Preparing Students for a Tournament

marie curie · KF Sempai

My school has its first real batch of students going to a tournament. We are sparring in class, and doing some sparring drills to concentrate and hone skills (only use legs, defender vs attacker).

Any suggestions on things to do to prepare them further?

**Edit**
I should note that they are all college age and pretty much all boys
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bushido_man96 · KF Sensei

You might teach them a little bit about positioning in the ring so that they can make their points seen by the refs. This will ensure that as many refs as possible will see them scoring points.

Teach them to work the ring as well. Try to corner an opponent, or even work them out of the ring, and to stay on them until the judges call break.

It is also good to have some bread-and-butter moves, the moves that each has that are their "speciality." They don't have to be fancy, but just something that they can fall back on. Once they have that move, if they have one, then teach them to build strategies off of them, too.
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DWx · KF Sensei

Try making one pair at a time spar in front of the rest of the class. Unless you've sparred before in front of a crowd it can be unsettling and ruin your game. Also it prepares them to block out outside noise that you might get from people cheering and stuff. If you also have those not sparring trying to score/decide who wins, then they can all see what the judges themselves will be looking for as well as getting fully clued into the rules.

To go with Bushido_man's advice about using the ring fully, set up senarios for them, have them start with one sparrer backed into a corner and get them to work themselves out of it. Or maybe have them spar with one person driving forward all the time and the other has to counter but move off the centre line and around instead.

Best of luck to them

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NewEnglands_KyoSa · Pre-Black Belt

when we did this for my students(it was their first tournament too, and some of them were BBs!) i set it up just like a tournament with judging, points, rules, and timing. i set it up just like that, and i time came closer to the tournament, i made them do it in front of a WHOLE class to simulate the crowd and overall hysteria of a real tournament.
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Kieran-Lilith · Brown Belt

If there's kata at this tournament, have them practice the format for tournament kata: bowing into the ring, bowing the the judges, announcing name-style-kata I would like to perform is..., bowing, adjusting distance for kata that move a lot, etc....

We also find that it helps people a lot when they practice judging (both kata and sparring), so they know what the judges are looking for instead of trying to guess.
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He who gains a victory over other men is strong; but he who gains a victory over himself is all powerful Lao-tsu

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