What we’re about
The short and sweet: friendly pickup sparring group in Central park by west 85 st. All styles of striking and grappling welcome. Everyone 18 +yr older
This is a group exclusively for martial artists, members are expected to have some experience with a fighting system.
FTC was born out of https://www.meetup.com/ManhattanMartialArts/. With over 9 successful years of being the friendly neighborhood fight club (just check out the reviews and photos), FTC was created to go back to our roots, where sparring was the focus of the group; led to lots of style vs style friendly spars, learning from one another, and competing together!
Our members come from very varied backgrounds and thus styles, with varying levels of skill. What is uniform is the respect, control, and general comradeship that has been a key element of our meet ups.
Fight-
The meat of the meetup, all styles welcome and the intensity of the spar is always agreed upon before starting. Fighting means sparring for us, the difference being that control and respect is required, egos and drama get you banned (has only happed twice in 9 years).
Train-
Fostering the idea of all styles being welcome and the group's focus on sparring, any training should focus on non-compliant drills and padwork rounds.
Compete-
A good way to really test yourself is to compete, but it can be challenging going to events alone, as well as finding good events to go to without having a coach of that style who is aware of them in the first place. Join the group, let's get a database of competitions going as well as some gold!
*PLEASE NOTE*: This is a fun and friendly training environment. However, given the intense physical nature of our activities, injuries will occur from time to time. THE ORGANIZERS OF THIS GROUP ARE IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INJURIES THAT MIGHT OCCUR.
*RULES OF ENGAGEMENT* When sparring we adhere to the common 50%, 2/3rds strength when sparring that is common practice in many dojos and camps. If you wish to engage harder, just communicate with your partner beforehand so you both are on the same page (there are many of us who have no issues with ramping up the intensity). We are here to test each other and test ourselves, learn from each other and ultimately learn about ourselves. Strength is not just how hard you can punch, but having discipline and control as well.