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The Rough Guy

Often a student new to mixed martial arts training will attempt to make up for lack of technique with brute strength and intensity, especially during groundwork training. This is a mistake in many ways.

First off if the student is stronger and heavier than the other students in class, they may achieve some success when using strength, and will most likely not realize the importance of acquiring the technical precision that will be necessary when they are facing an opponent who is physically stronger than them.

As an instructor, I’ll deal with the roughly aggressive type of student the moment I recognize them as such. My reasoning is simple. That type of student will more times than not, injure another student by being aggressive in a non-technical way. I’ve watched classes where new, smaller statured students have been twisted, squeezed, crunched and slammed by their larger partners to the point where they would scream in pain.

Don’t become known as the rough guy in your martial arts school. Nobody likes that guy!

Train in an intelligent and safe way allowing the techniques to do the work for you. When learning and applying submission holds, apply pressure gradually and be on the lookout for some form of tapping out by your partner as they new students often forget to do so in an obvious enough way. A good rule to follow is that “in training it’s better to have an opponent escape your submission attempt because your applied pressure gradually than to have them become injured because you cranked it on too fast.”

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