During July and August, I'm officially taking a break. Hence, my Dojo is closed. Still, I feel a certain responsibility for my students and their training, so once to twice a week we're taking advantage of the weather and do an outdoor session. Yesterday, we warmed up with some shadow-sparring. Now I feel that shadow-sparring is a great tool to sharpen an athletes technical skills and work on his cardio at the same time. Unfortunately, shadow sparring doesn't come naturally for most students and many instructors are a little uninspired when it comes to implementing specific concepts within a shadow-sparring session. Therefore, I'd like to present some ideas on how to incorporate shadow-sparring as a coaching tool for martial arts training. Personally, I like to start out my shadow-sparring sessions with a round or two where I do nothing but stepping. I do incporporate some bobbing, weaving, blocking, etc., but no striking whatsoever. This helps me work up to an operatin...