Sparring First

Sparring is the most important aspect of any martial art. Every martial arts training session should include a significant amount of sparring. When this does not happen, it's time to start cutting out some of that other stuff that is cutting into sparring time. What should be cut out to make sparring time: calisthenics, drills, warm ups, weight lifting, cardio, forms, kata? That depends on what works for your style, you have to prioritize, and sparring must have top priority.

But this is really about katas and forms isn't it, don't you have Bruce Lee style chip on your shoulder about forms? Not at all, unless kata/forms attempt to substitute for sparring. If I had to draw the line somewhere, I would say that students should be sparring before they finish learning their first kata or form, because they can't truly understand the moves in the form without sparring. If you are getting into a second kata or form and still no sparring, then you are dangerously close to practicing performance arts instead of martial arts.

And I am a critic of Bruce Lee, as a former Choy Lay Fut practitioner I have no end of bad things to say about that disgruntled Wing Chun student... but the value of Bruce Lee's ideas can only be manifested in the same way other martial arts ideas can be manifested, and that is through sparring:

But the really big problem I have had with Bruce Lee is his advocating of leading in with his strong side, and doing lots of back fists like in kumite point fighting... I feel like he was influenced by that element in his day, and more importantly his "Art of Jeet Kune Do" was used to justify that nonsense almost destroying the martial arts scene in the USA.

BUT Bruce Lee didn't advocate kumite point fighting, he advocated serious sparring, MMA to be specific. To be real sparring (and not fencing) sparring must be:

1. Free sparring - not stop and go, not talking about good hits, no judges calling points, no interruptions except for safety reasons, no preset attacks, no preset defenses.
2. Contact - you must be doing real attacks, and those attacks must make contact. I am not saying it should be 100% force or 100% speed, but it does have to be real.
3. Safe - the purpose of sparring is to train, so that if you accidentally injure your opponent so they can't spar anymore, you have impaired your own training. In sparring you need to keep your opponent safe, opposite of a fight.

Real sparring is then "safe contact sparring." But your martial arts moves are too deadly to spar with? One of the best martial arts when it comes to dedicated sparring time in every class is BJJ, and there are NO more dangerous moves than limb destruction and deadly chokes, which is exactly the attacks they focus on training in. 

But what about eye gouging? The basic Shoulin straight attack to the face is a palm strike combined with an eye rake, called a Tiger Claw. The style that incorporates this perhaps the most is Hun Gar, and they are known for their brawling and sparring. Here they are doing focused sparring with Tiger Claws:

Even the deadly Ninja can spar:

Deadly weapons? Spar:

Traditional weapon martial arts without any sparring tradition like Archery? Spar:

But what if you are doing McDojo karate fighting or no sparring at all, isn't it best for the ideologically impaired to simply never spar at all? If these two can spar, so can you:

As rare as serious Tai Chi may be, even serious Tai Chi people spar:

I once attended a BJJ club were some of the senior members went rock climbing together, and considered it relevant BJJ conditioning. They even named their club after the practice, but they didn't make people climb a rock climbing wall in BJJ class. You would have had to attend the club for a while before getting invited to go rock climbing with them. Sparring for all students came a long time before this club's signature conditioning technique. Consider that before asking students to learn two katas before doing any contact free sparring - is your club there to teach conditioning, or is it there to teach martial arts?