approach to sparring in Zen Do Kai

Nick, I have just read your post in the "realism in TMA" thread.
You mention that you guys did no heavy sparring until brown belt.

I would estimate that this would be a period of around 3 years until heavy sparring would be on the agenda.

Could you elaborate how the sparring was organised until brown belt?

On a more general note: would this mean that until brown belt the practitioners were at a disadvantage to people who started had heavy contact earlier in their training, for example boxing?

Boris,

I should have clarified...when I say heavy sparring I was referring to full contact and the street fight nights.

Full contact - with the Joon Rhee protective gear - was limited to brown belts and above. We also used to have a combat night - usually Friday - when Noel would turn up and break down forms and we'd practice against tackles and chairs and so on. The festivities would always end with us putting on boxing gloves, a cup, training shoes and kicking the crap out of each other (again, limited to brown belts and up)

Other than that everyone sparred. There was a lot less contact with the lower ranks which is how they got eased into the process. The theory was to pull your shots about six inches away while white belt blue belt level. Touch the gi contact was the rule of thumb at green belt. A couple of inches penetration to the body was accepted at brown belt and touch contact to the face and black belt was supposed to be a degree harder than that (but that depended very much on who you were up against and whether or not you had a black gi, or they did)

Nick

That sounds like The Right Way To Do It - in fact it seems obvious. Ease in gently but the top end is as hardcore as you want it. With the discllaimed that it depends on who you are and what you're willing to take.

Eminently sensible....

Yep, Bob's black gi concept was one of the best I've ever seen. All his bouncers and hard core guys were awarded "black karate suits"...you could hit these guys in the head with a brick they wouldn't show the pain, and they'd never take a backward step in sparring.

When he (Bob) openned up to the public, they separated the bouncers from the rest by use of the black gi. The theory was if you were wearing black and came up on someone in white you didn't pound (too much) crap out of them as they were there for a different reason than you. Two black gis however would know it was ok to let fly.

Nick

Nick,

You mentioned the difference between black & white gi wearers and the different approach when sparring them. I think you also touched on a story invloving a white belt who wore a blach gi.

How were black gi's actually awarded?

Cheers.

Black gis were awarded most typically at gradings. Someone would be watched for a while and discussed amongst the higher ranks as being somone of note. When he fronted for a grading some of the hard core higher ranks would be tasked with stepping up the pace and watching his reaction.

It was usually awarded only after 4th kyu level, (upper level green belt). Some people made it all the way to black belt without being awarded one but were allowed to wear one after black belt (If you made it through that test you were pretty hard core anyway)

Mick Cerutto was the only person awarded one at white belt. When everyone heard about it in Melbourne they thought Bob had lost the plot...until the day Cerutto turned up and filled the doorway of the dojo. He was already a ranked heavyweight boxer 5-0-0 at this point and built like a brick shitehouse so everyone then realized why Bob had done what he did.

Nick