Chapter 26: New Techniques

In a self-defense situation, you are legally permitted to protect yourself with all the reasonable force necessary to stop the attack. Using more force than is necessary may get you charged with assault or even manslaughter. Point sparring requires precise control, which is also required when defending yourself. The law assumes black belts have control of their power because of their training, so, if too much force is used by a black belt, it is assumed the he or she meant to use that amount of force. This means a black belt may be charged with assault or a greater charge where an ordinary person may not be charged at all under the same circumstances. Point sparring fighters usually have more control than Olympic style continuous fighters due do their training methods. To learn to maintain stability when making full-contact, point sparring fighters need to practice full-contact sparring periodically. 

Continuous sparring was developed to overcome the limitations of point sparring, but it only succeeded in developing another way of sparring, with its own limitations. Point sparring stops the action for a scoring point, which hampers counter attackers, such as myself, but hand techniques are encouraged. Olympic style continuous sparring would be seem to be advantageous to counter attackers, but it has evolved into a kicking contest where hand techniques are not encouraged. Some say sport sparring is better, as evidenced by its winning so many matches in international competition, but this is not a valid argument. It may also be said that sport sparring wins in international competition because international sparring rules were designed to encourage the use of sport sparring techniques.