Dealing with Martial Arts Partners with Dangerous Training Habits
When you train in a martial art with a lot of partner-based training, you end up working with all kinds of people, big or small, male or female, experienced or inexperienced. With all the different pairings, you find that everyone has different habits, some good, some neutral, and some bad, which can be dangerous for one or both people in the pairing. In our dojo, we tend to attract people with good training attitudes and ethics, so students don’t generally do things while they train that are intentionally dangerous. That being said, sometimes adjustments need to be made for safety. A student might hit or throw a training partner a little harder than the person receiving is comfortable with. Or maybe a less experienced student might cling to person throwing them in a way that is dangerous.
Here are my suggested ways of dealing with this situation as a student:
1. Talk to your training partner. Most of the time, your training partner doesn’t even know they’re doing something wrong that is compromising your safety. It’s important to be up front about these things, not just for your own safety but for everyone else at the dojo. Tell them what they’re doing that is making you uncomfortable and explain how it is affecting you. If a person is hitting you too hard, just let them know to ease up a bit. They may need further reminders or corrections, so be prepared to bring it up again if necessary.
2. Go more slowly. If simply telling your partner isn’t correcting the problem, either because the habit is ingrained or they don’t yet have the control, the best way to correct the situation is to slow the action down so the person can make their movements more deliberate as they work through what they need to correct.
3. Ask for help from an instructor. If you’re still having trouble, have the instructor come take a look at what is happening. They’ll likely have suggestions that may be able to help the person, or they might explain the seriousness of the matter in a way that helps a student understand how important it is to fix the problem. Whatever the issue is, having an instructor’s insights will almost always help.
4. Talk to an instructor privately. If the situation is serious, to the point that you aren’t comfortable training with the person or it has caused you injury, be sure to bring it to the instructor’s attention privately. This is not tattle-tailing, it is a matter of safety that should be addressed as it could affect other students in the dojo. If you have a good teacher, they won’t single you out as having “told on them” or point fingers at the offending student in a way that makes them feel bad. They’ll talk to the student earnestly and work with them to correct the situation. This is what I do anyway.
Have you ever had a situation in which you had to deal with a partner’s dangerous training habits? How did you resolve it? Please feel free to share in the comments.
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We used to have a guy at our school that would routinely hurt people when they sparred. He was particularly aggressive about cranking joint locks. In some cases, his partner was already seriously injured before they even had a chance to submit. A few people had to miss several months of training and some competitions while they healed. No one could really figure out if this was careless or malicious, and after several warnings, he never changed his ways. Thankfully he chose to leave on his own to go train at another school!
I think this is primarely the sensei’s responsibility since he/she should watch over the safety of everyone, including giving out clear guidelines in order to minimize the chance of injury (e.g watch out with this, avoid doing that…) and correcting dangerous behaviour. If someone is routinely hurting others like in Brr’s case they should be expelled from the school: training in a martial art is not an excuse for hurting others or showing how ‘bad ass’ you are. If you want beat up people go do it on the street where you’re criminally liable. If I were in charge of that class I’d warn him first, then train with him myself (it’s amazing how quickly people learn to go easier when they themselves are subjected to pain) and if that didn’t help I’d tell him to leave and never come back. Some people, whether through arrogance, malice or plain stupidity, really are a danger to others and should be dealt with severely. Just imagine sustaining a lasting injury because of some oaf’s carelesness…
The biggest problem I see with this is not regular training at the dojo (if the teacher’s competent and the atmosphere is respectful there’s not much chance of problems arising) but in training with people you don’t know at seminars and the like. Some individuals seem to think that just because it’s unlikely they’ll have to train with you again they don’t have to be careful: I got a back injury training with an imbecile like that (a brown belt in kenpo no less, clearly someone messed up there) and from now my course of action will be to a) avoid if I can, b) tell them in no uncertain terms to watch it and c) hurt them if they refuse to listen. Word to the wise: never be timid or too respectful when it comes to your safety, when you feel someone is dangerous take action. Don’t just wait for the inevitable to occur.
In our old dojo there was a rule that you weren’t obligated to train with certain people if you didn’t want to: you just had to tell them, bow and pick someone else. I think this is a very good rule since it makes it perfectly clear how you feel and it’s a clear warning sign for troublemakers to either get with the program or find themselves without partners.
We have several people that like to train hard and rough…. Not careless, just hard. The good thing is, they *know * they like to train that way and seek each other out with the mutual agreement of “controlled all-out”, and talk to each other throughout, about what is too hard or if they’d like more resistance. Luckily, they are able to bring it down accordingly if working with new students or those that want less of a rough time. As you said, communication is key.
I’ve got no problem with training hard or enduring pain (part of the game) but there’s a world of difference between really going at it (with mutual consent) and wilfully endangering others ignoring basic safety-rules. You’d think it’s pretty obvious you avoid placing full-on strikes on vital spots like the neck, throat, knees or spine but apparantly some people don’t seem to get it (or don’t want to): I got injured, not in a sparring-match where I could have defended myself, doing a stupid exercise at a seminar where you had to lie down on your stomach while the partner placed strikes on vital points. The moron I trained with dropped his knee straight on my spine… If I ever see him again he’ll get the same from me: people like that deserve nothing but contempt and since carelesness was apparantly a habit for him (the others avoided training with him for that very reason, something I didn’t know since I was new) I seriously doubt the competency of his teacher. If you know someone is dangerous (not because he could fight, I’m pretty sure I could have taken him without breaking a sweat) and you don’t do something about it you’re equally guilty if people get injured and the fact that he wore a brown belt says enough about the standards in that dojo.
Afterwards I told my sensei what happened and he said I should have hit him if he didn’t heed my warnings: some people really are so daft they only understand pain. Sad but true…
Rather than dwell on less than optimal partners I’ve had, I’ll re-collect a time where *I* was that guy… My Ippon-Seonage was being performed in such a way that my ukes were getting a very high impact landing. Sensei gave me a first hand sample of what it was like to be thrown in that way, then contrasted it with how he actually wanted it peformed. The lesson has stuck since then.
Nice to focus on your self and what you learned from being “that guy”. A refreshing change in perspective. 🙂