Tip Tap Sparring?!

[TheMightyMcClaw]

Yeah, at my old gym, we'd usually warm-up with a ten-minute "Ten percent" round, much like this. I found it to be a useful environment for getting the feel of new combinations, tactics, etc. before implementing them in harder sparring.

[EternalSpring]

I do something similar (or perhaps exactly the same, who knows) to this called "tool sparring." Like others mentioned, it definitely is very useful as a warm up for sparring. I also find that, for those who deal with this type of issue, it's a really good way to lead to harder or more intense sparring with a person who's not as comfortable with sparring.

I think it's especially useful for people from backgrounds that dont include much sparring because it gives them a starting point from which they can spar lightly and gradually increase intensity. In addition to that, at least for me, tool sparring gave me a chance to try and work on things that I wanted to experiment with based on result from more intense sparring, except I didn't have to worry about getting hit as hard.

Of course, as some mentioned, there's the flipside because I feel that a lot of things trained in tool sparring have to eventually be incorporated into something more intense to make sure it still works at higher intensity. Just my take on things.

[tintin]

We also do something similar to this in our gym. not every session, but frequent enough for it to be effective.

We generally do this as an alternative to shadow boxing as our warm up for 3-5 3 minute rounds. It does help, or at least I think it does, with practicing new techniques to get ready for the sparring towards the end of the session (if you are up for it that is, which if you're not, then, meh!).