Makes Sense... But...

Sparring is a form of training common to many combat sports. Although the precise form varies, it is essentially relatively 'free-form' fighting, with enough rules, customs, or agreements to make injuries unlikely.  - Wikipedia

It's a game... and fun, but counter productive in combative training or real protection.

Now sparring is good for many things, timing, distancing, developing more confidence and exercise, but not for real self protection... our goal and not good for Kyusho.

Working with Kyusho for decades within this model has proven to us many times over that it is a counter productive training.  Yes we made it work but at the same time it taught bad habits and worse... responses.  What works in the Dojo or training hall is rendered useless, with spontaneous action those static bunkai become unworkable, the slow static targeting skills fail.  With Sparring the practitioner sees the targets Vanish!

That is why we have dropped it as a base of study or method of instruction.

Kyusho over the years was ridiculed for being a static set of unrealistic techniques and bunkai (Enhanced by Kyusho), it was and for the most part it still is.  The groups that work with this method can still teach Kyusho and yes they can develop practitioners and instructors that are very adept in this field... however it is not realistic and it may get those immersed in it hurt in a real confrontation.

We used it as the next logical step from our Martial Art background and believed we were working better... and in part we were.  But there were so many major flaws in this practice and as we found them, we dropped it from the curriculum.   As we conducted this type of training we saw time and time again, people failing in obtaining a dysfunctional level on their sparring partner, we knew we must abandon this as a practice.  We have progressed far beyond this model into a more realistic approach that is multiple times better in the deployment of Kyusho methods.

We see others now adopting this sparring approach and even though it is more challenging than the static bunkai approach*, it is severely lacking if self protection is the real goal.

As always when we find through experience a paradigm (even as historical or standard in Martial Arts as bunkai or sparring) that does not work, we change our teaching methods.  This saves people that have entrusted their self protection in our hands, time, money and most especially a false sense of ability.  That is Kyusho Internationals promise to you.

* Bunkai and sparring are both fun activities and enjoyable to work,but we do not delude ourselves into believing they are realistic approaches to self protection... further reading:

• Unleashed
• Advancing Kyusho
• Potentials
• Real Kata

-ep