Not Every Good Person Is a Good Training Partner

There's a scene from the movie, The Matrix Reloaded, that I love, it's where Seraph fights Neo to make sure he's not an imposter.

And it highlights today's article.

Recently I made a decision on the BJJ mat that I did not particularly enjoy making.

I decided not to roll with somebody anymore.

Not because I dislike him.

Actually, I like him.

He is a nice guy. We talk all the time. We are both blue belts. We have both been at the school for roughly three years.

And I like hard rolls. So this was not me deciding that guy is too tough.

The problem was different. I finally had to admit something I had been resisting.

I do not trust what happens when the pressure goes up.

That does not make him a bad person.

But it does make him someone I no longer want to trust with my body.

That distinction took me a long time to learn.

People Bring More Than Technique Onto the Mat

One of the things martial arts exposes very quickly is that nobody walks onto the mat carrying only technique.

We bring ourselves.

Our confidence.

Our fear.

Our ego.

Our need to prove something.

Our discomfort with losing.

Our desire for status.

Our need for control.

Our ability—or inability—to regulate ourselves when things stop going our way.

I am not standing outside this observation pointing at everybody else.

Shit, I did it too.

Martial arts has been one of the places where I worked through my own stuff.

That may be part of why the mat is such a powerful classroom.

Pressure reveals things.

Technique comes onto the mat.

So does ego.

So does fear.

So does identity.

And the uncomfortable part is that those things do not always announce themselves.

They can show up disguised as intensity, toughness, leadership, competitiveness, helping, teaching, or simply “the way I train.”

That is one reason I have become slower to judge what somebody is.

I can often see what they are doing.

I cannot always know why.

But I still have to decide how much access I am willing to give them.

Orange Belt Syndrome

I first started noticing this years ago at Master Han’s school.

The senior student in each class had a little extra responsibility.

At the end of class, for example, that student might tell a couple of people:

Grab the brooms.

Get the dustpan.

Clean the mat before the next class.

Nothing dramatic.

Just responsibility.

But I noticed something funny.

Sometimes a perfectly nice student would become senior student for the day and suddenly transform.

Orders everywhere.

You do this.

You do that.

Barking at classmates.

I started jokingly thinking of it as Orange Belt Syndrome.

Someone who had never had much authority suddenly received a little authority.

And the pendulum swung all the way over.

That did not necessarily mean the person had become an asshole.

Maybe they were learning what authority felt like.

And they had not yet learned the middle.

Over time I came to see that as developmental more than moral.

People often have to learn how to possess something before they learn how lightly to hold it.

Rank can do that.

Expertise can do that.

Strength can do that.

Status can do that.

Leadership can do that.

At first, the new thing feels important because it is new.

You grip it tightly.

You identify with it.

You may use too much of it.

Then, if you keep learning, the pendulum settles.

The authority does not disappear.

You just stop needing to prove that you have it.

Black Belts Can Do It Too

I saw another version when people earned their first-degree black belt.

For years:

Listen.

Practice.

Absorb.

Then suddenly:

Teach.

And sometimes that became:

Teach everything.

Correct everybody.

Explain every detail.

Give every piece of knowledge you possess.

Again, the pendulum.

Eventually, good teachers usually learn that knowing something and needing to say it are not the same thing.

Authority takes practice.

So does leadership.

So does restraint.

The common thread is that people are not only learning technique.

They are working on themselves.

Sometimes consciously.

Often not.

They are figuring out what to do with status, responsibility, recognition, and identity.

And the early attempts are frequently awkward.

That does not make those people bad.

It makes them human.

But it also taught me something else:

Understanding somebody’s developmental process does not obligate me to put myself in the middle of it.

Not Everybody Gets the Same Version of Me

Over the years I learned to change how I trained depending on who was standing in front of me.

With some people, I can be vulnerable.

I can experiment.

I can deliberately enter a bad position because I want to practice escaping it.

I can expose an arm or leave my neck a little more available while testing whether I can recover.

I can slow down.

Try something I am terrible at.

Tap early without ego.

And trust that the other person understands the difference between pressure and recklessness.

That kind of training requires trust.

You cannot really learn some things without giving another person the opportunity to hurt you and trusting that they won’t.

With somebody I trust less, the entire roll changes.

Hands home.

Neck protected.

Position first.

Limbs tighter.

No unnecessary openings.

No casual concessions of bad position just to see what happens.

I am no longer experimenting as freely.

Part of my attention is no longer on learning.

It is on self-protection.

Same Chuck. Different partner. Different level of access.

That is not punishment.

It is calibration.

Hard Is Not the Same as Unsafe

This distinction has become more important over roughly three years of BJJ.

I like difficult training.

I like hard rolls.

A hard round with a skilled, controlled partner can be one of the best learning experiences on the mat.

But hard and unsafe are not the same thing.

Technical intensity is not the same as emotional intensity.

A highly skilled person can put enormous pressure on me while remaining completely controlled.

They know where my joints are.

They know what they are doing.

They can feel when the position changes.

They can increase intensity without turning the roll into chaos.

Someone else can create much more risk with much less technical ability simply because the interaction becomes frantic, emotional, or unpredictable.

That difference matters more to me now than it did when I started.

The little injuries accumulate.

Knee tweaks.

