Fightercitis

I have seen this happen in the last few years, and I have seen this happen decades ago:

1. A martial arts gym is teaching martial arts, with the vast majority of students doing contact free sparring.
2. Some of the students get good enough to participate in combat sports.
3. The instructor starts putting focus on these good students, knowing that the reputation of the school is on the line.
4. The pressure comes off the other students to spar, because it is something that those advanced students do.
5. Next thing you know, class by class, sparring gets so deprioritized in favor of conditioning, drills, or some other "critical" type of training, that sparring disappears in the regular "classes" of the school.
6. New students think that a certain level of fitness is first achieved before sparring, leaving no one to spar with for the not-official-fighters. 
7. The classes become first and foremost conditioning classes with little or no sparring, while the relatively few fighters at the gym are the only ones sparring.

I call this disease "fighercitis." It's sad. It destroys schools. It destroys entire great martial arts systems. I know of no cure. All I can do is warn to never allow non-sparring classes into your gym or school, because it will destroy you as a resource for average students to learn martial arts skills, and perpetuate backwards, destructive ideas about martial arts. You will burn in hell for teaching that Tae Bo bulls***: