http://www.myboxingcoach.com - In preparing to write this article, I found a wonderful definition of ‘sparring’ in relation to boxing training. This definition is from the Oxford English Dictionary: verb (spars, sparring, sparred) “Make the motions of boxing without landing heavy blows, as a form of training.” The thing that I really like about this definition is the bit that states “…without landing heavy blows“. You see, as a coach I am a big believer in constructive sparring rather than destructive sparring. For me, allowing spars to descend into brutal slugfests is counter-productive and dangerous. But more on that in a moment. The boxers that I work with spar in some form pretty much every night they are in the gym. Sparring is the ultimate way of preparing for a contest, enabling the development of skills, speed, stamina and tactical awareness. It’s a fantastic way of taking the theory and applying it in the real world. Soldiers go on training missions boxers undertake sparring. In this article I want to do two things. Firstly I want to describe the different types of sparring and I also want to describe some of the methods that I apply when managing sparring activities. In my view, there are 3 types of sparring that we can undertake: Technical sparring Conditioned sparring Open Sparring