At High Altitude Martial Arts, culture comes first. This means taking care of each other, supporting each other, and respecting each other. Being a good training partner is arguably one of the most important skills to learn when you start Jiu Jitsu. Learning how not to hurt your training partner while allowing them to learn with you is extremely important. Here, we will discuss how to keep your partners and safe on the mats.
Partners
Your most beneficial resource in your training is the people you train with. Having a good coach is important as well, but there is a reason that we all gather in our gyms to train every week rather than watch a couple YouTube videos and call it good. Thus, it is critically important that we keep each other safe so that we always have a deep pool of partners to train with and so that people feel comfortable coming to class every week to train.
- Size, Strength, and Skill Differences
One of the most wonderful things about Jiu Jitsu is that it is made for everybody. Your gym likely has people of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds and you’ll probably be rolling with all of them throughout your time there. When rolling with someone smaller, it might be natural to use your weight against them to maintain control, drain their energy, or hit submissions. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, but there are some things to consider such as the comfortability and skill of your partner. Some of your partners may be hobbyist practitioners who don’t take their training as seriously as others and smashing them to bits using a size advantage may make their training uncomfortable and unfun. If this is the case and you want to have a more serious roll, try to avoid this person as a partner and stick to the more serious members. This leads right into the skill consideration, as using your weight to gain an advantage against a more skilled partner might be totally acceptable and fine while using it against a lesser skilled partner might again give them a more negative experience. If you are someone who wants serious rolls every time make sure that you are choosing partners who share this mentality rather than mercilessly smashing smaller and less skilled opponents.
The flip side of this coin is that being a lesser skilled opponent may mean that you don’t have the time and experience necessary to do a live roll safely. This is extremely common amongst white belts, who are often described as “spazzy”, due to their lack of knowledge of the fundamentals of Jiu Jitsu and generally uncoordinated, random flow during a roll. Many gyms don’t allow their brand-new white belts to participate in live rolls because their inexperience makes them very likely to get injured and injure others. If you are the new white belt, don’t go into a roll with any kind of expectation of winning or doing well. This will only cause you to do things or try things that you don’t yet understand and leave you at a very high risk of hurting yourself or others. Focus on your defense and maintaining control. You will have many years (hopefully) to work on your submissions.
- Submission Safety
When you are rolling with a partner, there is a shared trust that your intention is only to practice and learn rather than hurt each other. This means always respecting a tap, only going for submissions that are allowed at your/your partners skill level, and not cranking every submission. Respecting a tap speaks for itself but keeping in mind your partner’s skill level can get lost at times, particularly at higher belts. For example, many gyms do not allow rotational leg locks for lower-level white belts, so if you are a higher-level belt who knows these submissions, it would be incredibly dangerous for you to try these out on someone who doesn’t know what it is or how to defend it. Heel hooks are notoriously dangerous given how easily they can tear knee ligaments if defended improperly, so these should absolutely never be attempted on an unsuspecting white belt.
This is also true for submissions such as trachea crushes, spine cranks, and bicep/calf slicers, as they can quickly lead to injury if not defended correctly or tapped to in time. Even when we are doing submissions that fit the skill level of ourselves and our partners, we should also remember that we are training, and this is not a competition. We should not be cranking and yanking every submission as that only increases the likelihood of injury. When finishing a joint lock submission, the finish should be smooth and controlled such that you are able to stop at the moment that your opponent taps. After the tap we want to keep training and maintain the flow of the roll as best we can which can’t happen if we tear or tweak our partner’s joints. Even if slowing down your speed or applying less strength means you lose the submission, that is of no consequence compared to injuring your partner.
Chokes are slightly different as the concern moves from how much strength or speed we put into the submission to how long we hold the submission. When finishing a choke, you should be giving your full attention to the state of your partner. With a deep and clean choke, your partner will normally tap but we know this is not always the case. Some chokes may not be super deep or applied perfectly or your partner may still be fighting to escape. It is still possible to restrict blood flow to your partner’s brain and with the added variable of adrenaline, your partner may start to lose consciousness before they realize what is happening. No matter how bad you think the choke is, you are trying to stop blood flow to their brain and you are responsible for that. This is why your attention must remain on them even in your sloppiest choke attempt, because what might not feel dangerous to you can still have the potential to put them to sleep if held for too long. Again, we are training and after the tap we want to keep going. You can’t (shouldn’t) do Jiu Jitsu on a sleeping person.
Keeping yourself and others safe means a lot of different things in Jiu Jitsu but they all center around remaining healthy and avoiding injury and taking care of each other so we can train as often and as hard as we want. Don’t be the guy who injuries your favorite training partner, it’s a lose lose.
