Lessons learned from sparring

So I got my first taste of some real sparring and it didn't taste so good. Don't get me wrong, it was fun and I learned from it, but what I learned wasn't all that encouraging. Keep in mind that the point of sparring isn't to win, it's to learn. However, if the point of sparring was to win, I lost horribly.
My sparring partner was Earthquake Jake. I call him that because one of his punches, I think it was a right, landed dead center on my nose causing me to see a flash of white light while my legs turned to jello as if the ground beneath my feet was moving.  Jake stands 6' 3", 204 pounds and has skills. I stand 5' 9", 165 pounds and pretty much have no skills. In hindsight it wasn't such a great idea to go that far outside of my weight class, but now when I spar someone my own size it might be a little easier when I don't feel like I have to stand on my toes to try and hit their face.

The worst thing I learned during the few rounds of sparring is that my conditioning blows. I've been doing combat fitness for well over a year, but after two minutes of sparring I was so out of gas that I couldn't defend myself anymore. That sucks! That more than sucks. It's kind of horrifying to realize how much more conditioning I need. Breathing with a mouthguard in didn't help, but even without the mouthguard I would  have still been drained. And we were only throwing punches and kicks, we weren't going to the ground.

Another thing that became clear, and Mr. Stuart has mentioned this often, is the bad habit of "I go, you go." This is when sparring during class and we seem to take turns with our partner ... my partner hits me and then it's my turn to hit him and back and forth. So when Jake would throw rapid combinations, most of which landed on me, I kind of expected him to back off, let me reset and then continue. That ain't the way it works. He would land a combo and immediately move in and keep throwing. That was tough to get used to. And to his credit, he held back, he showed restraint. He could have really hurt me anytime he wanted to but he didn't.

My lack of movement was another lesson learned. My movement isn't good at the best of times, but in the ring, I couldn't get used to the canvas surface. It's almost slippery. Add to that how fatigued I was getting and I became a sitting target.

Back to that punch that landed on my nose. I have a big nose, or as I like to think,  I have a nose with character, character that came by way of getting broken by the back of some guy's head while playing soccer years ago.  Whatever you call it, I have a nose that's just begging to get smashed. When Mr. Stuart told me I was ok to spar and gave me my headgear, the first thing he said was, "Watch your nose." True that, sir. True that. Your words were prophetic.

Start sparring. There's no substitute for it. It's the only way you'll  learn where you stand with your conditioning and your skills.