Lies Jiu Jitsu Teachers Told Me
Lies Jiu Jitsu Teachers Told Me
it's a trap!
In my junior year of high school, in one of the most conservative states in America, my U.S. history teacher had us read a book that discussed how most of history taught in school was revisionist. This book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, was the first time that anyone in the public school system had told me that what I learned was not the full truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The lies, mistruths, half-truths and misrepresentations told to us in the jiu jitsu world by the authority figures are certainly not as extreme as the book above. But, it is important to call attention to these ideas, because they still have a dramatic effect on one’s perception and experience in jiu jitsu, which, if believed fully, leads to a suboptimal jiu jitsu experience. To some of you who have been in jiu jitsu for a while, this essay may seem like common sense. Yet, what is common sense to us may not be apparent to someone else, especially if that “someone else” is new to the sport, inexperienced in life, and sometimes, desperate to belong and to please.
Training Lies
“Jiu jitsu improvement translates to life improvement/you become a better person.”
I’m a big fan of integrating the different aspects of my life into a holistic tapestry. Yet the statement that improvement in jiu jitsu leads to life improvements is rarely true across all stages of a person’s life.
For the person who has high blood pressure and poor cardio, it is likely true that jiu jitsu improvement signifies or helps with physical health over time. For the person who has mental health issues, it is probably true that improving in jiu jitsu means they are starting to take better care of themselves. We have all experienced, in many ways, how jiu jitsu is connected to our positive transformations.
But herein lies the difference. Jiu jitsu will never get to take the credit on my improvements or growth. It is not a co-author listed first in the research findings of My Life (perhaps a footnote or two would suffice). I am, as the famous poem goes, the captain of my ship and the master of my fate. Those who believe the story that success in jiu jitsu means relief from life’s stressors like job, relationships, finances, and well-being will suffer in the end.
They put all of their energy into jiu jitsu, to the exclusion of working on harder issues outside of the gym. Jiu jitsu becomes not an escape or a refuge, but a means to avoidant behavior. Instead, over the course of months, or years, they come to realize that they have been sold a bundle of lies and have abdicated power that they should have kept for themselves.
“Just keep coming to class, you’ll be fine.”
This response is usually a cop-out answer to when students ask an instructor how to improve. To me, it signifies that they haven’t been paying attention to progress at best. And even worse, sometimes, it’s because the coach simply doesn’t care, or will only want you to progress if you pay extra through private lessons.
Of course, I’m not talking about hounding the coach every class or after every technique. I’m talking about when sometimes students go for weeks or months on these empty platitudes. When you pay for a service such as jiu jitsu instruction, that service deserves to not only be dispensing techniques, but also making reasonable recommendations about whether the systems are landing right with the individual.
“This technique doesn’t work because you’re not listening to me/you haven’t practiced enough.”
When a technique doesn’t work for the student, bad coaches place blame on the student. Feedback, not judgment, is the mark of good coaches.
Blaming someone for inattention is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Chances are, if a student was paying attention, they are now learning how it clearly didn’t help, which means that they’re probably going to disengage for the rest of class.
Second, an instructor should be able to help a struggling student adapt almost any move for their current physical qualities in relation to the partner they are working with. What works on someone your size may not work on someone bigger or smaller.
There is a common trope that “jiu jitsu takes two.” When a student can’t execute a move (even during drilling) on their partner, the first go-to reasons should not be about their supposed character flaws or lack of practice, both of which can’t be changed overnight. Instead, a better way is to work through with the student why things aren’t working, to show empathy for what the student is thinking, and to suggest alternative options. This fosters a growth mindset in the student, instead of implying that they are simply stuck with immutable traits.
“If you miss a day of training, it will take two days to catch up. If you miss a week, it will take a month to catch up.”
I value consistency as much as any person who wants to make serious skill gains, but I highly doubt that this formula is a robust one. My biggest issue with this statement is that it takes such a negative, scarcity mindset perspective. Instead of telling students that you can make a lot of progress by showing up and paying attention, this statement focuses on what you will lose if you don’t show up.
I get that coaches want to impress on their students the importance of consistent attendance, just like hygienists impress on their patients the importance of consistent flossing. But coaches need to understand that after a certain point and for the vast majority of their student base, people are adults and will need to make tough choices about how they spend their time. And, what of the people who are too injured to train without significant pain; who have caretaker responsibilities; who lack consistent transportation to the school; and who have demanding careers? This statement leaves no nuance for groups that don’t get to make easy choices whether or not to train.
Competition Lies
“If you’re not a competitor, you’re not worth my attention.”
No coach is going to say this outright, but they may say it through their actions. If the coach rarely pays attention to you and showers attention constantly on their star competitors and up-and-comers, but rarely throws you a bone in terms of feedback, that doesn’t mean that you should start competing just to get their attention. Ask your teammates and see if they think that the coach is playing favorites (just be careful who you ask!)
