigh much at all. Maybe 135 lbs. But he has some of the hardest bones I have ever encountered. He has a very strong will to fight, he doesn’t back down at all. I hit him very hard on many occasions but yet he would still keep coming at me like nothing happened. I have sparred with people much bigger and stronger than him and I have hit them all not nearly as hard and that would already be enough for them to stop the sparring session.
He is very uncoordinated but he has some very hard kicks and punches even though he lacks coordination and strength. His movements are very unorthodox, spontaneous, and unpredictable. It was very dangerous sparring him because I felt a great lack of control, I pretty much assumed that if I allowed myself to get hit by him one time, I would likely lose a tooth, because I didn’t trust his ability to control his delivery of techniques. It pretty much felt like a real fight, except even more dangerous because even though he was going hard at me with relatively no control, it was still up to me to control my techniques so that I did not seriously injure him, whereas in a real fight, I would be allowed to just hit him as hard as I wanted, bare fist and everything to just end the fight. It’s like gun fighting someone who has real ammunition while you’re stuck using paintballs to fend him off you. Or someone coming at you with real nunchucks while you’re stuck using foam nunchucks to fend him off.
Hassan taught me never to underestimate anybody’s ability to fight even if they are weak in strength. He might not be able to bench press a lot of weight or do a lot of pull ups and heavy squats, but he certainly could take a hit, he has very strong punches and kicks, and his bones are hard like rocks. Another thing is, he was a very nice guy, he didn’t even get angry when sparring, he was just determined and intense when he sparred, like it’s the real thing. It’s a shame he disappeared, I still don’t really know why, but I assumed that maybe I went too hard on him. After this experimentation with harder contact sparring with 3 different students and seeing their reactions, I have stopped sparring with hard contact all together and have re-focused my combative training to the wooden dummy. It’s just not worth all the risks and the sacrifice of losing business.
