This is a plea for help/guidance. And I hate to post and run, but I will be offline for several days doing my Air Force Reserve thing, so please forgive me if I don't get right back on to thank people for their scholarly input...
I have several sparring concerns of a personal nature. I seem to have developed a great aptitude for what I call "Instructor" sparring. By this I mean that I try so hard to match my students capabilities and speed that I find myself having a hard time releasing into higher levels of sparring.
I certainly don't mean to imply that I am a good fighter. In fact, I am solidly in the mediocre class in this aspect of my karate. But I think I aggravate my mediocrity by spending so much time sparring in this instructor mentality.
My previous sparring problem (which I conquered about 10 years ago) was to fight in what I call the "red haze." This was too much like turning to the dark side, and I have achieved much more of a void approach to sparring, which I believe better represents good karate training. So now I have new problems...
Due to the fairly secluded places I seem to end up, I keep opening up dojos. Then I spend a couple years developing sparring partners. And by the time they are ready to rock-n-roll, I can't seem to shake the training mode I tend to fall into.
So with all the expertise out there, what do some of you accomplished warriors do to keep some kind of edge on your sparring skills? I could use lots of sparring help, but we'll start with this subset first.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts, and my apologies for the delay I will have in learning from/responding to your accumulated wisdom and lore.
Chris Long