Eleventh Hour Thoughts on Sparring

First, a retraction.  I said I was throwing in the towel.  Well, I picked it up again.  Inspired by my instructors and teammates and helped by a large number of training sessions that I didn't expect, I am once again in fighting form.  I am ready to "bring it" tomorrow, as the young people say. 

Now, a few things I've been thinking about sparring lately.  (Warning: this is long and tangential.  I've got a tournament tomorrow and need to process a few things.  But there are two more photos, so click through for those, if nothing else.)

I saw this Bruce Lee video where he described martial arts as the supreme form of self-expression.  You can watch the video here, but unless you're hardcore, you might find it a bit boring.  I sure did.  Boring and a bit baffling: either over my head or under it, I'm not really sure.  I mean, how can kicking and punching be the best way to express oneself?  That's just bizarre.  If you have feelings or ideas you want to express, grab a pen, and write them down!  It's simple.  You don't have to have decades of martial arts training and be in peak physical form to show that you're feeling sad or happy or angry.  And what is he "expressing" with that little tips-of-his-toes shuffle that he does during a match?  Is he saying "I'm sprightly!" or is it just good strategy, to stay light on your feet?  I mean, if fighting is only about expressing yourself, then the best thing to do when you're feeling slow and low is to keep your feet planted and toss a bunch of heavy, slow punches at the guy.  But then you'd lose, fast, so probably it would be best not to express what you're feeling at that point, right?

Still, there is a kernel of truth in what he says.  There is something that happens when you're fighting someone that has the effect of sort of stripping away the layers of pretense and showing you, and your opponent, who you really are.  I've felt it a few times. 

Once, when I was fighting an 18-year-old male red stripe, who is a crack fighter, I had a flash of the same feeling I had back when I was 19 and I got mugged in North Dublin.  The feeling can be summed up this way: "I'm not going to let you do that to me."  When I was being mugged, it was like "No way am I going to let you do this to me you fucking piece of shit!  I'm going to fucking kill you!"  This "feeling" would not be appropriate in the dojahng to say the very least.  Luckily, the feeling during the match was more like "Oh no, I'm not going to let you do that to me, I'm going to keep my guard up, I'm going to think fast, I'm going to move fast, I'm going to protect myself."  Yeah, self-preservation, that was the feeling, but not in a desperate, primal "oh this lion is about to eat me and I'm absolutely terrified", but more in a calm, collected "You think you can get away with what you're trying to do but I'm going to show you that you're wrong" sort of way. 

That moment was very satisfying, because what I learnt is that a) when something is trying to overwhelm me or harm me, I have the option to face it head-on, and do something about it (as opposed to run away or hide or ignore) and that b) I can and will take that option. 

But the feelings happening in the ring (for me, I mean.  I have seen a lot of other things go on with other people, but I won't go into that now.) aren't always so primal.  I fought a great match a couple of weeks ago with a 16-year old female red stripe that went into sudden death.  The feeling I had, especially during the "next point wins" portion of the match, was elation.  I just loved that we were both doing so well in the match. 

I was actually admonished by a judge to "Never tell the judges that your opponent deserves a point!  You're throwing away the match!"  The idea is that, even if you know your opponent just scored on you, you always pretend that nothing happened in the chance that none of the judges saw it.  This actually happens a lot, so part of good sparring strategy is to have no reaction to being scored on.  I absolutely suck at this.  I'm always shouting out "Good one!" when my opponent scores a particularly crafty or skilful point, especially when it comes out of the blue.  I'm working on it, but it's not easy.  And coming back to Bruce Lee's comments about expressing yourself, how does stoicism fit into this?  I mean, if I hold in my comments about my opponent's performance, surely I'm repressing, rather than expressing, my true self, right? 

Anyway, getting back to the match, I won it, which makes the feeling of elation all the better.  But then the red stripe went on to trounce me quite badly in a subsequent match, so the winning part of it was tempered somewhat. 

My biggest problem, according to those who know more than I do, is that I lack confidence.  I tend to fight in a primarily defensive style, and lack the courage to move in close enough to use my hands.  I try to keep my opponent away with my legs and if that fails, I'm done for.  The reason for this, I've realized, is that I am afraid of getting hit if I move in close.  Not too complicated a reason!  So this is what I've been working on the past two weeks.  I've been trying to convince myself that I can move in close, no matter who my opponent is, and I can score (usually on their head).  This is challenging when almost everyone I fight outranks me by a lot, and most of them have won many medals for sparring, and some of them  are twice my size, or at least it feels that way.  But then, if I actually do succeed, those factors just make the victory all the more sweet. 

Example: fighting a 40-something male black stripe (will be getting his black belt early in 2008) who probably weighs about 220 pounds.  The odds are not good, but I made a conscious effort to reject the facts.  The facts are he's much bigger and more experienced than me.  I told myself that surprise and speed were on my side.  I told myself that even if I couldn't reach the top of his head, I would score a hammer fist to the top of the head by distracting him, then jumping in and up.  It worked!  He was laughing because he was surprised that I was scoring on him with my hands.  I'd never done that before.  I felt great.  I felt like fighting in this way was my way of expressing joy. 

I felt this again a couple of nights ago when I was fighting a 13-year-old transitional black belt (will be getting her black belt in June) who has fistfuls of gold medals in sparring.  She is great fun to fight, but nearly impossible to score on using hands.  She is an expert at keeping opponents away with her legs and she can move fast.  If you do manage to get in close, she will either disappear and reappear behind you like some sort of magical sparring fairy, or she will bob and weave and not let you touch her no matter how many punches you throw.  Of course, when I was fighting her, all I was doing was trying to get her head.  I thought "If I can get just one point to her head, with my hands, then I have gotten much better at sparring and my confidence issues are improving."   

I must have tried at least a dozen times in our two-minute match, and each time she avoided me.  But then, with 10 seconds to go, I finally caught her off-guard, just for a split second, and landed a sweet hammer fist right on that 13-year-old frontal lobe.  I shouted out loud (with joy) and did a little happy dance while my opponent just smiled and shook her head.  I am an old weirdo to the kids in my club.  But I'm fun to spar, I think, if only because of my verbosity (which is probably just annoying to the adults). 

Anyway, joy.  That's the thing that I'm most expressing when I'm fighting.  Of course, when a fight gets messy, or I'm just completely overwhelmed by an opponent, or when I am fighting a little kid that thinks he's a big bruiser, then the joy dissipates, and the whole process becomes more mundane, more frustrating, less artful. 

What will tomorrow bring? I'm registered in three divisions: patterns (I'm actually excited about this as well, even though I have less to say about it), point-stop sparring (which I've done before) and continuous sparring (which is pretty scary and new).  If the conditions are right, I hope to have a great day expressing myself in all sorts of ways.  Barring that, I just hope to come home in one piece, because I've got a ticket to the opera tomorrow night.  Oh, and no, I didn't lose four pounds.  I just lost one.  But I could conceivably lose three pounds of water weight tomorrow just sweating through my fights.  So there's hope.