After seening a few throwdown vids, and through personal experience, I find that, IF you are gonna do both striking AND grappling that, you really do need to strike with hard contact.

"light" striking makes NO difference, you can hit the guy 100 ways to sunday, but he will still get in on you, which MAY not be the case IF you were stiking "hard".
This does also NOT help the guy goin in of course, he gets it in his head that he can "take tht shot" while going for a takedown, and, while that MAY be true, it should be based on going "light" during training.

Now, I don't suggest FULL contact, not eveyone is up for that, BUT some type of HARD contact, yes.
Light body shots are useless, but HARD body shots, that is a whole new thong.

It's not very realistic to throw strikes that can't hurt a sunday school girl and think that you are incorporating strikes into your grappling.

This is what protective gear is for.

Light striking only works when you have a partner who agrees to respect your strikes. But then you both need to know what would have been a a real shot or not. So, it can have its uses if you want to do some reaction type work, but it makes no sense to do it in a live sparring type of match.
A funny little story about one of my old shifus goes along with this. My shifu was in black belt class, and they were working on some sparring techniques, and he was paired up with a more advanced shifu. Well, my shifu was all excited because he was peppering the more advanced shifu with all these strikes, thinking he was badd azz. The senior shifu got annoyed, struck hard, and put my shifu down. The shifu running class walked by and said, yeah he(senior shifu) doesn't know how to spare, just fight.

Standing, I agree. On the ground, it's entirely subject to the person you're dealing with. Since positioning is the most important aspect of groundfighting, light-contact strikes can serve as excellent motivation to get your ass moving without actually busting their face in, provided the person is willing to treat the blows seriously. Some people won't. One time I was fighting this guy who attempted a leg lock on me when I stood up in his guard. I countered it and was raining down bombs on his face but he was chilling down there as though nothing were wrong. That's the sort of mentality that REQUIRES heavy contact as a sort of wake-up call.

Yeah, if you're doing both, you need to crank it up.

At the chicago throwdown, keinhaar and me were doing the full striking/grappling(well, I was striking, he was grappling). Anyway, I wasn't going crazy hard, and he goes for a shoot, while I was front kicking him. There was no power behind the kick, and he ended up plowing right through it. If I kicked a bit harder, that may not have been the case.

Originally posted by Boyd
Standing, I agree. On the ground, it's entirely subject to the person you're dealing with. Since positioning is the most important aspect of groundfighting, light-contact strikes can serve as excellent motivation to get your ass moving without actually busting their face in, provided the person is willing to treat the blows seriously. Some people won't. One time I was fighting this guy who attempted a leg lock on me when I stood up in his guard. I countered it and was raining down bombs on his face but he was chilling down there as though nothing were wrong. That's the sort of mentality that REQUIRES heavy contact as a sort of wake-up call.

Exactly.
Tapping somone is doing NO ONE a favour.

Wait a minute, wait a minute...Are you guys saying that all my years of point sparring training (and trophies!) are going to mean jack when I incorporate more grappling into the mix? I find that hard to believe... :p :)

I've finally started training again, and we've got sort of a regular sparring group together, but we have a lot of newer students that aren't used to sparring yet, so I almost feel that they're lucky that they don't have to waste any of their time learning that point sparring crap. I mean they're not going for heavy contact that early...unless they want to step it up (in a controlled manner), but the sparring is continuous, even though it's light, so they're concentrating more on not leaving their chin wide open for that overhand right when they land a strike.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with the group when we get heavier into the full MMA format (not full contact strikes, but grappling to submissions will be incorporated). The problem is that I don't even know what's going to change, because while I totally respect and feel that grappling is needed, I don't have the experience that some of the guys we're bringing in have.

I've had a friend in Jiu Jitsu (he's a brown belt at Cobra Kai Jiu Jitsu now) for years, but I never had a chance to get into it (I left all martial arts training at that time because I got married, had two kids and bought a house, so I've been out for a while). So while I've been exposed to grappling (I've tapped out a tune on the mats more than I care to admit...but it was so much fun), I don't know how well the mixing is going to go with the group I'm with.

The harder contact is something that I feel is necessary when you mix them, but then that sort of delays the initial "introduction" to mixing in grappling for the newer students that I feel should stay at a lighter level for a while (they don't want to be professional fighters, but I don't want them to think that forms and stances alone will make them a good fighter).

My biggest problem is that this new group is part of a Kung Fu school (while my Sifu doesn't study/teach Jiu Jitsu, he's super open-minded about a few of us learning, and getting this group together in his school) that I'm with, but I don't think they want to learn Jiu Jitsu, so they won't know what they're lacking until they start tapping.

Getting ploughed in the face rules. It allows you only two options:

1.) Learn.
2.) Quit.

Whirred.

Do you think light contact sparring creates more bad habits than it removes. The reason I ask is my daughter (age 24) is wanting to spar but isnt used to getting slammed around. I was thinking of intruducing her to fighting with light contact sparring (not that silly point sparring stuff) and gradually move up to what she can tolerate. I find most women arent used to getting hit and often freeze when it happens and I want her to get beyond that.

Originally posted by ronin69
Exactly.
Tapping somone is doing NO ONE a favour.

It does me a favor by keeping my head attached to my neck!

Isn't this what the karate guys figured out 300 years ago?

Originally posted by Rigante
Do you think light contact sparring creates more bad habits than it removes. The reason I ask is my daughter (age 24) is wanting to spar but isnt used to getting slammed around. I was thinking of intruducing her to fighting with light contact sparring (not that silly point sparring stuff) and gradually move up to what she can tolerate. I find most women arent used to getting hit and often freeze when it happens and I want her to get beyond that. Most people aren't used to getting hit.
I ate a scary jab recently and it had been so long since I'd done standup sparring that I was a bit taken aback. Eventually I got a guilletine but wouldn't have if the sparring rules were different.

I don't think that ronin is saying you need to try and kill people, merely they have to realize they're getting hit. What she consideres getting hit to be will change over time.

Not even in boxing is the sparring synonymous with a fight everytime.

COBRA KAI Jiujitsu?

Originally posted by hedgehogey
COBRA KAI Jiujitsu? Check grappler's quest team results. If he's talking about the same people they're pretty damn good.

Originally posted by Dochter
Check grappler's quest team results. If he's talking about the same people they're pretty damn good.

Yeah, same guys (Marc Laimon's school). And yes, their name did come from the Karate Kid's own infamous karate dojo (I'm not completely sure, but I think it was just sort of a temporary name just as a joke, but I'll have to ask them to be sure). I know Marc is a big Halo fan and wanted "Master Chief" in the name somewhere at first (as the temporary name anyway).

If you are going to fight MMA, you have to TRAIN MMA.

THE ENEMY DESERVES NOOOOOO MERCY!