Private Lesson Note: On "Having Conversations"
The difference between "talking" and "arguing" in training.
I can tell you one thing about my life… I refuse to argue with people. I won’t do it.
Arguing is low, in my opinion, and further, it’s more often than not a substantial waste of time.
If you consider an argument, it’s essentially two people butting heads until one person concedes (or doesn’t) and in the end, nothing gets fixed, nothing gets learned and both parties lose.
This is how I feel about bad training partners —the type that only seem to want to fight, resist everything you’re attempting to do (read: not “defending”, but “resisting. Big difference). These are the sessions when you come away feeling like nothing was accomplished.
In a recent private lesson, a student talked about one of these such training partners. He alluded to the lesson I had taught in the past about jiu-jitsu being a conversation.
For those unfamiliar with this lesson, this idea comes from the fact that when you train jiu-jitsu, your sparring sessions should feel more like a conversation than an argument. In other words, if all you’re doing with your training partner is “fighting”, you may just be arguing and wasting your time.
If, however, you’re having a good, solid discussion with your training partner, things are flowing and moving (regardless of high or low intensity), you’re going to gain a lot from it, similar to a good discussion with a great friend.
Moving on, he mentioned how he categorized training into 4 conversational groups: Yes’s, Maybe’s, No’s, I don’t Know’s.
I thought this was an interesting categorization. In his words:
Yes: These are people I love training with and I feel like I get the most from them
Maybe: These are people that have their good days and bad.
No: People I don’t like training with —these feel like “arguments”
I don’t know: People I’ve never trained with before
In his mind, he could only get value from the “Yes’s” and not get any value from his “No’s”.
How to Get Value from Each
Let’s tackle the low hanging fruit.
The Yes’s are obviously valuable because this is how jiu-jitsu should be played.
It’s a constant “path of least resistance” into and out of techniques. It should flow and you should learn quite a bit during the session because your mind is focused on learning and not on fighting. This is an amazing learning opportunity but the reality is your training sessions don’t hit like this 100% of the time.
The “maybes” are also valuable. It’s a good bit of flowy, solid jiu-jitsu combined with some resistant, bad jiu-jitsu. You have to learn how to adapt mid-match and not get caught up in the turbulence of your training partner’s fight. It’s a good exercise in being present and adapting constantly.
The No’s are those training partners you never want to train with. They’re blindly aggressive, powerful and erratic and every time you train with them, you always seem to be the one getting hurt. Every gym has these people.
It seems like you don’t get anything out of training with people but in fact, you get a LOT out of it IF and ONLY IF you can learn how to train with them… which in itself is a task and only good if used sparingly.
[I’ll add a paywall at the end with how I handle these people but for now, let’s get to the I don’t knows"].
The “I dont’t knows” are the people you’ve never trained with. I think training with these types are great but it can be a little unsettling, especially if you’ve already told yourself a story about that person’s skill level. The stakes are lower, but it’s similar to going to a competition and eyeballing the people you think are your competition —we’ve all done it.
The best way to train with these types is to constantly feel out the match. Match your intensity to theirs and if you think they’re much more skilled, play your A game. If not, dial it down a bit. Either way, you need to have a conversation.
There’s more beyond the paywall but for more reading, you may also be interested in this article here
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