Question 053: First competition

 

The basics for winning at a tournament are:

• Don’t do anything to draw warnings and get disqualified.
• Stay with basic kicks and punches. Don’t try get fancy, you are not sparring to impress, you are sparring to get points.
• Attack! Attack! Attack! You don’t score points for blocking your opponent’s attacks, so don’t worry about them. If you attack continuously, the opponent will not have an opportunity to attack you. The opponent may score a point with a technique here and there, but you will be racking up points everywhere. Depending on your conditioning, you may not be able to attack continuously, so, while resting, then you may block and counterattack.
• The head is difficult to hit so concentrate on body targets.
• Stay away from punchers and kick from long range; crowd kickers and punch from short range.
• Single attacks seldom score, so use combinations with a mixture of kicks and punches.
• Relax and stay loose; if you are tense you cannot act or react quickly but you will tire quickly.
• Put on your fighting persona, get serious, and kiai a lot. You are not there to harm the opponent but you are there to beat the opponent.

Good luck in your competition. It is always fun to pit your skills against others.