so does firas make his fighters go hard in sparring or not?
he does, but only preparing for the fight.
what's the best way to prepare? I have a full contact karate background and i focus alot on strength and conditioning honestly. Sparring is usually ligh for me.
in my opinion, it is important to learn the theories of fighting (leverage, timing). For example, how to move your body to generate the most power from a cross, or a leg kick. Then drill the movement so you can have good technique in terms of generating and landing. Then light sparring and drilling in order to figure out the timing of things, or rather strategy. For example, "if i threw this punch, i would be open for this one, and he would counter it with this punch, hence i do this to make up for it". Only once strategy is down, sparring would sharpen up the previous mentioned tools and give you time to adapt to the intensity of actual fight. How experienced thai's train in muay thai is that they literally flow, basically you throw a punch, and the other guy will throw something that counters you like i previously mentioned and then you just keep going, but both guy throwing at like 20% or so. This only works if both people are knowledgeable and can flow, its a great way to sharpen up timing and overall fight strategy.
ehat can mma fighters do though? I mean their body has to get used to taking shots? Go below the throat shots only for sparring? Only a ****** would try to condition their heads lol. I have seen pro fighters sparring and they go hard
like seriously hard. They kill themselves in there. It is ridiculous. Wrestlers have it much easier than strikers.
might also condition the chin. They bite down a rope that has weight plates tied down on the other end. The theory is that if you have more muscle on your jaw then you will less likely to be concussed, not sure about the science behind it.
You can find videos of albert kraus (dutch kickboxer) doing this i believe, among many other old school k-1 fighters
but other than that, its about being well rounded in your transitions from striking to grappling
bjj i am not too sure about but you probably get ******s that want to rip your arm off in training but not too many.
really depends on culture of gym. Traditional bjj gym usually weed out knuckleheads earlier on as the higher belts put on smashings which make those people questions their lives. However in mma gyms, its usually encouraged but i would still say more experienced fighters will understand the importance of keeping their training partners. So i would really chalk "wanting to rip something" up to newer people in general, and dicks of course.
i would be concerned for strikers that spar hard in training. I wonder what they could possibly do to get prepared without hurting themselves too much in the process.
light sparring to sharpen skills. Occasional hard sparring to get used to intensity. I believe robbie lawler does not even spar.