These rules are posted on the walls of Straight Blast Gyms all over the world. They are part of a baseline behavior code agreed upon by all students on our mats. This is the short explanation I give my new students just before we do their first matches.
- Never roll rough
- Trust your coach
- Maintain good hygiene, short nails, and a clean uniform
- No sideline coaching
- Support your tribe
- Never Roll Rough.
In other words, we don’t use pain compliance to get a partner to move or open up for a submission. For example, knee riding an opponent’s head to open a submission or driving the elbows into the thighs to open the guard. These things don’t work well on larger, tougher partners.
2. Trust Your Coach
I explain this rule to new students in terms of their jiu jitsu progression as well as their personal relationship with the coach. In terms of their own journey, there is a cognitive bias that occurs when learning a new skill called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Those in the new to intermediate skill range suddenly (often briefly) become very confident in their knowledge. In jiu jitsu this usually happens around the blue or purple belt range. We stop feeling like we are drowning and start to swim a little bit. The student knows enough of each position to be able to make some of their own combinations, do their own research, and hopefully solve some of their own problems.
This is great, but the biggest barrier to learning is the assumption that you already know everything. This is the range where I see some well-meaning students start to question everything their coach says. They are already thinking of the counter move in class rather than learning what is taught. They will insert their own flair and or go outside the bounds of the drill. They end up missing the point of the drill and confusing their partner. This is often the phase where I see students trying to coach a partner that is not requesting their help.
This bias bottoms out when you start to realize that you don’t know much at all (the valley of despair). If you make it past this and start the gradual climb back up you level out at the “It’s Complicated” range and still continue to learn. This is the highly skilled point where you can underestimate your own technical ability. Often the learner is never as confident as they once were in that beginner to intermediate level.
My advice to students to avoid the pitfalls of this bias is to “trust your coach.” If they are teaching something in a particular way or a particular order, there is likely a reason. If your coach ranks you and you feel that you are not ready, you must believe that they know what they are doing. Unfortunately, I more often see the other side of that trend where a student feels they are ready for a rank and the instructor is just not seeing it. This becomes a barrier to learning.
In terms of the personal student to coach relationship, trust also critical. It is built over time and can be easily lost. There are far too many instances of coaches taking advantage of their position. Just because someone has a black belt does not mean that they are a good person. Hopefully, their time at the academy has acted as a filter and they were not moved along in rank just because they were technically good. A good instructor treats all their students well, even the new ones. It is a huge red flag if they are not.
The coach should keep good boundaries. This one is tough, and I have learned the hard way that it is important to stay out of student’s personal lives and keep business hours. Friendships may develop over time, that is natural. A jiu jitsu coach should not be acting as a nutritionist, physician, financial advisor, or mental health counselor unless they are qualified to do those things
3. Maintain Good Hygiene, Short Nails and Clean Uniform
This is unfortunately a talk I have had to have more than once as a coach. Do not leave this up to your students. It is not their responsibility. People grow up around different levels of cleanliness. Some are ignorant of the issue until spoken to. Others may not have access to a washer regularly. Skin diseases such as ringworm and staph can thrive in a dirty uniform and under long fingernails. Fingernail scratches almost always get mildly infected. This is another nonnegotiable agreement for training at our gyms.
4. No Sideline Coaching
This is the type of coaching I mentioned in rule number two. A student who is sitting on the side in open mat (which should never happen unless there are odd numbers) begins to shout directions to a pair that are rolling. This is a form of mat sharking. When people get tired, they sit on the side of the mat and feel as if they are participating by coaching those who are out there trying to improve. If their directions are correct, they are robbing their teammates of the opportunity to solve the problem they are having in real time and develop fight IQ. When this happens, it is almost never an active coach at the gym. It is another student. They are overstepping their role.
Sideline coaching may also happen within a drill or roll. During the initial learning of a move, of course it is important to talk to your partner. When it is time to drill or roll, each player is learning to solve the problem presented to them. If they are given the answer verbally, they lose the opportunity to do it themselves. The worst form of sideline coaching occurs when a person begins to coach their opponent who has locked in a submission on them. They feel that walking them through the end of a submission will allow them to feel like they had a hand in choosing the end of the roll, rather than admitting they got caught. I do think sideline coaching happens way more to women than men. This is poor etiquette at any gym.
5. Support Your Tribe
In other words, no cross training and get ranked by your home instructor rather than anyone who might give a belt to you. This one has been coming up a lot online. I see the argument for both. I think that there is a way to cross train respectfully, and there is a wrong way to do it.
I cross train when I travel. I have had great friends and training partners at other gyms as well. If I trained elsewhere, it was typically at an open mat where I was not missing a practice at my own gym. It was extra. I also did not plaster it on social media. I paid the mat fee and followed their uniform rules if there were any.
In this way I was not removing myself as a training partner from my own mat, I was also not throwing it in my head instructor’s face and inadvertently marketing for a competing business. It is truly difficult to keep a full time jiu jitsu academy open with staff. The profit margins are not large contrary to popular belief. If your instructor seems well off, they probably have other businesses aside from their academy that they run.
These are our baseline rules. I’ll write further on open mat etiquette since a lot of gyms skip over informing new students. I think sometimes they forget what it is like to be new to the sport. What are some other rules that your gym has?
Rolling Under The Big Sky 