It does make sense that competitors need more support than a non-competitor. They may get it in competition class, or in training sessions, but what a competitor needs is not just the feedback from the coach. They need training partners who also are getting better and the feedback that they need/crave, so that those people can also improve as fast as possible as well.
Placing an exorbitant amount of time on a competitor does not make sense because if they are going to get better than their training partners, then there is no change to the status quo: they are going to get even better than their partners. But, spreading out your attention to a pool of people means that a star competitor is going to keep being challenged in different and dynamic ways.
By the way — what counts as “exorbitant” is in the eyes of the students who are not part of the competition pool. Coaches and their favorites might say, “Now the time we get together isn’t unreasonable,” but it’s not for them to decide. If everyone is starting to feel like the coach is just a personal trainer to a few people, there’s a problem.
“Making it onto the podium is important.”
Whenever I hear this statement being made, it’s like I’ve put my blood in an oven and set the temperature to “broil” on high. You have to question why the coach would be saying this to you. Who is it important for? It may be that it is important to you — to show you that you can handle different opponents in a stressful situation — but also consider if it is important to the school’s image as well.
Particularly for new or growing programs, there is a pressure for the competitors to do well so that the school’s branding can take the path of “look at us, we create champions and medalists.” This to me is a potential signifier that the program doesn’t care about the competitor’s personal development at all, or at least values it as a secondary afterthought.
The problem is the inherent judgment of this statement to say that the podium is the “most important thing” of competition. When someone is fed this message constantly, they may start to forget that the point is to challenge yourself, results be damned.
Community Lies
“I’m your friend.”
Boundaries are incredibly important to me, but even more so when it comes to relationships between the student and the coach. I do not want my coach to help me with my personal life, be it in the realm of work, friendships, romance, investment advice (or for those of you further out there, crypto & NFTs), or mental health. They are there for jiu jitsu, and for jiu jitsu only.
That is not to say that a coach should turn a complete blind eye to those things, especially in extreme situations where the welfare of the student (or other students) are at risk. What it means, frankly, is that what happens out of the gym is none of the coach’s business.
Putting aside the problematic issue of coaches dating/hooking up their students — and acknowledging that some situations may be non-consensual and/or exploitative — when coaches see themselves as friends with their students, there is a great deal of risk for both the coach and the student. As a coach, your job there is to do exactly as the job title says — to “train or instruct” during a designated practice time. Anything else is a waste of your time and energy. And, even if that coach sincerely believes they may do good, they should take a hard look at whether or not they really are an expert in that area.
I don’t cast the blame solely on the coach, though. Students come to teachers with a variety of questions irrelevant to jiu jitsu. It bears resemblance to the phenomenon of transference, where “one seems to direct feelings or desires related to an important figure in one’s life—such as a parent—toward someone who is not that person.” Students: understand this — your coach is not the same as your friend, your sibling, your mom/dad/caretaker, that teacher you really admired in high school, that professor you talked to a lot in college, or that manager that advises you on things. They are not a stand-in for something that was lacking in your life. They are your jiu jitsu coach.
“We are a (jiu jitsu) family/we are like family.”
Family is a loaded word for many. Most people who see this statement as a lie often have had dysfunctional experiences with families (typically biological) or prior schools that have used this phrase. I think that’s understandable. People may argue that past experience does not necessarily mean present experience, but it is also equally likely that past experience may mean present experience, too.
Even people who have had good experiences with their first families shouldn’t be so keen to accept this phrase. This is because the process of building and maintaining a community isn’t about rhetoric or sound-bites stated at classes, on your gym bag/logo, in a group chat, or at celebratory school events. Community involves the day-to-day interactions and a long-term, slow, and painful building of trust and caring.
“Other schools are worse than us because [insert arbitrary example].”
Hm, do we really know if a school is worse or better? Usually when this statement pops up in class, it could signal that the coach is insecure about their technique or that they perceive that the students don’t believe them. It’s definitely a paradoxical situation: the coach thinks that the students don’t listen, so they try to attack another school to make themselves better, but the students actually do listen to that belief.
Also, it probably doesn’t matter if a school has a wrong or subpar approach — the real kicker is if the coach allows the quality of how they present the curriculum speak for itself.
Learn to judge for yourself whether a school is right for you. Allow your emotions to speak clearly to you, and take the coach’s words as one of many data points in your analysis. Do you own research on what you think of other schools. Or better yet, remain neutral, focus on what you’re learning, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your school is superior because the instructor told you so.
My advice: Question everything you hear, at least once, maybe twice, and to find the most truthful version that serves and honors your jiu jitsu—and yourself.