In this series of articles we are discussing how to make your sparring relevant to real situations. As we've discussed in previous articles, the sparring in many dojos has little in common with real situations. Karateka train for a variety of reasons, so it is to be expected that they will spar in a variety of ways in order to address a variety of goals. If being able to protect yourself is one of your reasons for training, then your sparring needs to specifically structured so that it has relevance to the street.