At Green stripe, our syllabus requires students to participate in a sparring assessment and each grading thereafter. It is important that students and parents alike understand that the sparring in this assessment is NOT competitive. Therefore students do not need to practise before coming into this assessment and points are not awarded based on their competitive sparring attributes. The purpose of this assessment is so that students can demonstrate the ability to defend themselves against a real life opponent and of course demonstrate the ability to fight back.

 

Students will be provided with all protective equipment necessary and will be partnered with a trusted member of the NGMA sparring team who will be instructed to act as a resistance to the student and not to use them as a sparring partner. They will use minimal contact and will encourage the student to defend themselves by making them block, move around and dodge attacks. The sparring team member will also allow the student to string together their own attacks and use combinations that they have been practising in classes.

 

At this stage of the syllabus we need to understand that heaven forbid one of our students were ever attacked or physically confronted, they have the ability to protect themselves. An integral reason for a parent to enroll their child into martial arts is self defence, self defence cannot be fully taught or appreciated until the student is in a situation where they must actually defend themselves. Like swimming, you cannot tell if someone can swim until they are in the water!

 

This assessment will count for 25 points towards their actual grading and they will be awarded a final score on the day out of 75 points. 50 for the grading itself and 25 for the sparring element. 

 

I hope all of this makes sense, if anyone has any questions or concerns about anything written above then please feel free to reach out to me directly.