1. 

It can still be practical but the problem with that idea is two fold. The element of surprise is critical then as well as that initial technique working then if you are going to have a chance of surviving a situation. Without those two factors then you are really at a huge disadvantage then if you have had little in the way of full or heavy contact type sparring in your training I think. Part of being able to take a punch is being able to still give one back afterwords and you don't learn if you can do that or develop your ability to without some type of hard contact sparring. Its a little late to discover this and maybe if you can't if that initial technique does not work or you don't have the element of surprise in your favor to begin with.

Another thing about this is many of those techniques that you learn in martial arts become harder to apply successfully against a ready and wary opponent. Your approach and execution for some of them is different when that's the case and some you might not even use at all once there is no longer that element of surprise that goes with them.

The above are reasons why awareness and avoidance are still your best and first lines of defense and should be heavily relied on by most. Their skill is also often times suspect and that along without the element of surprise in their favor and if that initial technique does not work can often leave them in a worse situation then. Once it goes down that road they better be able to make adjustments and fight and defend themselves in a longer, more protracted confrontation and the ability to do that mainly comes from contact sparring.

Contrary to what the fan boy say full contact sparring is not an indication of practical self defense. It is good for sports where combatant stand in front of another and take an certain amount of physical abuse. Each combatant signs up and agrees t the terms of the contest. But self defense is completely different for a trained martial artist. There is no agreement. The attacks are random. Often it is done with a hidden agenda such as sucker punches. Of course I;m not talking about some school yard brawl or some ego driven fight were I'm mad because you said something inappropriate about my gf or wife. That is not self defense. That is just stupid agreeing to a fight without getting paid and with no beneficial lesson to be learned from training. Full contact sparring does not prepare one for a broken bottle going towards your head. It does not prepare you for the knife attack at a bar or in the parking lot. Full contact sparring prepare you to take a lot of physical abuse. it does not teach you strategies to avoid the abuse and end the threat is a short period of time(15 seconds or less).

There is no full contact sparring in aikido, but police and military use it all over the world and it is very effective. Judo contrary to popular belief is not full contact nor was it ever meant for to use against fully resistant opponents. That goes against the principles of judo that were created by its founder Dr. Jigoro Kano. There is no full contact sparring in eskrima. They had duels with no protection, but no full contact sparring.

Full contact sparring is overrated. It satisfies the ego more than it teaches anything related to self defense. It resembles more untrained fighters than it does well trained martial artist.

There is a difference between sparring and randori. Most people today don;t realize this.

You will never hear me say or read me saying the bjj is the greatest for anything. I respect it like I respect any other art. But just like I'l defend traditional martial arts I will defend bjj when someone says something incorrect about it like someone said on this question. Bjj can be used effectively in self defense on the street and it has been. It is not ideal against multiple attacker, but even against multiple attacker even though most school do not teach or know how to teach defense against it it would be better to know bjj than not to know anything. It would give you a better chance of survival. If BJJ does work neither does judo or jujutsu. They all come from the same cloth. Strategies may differ, but the techniques are the same.

The question is actually much more simple; which fighter would you put your money on, the one who practices under actual speed or the one who doesn't?

Martial artist bring up their Deadly/maiming attacks because they know they wouldn't be able to take as many actual hits, thus need to end it asap. Which again, if you dont practice these moves since they are dangerous, how the hell do you even have the same level of confidence as someone who does?

What it really boils down to, is people think punching is just throwing a punch. They think 1 dimensionally, muscle pushing at face. When it could be, just your arm punching, it could be your whole body punching, it could be your body Lunging into a punch, and even then there is an entire other side of it that is still over looked; the movement of your enemy. Are they stationary, or are they moving directly towards the punch im throwing? Was it luck, or did I throw a fake punch, or hell not even punched but flexed/twitched as to give the impression im gonna punch and..... nope punching right into the dodge you did for the punch you thought was being thrown.

They talk about these deadly moves, but if you don't practice them fully, then they aren't even as close to being integrated into your instinct, thus they resort to what is basic boxing.

One thing I am really starting to notice is that a lot more of the martial arts that focus more on form and less on contact, tend to be primarily about countering. Which is great in all.... but HOW THE **** DO YOU FIGHT SOMEONE YOU HATE IF ALL YOU DO IS COUNTER? Do you talk **** and hope they give you something to counter? In the end you have to pretty much do what some of the greatest boxer do; feint movements/attacks. Which back to the main point of full contact, you need it if your going to know what works with feints, if you never get full contact for extended periods of time, you'll never get to test your techniques quite as well.

Yes, a martial art can be practical and effective without full contact sparring. Those that say otherwise have little knowledge of martial arts.

All martial arts should have contact sparring. That is necessary. But martial arts should not fully rely on full contact sparring. You need to learn other techniques that could actually be applied to a self defense situation. Then, when you spar, you apply the techniques, and see what works best for you.

