Karate-ka, how do you spar?

That changes with time/place/people.

New students spar very lightly, when they are allowed to spar at all.

The rules also change. A brown belt will not clobber a new student. He will clobber me if he can.

Allow grappling? I REQUIRE it. Nobody who can not grapple can fight, period.

Often I will use randori training instead of wild sparring. I have found that just wild sparring, with no idea or direction does not promote rapid advancement as well as randori, and it can make bad habits, like hiding behind your hands. It is hard to learn technique when someone is pressing you so hard as in free sparring.

To make it more confusing, almost every karate place (read any martial art place) does that a little differently, some realistic some not so much. I guess it all depends on who is teaching whom.

In other words, you have asked a very complicated question.

Well, from my 8 years of experience from the age of 7 - 15 or 16 years old. We mainly did sparring with Head gear, Hand Gear, and feet gear. No Shin Guards unless you were a weak person with bad shins or something. Grappling was not allowed. In tournaments sparring is based on point system in which you strike the person before they strike you and you get a point. BUT in the dojo..we practiced sparring non-stop NO point system.

We would switch out with different partners every 10 or so minutes of sparring. A couple times we sparred without no gear but that disappeared when more kids joined and older people and then I left because I need to hit people and feel the pain. I suggest if you want some great sparring then go try "Kyokushin." I've been meaning to give them a try myself. ^^

Although I'm not a Karateka, I may be the only one up this early. lol.

Tai Chi has it's own sparring. The guy in this video is no Funakoshi, so no insult to Karate guys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vbtje7-hQk

And this is more like a wrestling match, but I guess you could consider it grappling/sparring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIc5NIfrnJs The Tai Chi guy is in the pants.

Sparring in Tai Chi is obviously a training tool. It is a little different than the external arts, but it has the same idea. Enjoy.

In Kyokushin we go full contact without hand strikes to the head, frontal strikes to knees, groin strikes, and throat. Other than that I think everything else is permitted. Also without protective equipment besides a cup and mouth guard.

Sometimes we put the gloves on and we go face and elbow strikes as well. We occasionally do some grappling but it really doesn't happen too often.

thats a tough one.

it depends who im sparing with, most of the time we use gloves, almost anything is allowed. some are full contact, some are semi others light. we jsut try not to bust each other up to much since we have to go to work the next day. some times we use weapons of have weapon sparring. sometimes its multiple people vs one or a complete group free for all no sides everyone against everyone.

wasn't karate exactly. but we just put on boxing gloves (no mma gloves at the time) and fought including clinching, if it went to the ground we stood back up for lack of room. the general rule was the senior students would go as hard as their opponent. if you went easy they would also.

ive done light contact no gloves in a taekwondo class i visited once.