Choosing a Training Partner.
Few things are harder on your body than injuries. Depending on the injury, you can be out for a few days, a few months, and even years. Now good thing is, injuries for the most part are preventable. Training in a club that actively looks out for your safety is a huge factor, this can mean having people watching during rolls to make sure people who are newer and haven’t yet learned to control their strength or speed are watched over and given constant reminders to ensure a safe roll. This can also mean reviewing safety protocols before each live sparring session. Whatever it happens to be, a club that puts member safety at the forefront generally makes for a great club to train at.
Now with injuries on the mind, picking your training partners is important. Who you train with plays a large part in injury prevention. If you have two brand new members rolling for the first time and not knowing what they are doing, the chances of one of them getting injured is significantly higher. In my club its not generally allowed to happen unless there is someone that is able to watch over the roll entirely. Newer members go with more experienced members to allow for a gradual introduction into the art and to prevent injuries that can occur as the more experienced members should be able to control the pace of the roll. If there is no experienced member to guide the roll giving them an objective such as one person breaks the guard and passes to half, and then it’s the person on bottoms turn to get out and recover full guard. This allows for the students to actively learn as well as stay relatively safe.
Make sure to keep yourself safe when it comes to picking training partners as well. People train for various reasons, some for the workout, some for the self defence aspect and some come for the social aspect. Whatever the reason make sure to train accordingly, when youre first starting out, training with higher belts is a great way to keep yourself safe as they should have enough control to keep both of you safe. Once you get some experience under you try rolling with various partners, some may surprise you with having great mat chemistry. Others you will immediately find you don’t gel with. Pick your training partner with this in mind and don’t feel obligated to have to roll with someone you don’t want to. Possibly because they are known to go a bit harder, or maybe they move to fast and youre not comfortable with that yet. Saying no to a roll is taking your safety into your own hands.
One thing that’s stuck when it comes to safety and training partners is, be the training partner you want to roll with. No one want to roll with the overly aggressive guy that injures everyone and soon enough that person will find themselves with no one to roll with or looking for a new club. Being the partner that youd like to train with brings about a lot of variables that are dependant upon what you want out of training. Maybe you want to compete, picking the social butterfly probably isn’t the best pairing to gear towards a competition. Though at times they could be, changing up who you train with can build the community, and maybe foster an unexpected friendship, but choose wisely and always think of safety first.
Tool of The Trade, The Tap
In jiu jitsu there are many tools in which a jiujiteiro (fancy name for a pajama fighter) can employ, from sweeps to guard passes, submissions to throws, all are important but, in my opinion, the most important is the tap.
The tap in jiu jitsu is generally thought of as what you do when your opponent or training partner has you in a submission and you have no other way out. At this point you would tap, and in a competition that would indicate you lost the match, in the gym it generally allows you to reset and continue sparring, but it can and is used for so much more. I feel the tap is something that should be explored more. Tapping is what keeps those of us that train in any grappling sport safe, it allows for an immediate stop in whatever is going on. It can mean the difference between a broken arm and a someone recognizing they got caught, smiling, and getting back at it. It can allow for newer people who haven’t quite gotten comfortable being uncomfortable a way out of situation that many that have been training for a long period of time have forgotten about.
The tap can also help during sparring sessions in close quarters. When you’re sparring, sometimes spatial awareness slips by and you come into vicinity of another group. The tap in this situation allows you to immediately get your training partners attention, help them realize the danger and allow for a reset moving to your own space. This can help reduce the injuries associated with rolling into another group and catching someone with a heel to the head, I use this example as I’ve seen it time and time again as well as had it happen to me, and it truly is a preventable injury if spatial awareness and the tap are properly used.
The tap is a great tool that you can use to keep yourself safe as well as others. If you have a pre-existing injury that you forgot to tell your partner about, lets say your elbow has been sore or injured, and they start putting that arm in a compromised or uncomfortable position, you tap. This gives you the second to explain that you have an injury and to try and not go after that particular injury. Some call this pretapping and it may come with ridicule, if this is a part of the atmosphere of the club you may want to start looking for another place to train as it’s more than likely a toxic environment to be in. You should never be criticized for making your health and safety a top priority.
To conclude, tap early and tap often, use the tap as a tool to keep you and your training partners safe. Don’t forget, be the training partner youd like to train with.