Once a week a couple of friends and I get together and do a bit of group training for fitness. We all come from different martial arts backgrounds and the workouts we do vary each week to keep things interesting. Sometimes we do muay thai, sometimes boxing, BJJ, kung fu, etc.

Last week we did a bit of boxing sparring, but it wasn't full-contact sparring or anything serious. We're all kinda beginners, so we just stuck to basic forward and backward movements with light jabs and crosses. It was mostly just a cardio workout with the basics of finding your range or trying to slip/block jabs.

I found out rather quickly that although my fundamental techniques are somewhat sound for a beginner, I absolutely suck at sparring.

This leads me to the question - when is the right time for sparring?

I've always thought that I needed to train a fair bit before jumping in the ring but I'm not sure if this is correct. I've been training for about 6 months in total now, but it hasn't been serious training for the full 6 months. I'd go hard for maybe 2 months then slack off for a bit, then get back into it, etc.

What would be the bare minimum before a person should consider hopping into the ring? Enough stamina to last ...2? 3? 4 rounds? If I could get a rough benchmark to aim for, that would help me heaps because then I'd have a target to achieve when training rather than just "today I will do XX rounds on the heavybag".

Thanks!