How often do you guys skip sparring?

[biscuitsbrah]

I have been training for about 2 and 1/2 years now and I have two amateur kickboxing fights under my belt. The most time I have ever skipped sparring during this period was for about 2-3 weeks.

When do you amateur fighters on the come up ever give your brain a rest? It feels like the field is so competitive that skipping sparring for a prolonged period of time is wasting time to improve, especially if you are a newer fighter like me. I feel like the rate of diminishing returns in sparring still hasn't got to the level in which I am comfortable taking a week off sparring, because every time I can feel myself slowly closing the gap between some of the better training partners.

Btw I only spar once a week, first half is harder boxing sparring, followed by kickboxing.
I'm making this thread because last week I got hit in the back of the head a lot and I had a headache for the rest of the night. This rarely happens to me even if we spar hard because me and my training partners are so light. (I weigh 140)

We all want to get better as fast as possible but it's so hard to balance brain health and the most important part of your training. Anyone have any special advice or protocols?

 

[SummerStriker]

I'm not sure what's right for you when it comes to brain health.

If you have someone you can spar with that is good at pulling his punches and staying off your head, you can go with him. You can also do rounds of body shots only.

I think fear of pain is a major contributor to ring rust, on top of the urge to try moves you were working on the bag without context.

I've done a lot of rounds of body shots / leg kicks only with guys when they had something wrong with their eye or nose or whatever. It's not my favorite, but I think it keeps the ring rust away.

 

[Frode Falch]

I spar three times a week. Mostly light or semi hard

 

[j123]

I spar once a week. sometimes biweekly if something comes up. To be fair, most of the drilling I do is like light sparring. eg. Partner works on throwing offense, and I'll try to get as many takedowns as I can or interrupt with combos. We do rounds, etc.

Sparring is at around 30-50% power. Speed and intensity is still up there.

If you need a break, just take it, the point is to improve, not regress.

 

[Paradigm]

Not currently training at the moment but I liked to spar after every session if I could. Of course, I usually spar light to medium, unlike a lot of knuckleheads here in the US.

You can spar every day if you just go light to the head and light/medium to the body.

 

[Sinister]

My guys train in cycles, typically. Conditioning weeks, drill weeks, then sparring weeks. The ones I keep active don't spar willy-nilly, it's either for fight prep, or if they're pretty sharp, they'll help others out if it's not conditioning weeks. But they also have to keep me very informed of any potential problems, aches and pains, headaches, fuzziness, etc. And if I see any consistent issues that put them in danger, I take them out of sparring rotations until I address that. Like I have two fighters who have a habit of floating their chins, so when they get hit their head moves a lot. That's the most key way concussions happen, so I held them off of sparring until I could address that. When they returned to it, they did much better with less effects.