Topic: Full Contact Martial Arts
I am a big believer in the importance of sparring. Even if you study a traditional martial art and have no intention of fighting in competitions it's the only way you can get any sense of what its like to use the techniques your learning in a real situation.
And I'm also a great believer in being creative with your training sessions and adding in plenty of variety. Its all too easy to think of sparring as just being a single exercise, done the same way each time, in which two people square off against each other and have a semi-contact fight according to the rules of their particuar school. But there is much more that you can do than this, both to make it more interesting and to gain real added benefits.
One common exercise in MMA classes is to have one person who is not allowed to strike, but just has to try to take his opponent down to the ground, whilst the other fighter is only supposed to strike and to try to stay on their feet, without trying for any takedowns or grappling themselves. Its a really fun exercise that also allows you to focus on a specific area of your game.
Other possibilities include having one person using punches only, while the other practices dodging and blocking, or having one person just kicking while the other person tries to catch their leg and / or get a takedown. You don't even need to stick with one on one - one of my favourite games is to have two people who are banned from striking trying to get a takedown on one person who has no limitations put on what they can do. Its a great way to improve your ability to stay on your feet no matter what (very useful for a striker going up against a grappler). These are just a couple of my ideas, i'm sure there are many more that you could come up with to suit your particular style / school.
