Can boxing also benefit from "Thai style" sparring?

[Iman Barlow]

By that I mean more or less slap fighting during a sparring session, but going nuts on the bag or pads

 

[Uchi Mata]

Yes, absolutely. You can spar a lot more if you spar hard less often. Sparring is not the place to develop power anyway, it's the place to develop timing, movement, defense, counters, finding openings, etc. You can do all those at way below full force. Especially if you're an active amateur fighter, you'll get a lot of practice with full force boxing in your matches. That's why the Thais can spar light in the gym: they fight competitively all the time, so they get a lot of full speed/power work in their fights.

 

[Jukai]

If Boxers fought as much as Thai fighters, you'd see a lot more slap style sparring.

 

[SummerStriker]

People can't spar hard all the time. I just recently watched a good sparring group dissolve in large part to some of the guys going harder and harder, and no one correcting it, saying that they enjoyed and appreciated the manly contact. You can't train if you are fucked up.

You only need to spar hard, often enough to get your ideas about the technique right and to calm your mind down. Just doing it for the fuck of it is pointless, needless suffering.

 

[Frode Falch]

probably yes. but i am not a boxer.

 

[Celestial Kid]

"It takes just 1o minutes in most Thai gyms to see that Thais spar differently from westerners. There is a myth going around out there that Thais don’t “spar hard,” and that the reason for this is because they fight so frequently. This may be the case in some gyms, but from what I’ve seen and experienced at a few different gyms and youtube videos out there of champions sparring, there is indeed hard sparring in Thailand among Thais. What’s universally “light” about Thai sparring is the attitude brought by the guys engaging in the play fight. In Muay Thai the hardness of the strike is a demonstration of domination, not of aggression, at least not as we’d recognize the concept in the west. The difference is glaring. Let’s assume that like the subjects of the study, Thais also experience the dis-equal force of an opponent sparring for neurological reasons. The way that they respond to this experience is very different. You do not show what affects you in Muay Thai, you don’t acknowledge it visibly and the escalation is absolutely not manifested with an emotional burst. Rather, the escalation is theatrical, not even necessarily with greater force, and it’s used to re-set the equality between the two sparring; to correct or calibrate the dominance scale. Once that is done (or failed) things settle immediately back down to sanook, to play. If there is a point still to be scored or neutralized it is kept in the mind, for retribution."
- Sylvie, female MT fighter

^ CK did research and he realized MT sparring light is not completely true.

 

[Sinister]

There's video of it around here already.

 

[HookRight]

yes we do it at my boxing gym all the time

 

[Soul Rebel 2]

A) IMO soft, technical sparring can never be a detriment. The real benefit of hard sparring is getting to accustomed to the violence and physicality of competition but once you've crossed that hurdle it becomes considerably less important. That said, I'm not in the modern day camp of "No hard sparring ever", ideally you'd like to get to a point where you only have to turn it up maybe once or twice per camp.

B) Are you actually Iman Barlow?

 

[Ryukyu Damashi]

When Thai's punch spar, they go pretty hard.

 

[TheFinerDetails]

When Thai's punch spar, they go pretty hard.

I also notice that they are very good at holding their Thai style stance and punches. A lot of westerners immediately switch to long, heavy front foot stances and start throwing massive looping punches that they would never throw in a fight. Just some food for thought .

 

[Sinister]

Sorry this is late, but this is similar to Thai style sparring, I have them do it with minimal equipment so that despite the lack of full contact, they still stay alert: