John Danaher recently shared insight into one of the most difficult judgment calls athletes must make during live sparring…
Knowing when to fully commit to a technique and when it’s better to abandon it and move on.
In a recent Instagram post, Danaher described this decision as one of the most subtle ones:
One of the hardest things to figure out when sparring is when to commit to the completion of a move and when to abandon it and move on.
The dilemma, according to Danaher, lies in balancing persistence with efficiency:
You don’t want to quit too early when there is real potential for a breakthrough.
Nor do you want to persist pushing hard down a dead end street and waste energy and end up with nothing to show for it but exhaustion.
Danaher was candid in admitting that no simple formula exists:
I wish I could give you a reliable formula for how to make this decision well every time.
But I’d be a liar if I said I knew of one.
Instead, he emphasized that the correct decision often depends on a wide range of situational factors that change from moment to moment within a match:
Are you ahead in the match? Are you behind and need to score? How are your energy levels? What about your opponent?
Is it early in the match or late?
Because these conditions constantly shift during sparring, Danaher believes the ability to make good decisions in those moments cannot be taught through theory alone:
This is the kind of skill you only get from sparring…
There is no drill or item of knowledge that will help you here.
You have to develop a sense of reading yourself, your opponent and the context you’re operating in.
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