You cannot only rely on the raw, brute strength that full contact sparring teaches you. You need to learn actual techniques, both individual techniques and from kata. This is what you need to actually apply so you can utilize proper techniques on the street.

Full contact sparring cannot be fully relied on. Sparring is necessary, but not everyday and it does not need to be full contact. You cannot rely on the raw, brute strength that full contact based arts teaches you. That's the same thing the attacker on the street will be using - brute strength. You need to learn other, much more important things, like skill, technique, control, precision, awareness, etc.

I’m going to translate full contact to full resistance, because full contact tends to refer to striking styles. I think full resistance is absolute must in a training to be an effective fighter. Even if it’s one a week, or one a month even, a full resistance sparring puts a reality check on all the techniques and application you train for.

But full resistance sparring shouldn’t be end all be all. I had a month of MMA training where we warmed up and pretty much just sparred. It leads to injuries and I started gaining bad habits because I didn’t have a separate training to correct what I was doing wrong or perfect what I was doing well.

In short, the full resistance sparring is a great way to keep the training in check, but it should be also paired up with a good amount of other drills and training to correct and perfect.

Depends on your level as a fighter.

If you're already competent at fighting you can take classes at a school that has no contact sparring and still find benefit, after all, there's usually nothing wrong with the techniques of most McDojos (no touch knockouts excluded) an experienced fighter can visualize a fight to some degree.

For a novice full-contact sparring is an absolute must have. Someone who has never been in a fight has absolutely no hope of imagining what it's like so they need to get the closest simulation they can possibly manage, AKA full-contact sparring. That is where you put your knowledge to the test and forge a skill from it.

Edit.

You got me there, you can't be throwing a novice to the proverbial sharks but to become something other than a novice they are going to have to do it. The better schools I've trained at have the novices sparring with an advanced student who teaches them about sparring and working them up to a level where they're prepared to be thrown to the sharks.

I will disagree with you on the BJJ part though. Brazilian Jiujitsu works fine on the street in the same way that Japanese Jujitsu worked fine in a battle it just requires a mentality shift. The goal simply changes from tap to snap. If you get a joint lock or bone lever on somebody don't worry about torturing the person to make them give up, break it and move on.

Well Odee is not totally right. You can Not take a person on there fist day and throw them into full contact they will be destroyed n some case or cause serious injury to others with there wild techniques. They need to build up into it, and semi contact can be just as beneficial as full contact.

BJJ how ever is the worst thing for the street, only a complete fool would use it. I was mugged and jumped several times and there was always more then one of them. I use a combination of boxing and aikido which is the best you can use. One of my friends tried that bjj sh**, he was in a coma for over a week because of it.

What ever you do DON"T do BJJ its useless in self defense. Don't listen to the fades people try to sell you on.

Depends on what you mean by "full contact sparring".

If by that you mean two people face off, a ref says begin, you spar a few minutes (full contact), then stop, rest a few minutes, then repeat a few more times, then ref says stop, and then everyone goes back to corners and a winner is declared. Then no, that is not necessary. It may be fun, but it's not necessary.

But if you mean that someone attacks you with full committment, and in all earnest and sincerity, and includes "safe lethality", then I'd say this is absolutely required.

Most people's definition of sparring seems to be in context of a match to see who wins. Self-defense is not about who wins, it's all about survival. And it's about choosing the appropriate technique - if any - that safely gets you out of immediate trouble and out of long-term legal trouble.

When you are sport sparring, you have a limited set of techniques. Two - and only two - people train for fighting against a known opponent using agreed-upon rules in an agreed upon amount of time. They willingly engage each other.

When you are sparring for self-defense, anything goes as far as attacking. The element of unpredictable strikes and defenses must always be foremost on one's mind - whether the training partners are attacking or defending. There is always a designated person who wants to stop the encounter, and there is always someone who is designated as the person who - at all costs - attempts to prolong the encounter. They do not agree to stop by a referee - only when one capitulates that the other has successfully neutralized the other.

Notice I didn't indicate that the defender should always win. Either could be the one to prevail against the other; we just aim for the defender prevailing. Notice I also mentioned that "anything goes as far as attacking". That means the defender must not choose a lethal technique to defend against a simple punch to the stomach, although that goes out the window if the attacker decides to implement a choke.

So depending on your context, full-contact is not necessary when referring to ring-style sparring. But it is absolutely required if in context of street fighting.

I saw an interesting documentary in relation with that a while ago....An ex Kyokushin champion goes to Okinawa to see, speak and practice Okinawan Karate. One of the schools that he visited (the last) had even no sparring at all. Here it is......The documentary is interesting and many good martial artists are to be seen and speak, including 2 ex Kyokushin champions (the host and another one) and several good Okinawan Karate teachers and practitioners...