Ankle problems.

Soreness.

Small things that linger longer than I expect.

Recovery time that reminds me I am not twenty.

I used to hear “pick your partners” and think mostly in terms of toughness.

Now I hear it in terms of longevity.

The question is not:

Can I handle this person?

The better question is:

Is this interaction worth the risk to my ability to keep training?

Logos Is Not the Whole Human Being

We like to imagine people are logical.

And we are.

Sometimes.

​Aristotle gave us a useful way of thinking about persuasion:

Logos. Pathos. Ethos.

Logos is the argument.

Reason.

Evidence.

What is factually happening?

Pathos reminds us that emotion is also present.

What does this feel like?

What fear, desire, anger, pride, shame, or hope might be affecting the interaction?

Ethos involves character, credibility, and trust.

Who is speaking?

Do I trust them?

Has this relationship earned the vulnerability being asked of me?

Those are rhetorical ideas, not three little switches inside the brain.

But I find them useful because they remind me that another human being is never just processing my argument.

Sometimes I give somebody a perfectly logical answer to a problem they are not experiencing logically.

You Cannot Logic Someone Out of Everything

Imagine somebody on the mat who needs to prove that they belong.

You can tell them:

Relax.

Good advice.

Logically correct.

But if every roll feels to them like a referendum on whether they deserve that belt around their waist, relax may not touch the actual problem.

Someone receives feedback.

Logos says:

That correction will make your technique better.

But another part of them may hear:

You are not good enough.

Now we are dealing with something else.

Reason still matters.

It just is not alone.

And if I respond only to the words, I may miss the person.

This is where I think people often make a mistake.

We try to solve a pathos or ethos problem with more logos.

We explain more.

Argue better.

Bring more evidence.

But you cannot reason someone into trust that has not been earned.

You cannot always explain someone out of an emotional state.

And you cannot communicate your way into making another person safe enough for the level of access you are giving them.

Sometimes the correct answer is not a better argument.

It is a boundary.

Understanding Is Not the Same as Accommodating

This is what finally connected back to my current training partner.

I like him.

I do not need to make him a villain to justify my decision.

Maybe I even understand some of what he may be working through.

But I do not actually know everything happening inside him.

And I do not need to.

I only need to make an honest judgment about what I am willing to participate in.

There is a difference between understanding, acceptance, accommodation, and a boundary.

Understanding means I can see some possible reasons for the behavior.

Acceptance means I acknowledge reality as it currently is instead of arguing with what I wish it were.

Accommodation means I change what I permit or provide in response.

A boundary means I decide what I will and will not participate in.

Those are not the same thing.

I can have compassion for what somebody is carrying without volunteering to carry the physical consequences of it.

I can think:

This person may be working through something.

without concluding:

Therefore my body should become the laboratory where he works through it.

Compassion does not require vulnerability.

Empathy does not require exposure.

Understanding someone is not the same as trusting them with your body.

Meet Them Where They Are

I have heard the phrase:

Meet people where they are.

I agree.

But I think we sometimes leave off the second half.

Meet them where they are. Then decide what is appropriate from there.

Meeting somebody where they are does not mean following them wherever they go.

It does not mean agreeing with them.

It does not mean fixing them.

It does not mean tolerating everything.

It does not mean matching their emotional state.

Sometimes it simply means seeing clearly:

This is where you are right now.

And then seeing just as clearly:

This is where I need to stand.

Maybe they need evidence.

Logos.

Maybe they need to feel heard.

Pathos.

Maybe the issue is trust.

Ethos.

Maybe the answer is patience.

Maybe the answer is another conversation.

And maybe the answer is:

I understand. And no.

That last one can be difficult.

Especially when the person is not evil.

Especially when you like them.

Especially when you can see why they may behave the way they do.

Healthy boundaries are not reserved for bad people.

A boundary is not necessarily a verdict on somebody’s character.

Sometimes it is simply an accurate description of what I am willing to risk.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Think about one relationship or recurring interaction that frustrates you.

Before deciding the other person is irrational, ask three sets of questions.

Logos

• What are the actual facts?
• What argument am I making?
• What argument are they making?
• Is the disagreement truly about the evidence?

Pathos

What emotion might be influencing the interaction—mine and theirs?

• Fear?
• Pride?
• Shame?
• Anger?
• Need for belonging?
• Need to prove something?

Be careful here.

You are not diagnosing them.

You are testing possibilities.

Ethos

• What is happening with trust and credibility?
• Do they trust me?
• Do I trust them?
• Is somebody defending an identity or status?
• Has this relationship earned the level of vulnerability I am giving it?

Then ask a fourth question:

What boundary, if any, does this situation require?

And one more:

What level of access has this relationship actually earned?

• My time?
• My attention?
• My trust?
• My vulnerability?
• My money?
• My body?
• My private information?
• My responsibility?

Not:

How do I fix them?

Not:

How do I win?

Just:

What level of access is appropriate here?

I Can Like You and Still Say No

That is where I have landed with this training partner.

I like him.

Nothing about that has changed.

I hope whatever he is working through on the mat becomes useful to him.

Martial arts has done that for me.

But part of my own development has been learning that compassion and judgment are not opposites.

Understanding and boundaries are not opposites.

I can see the person.

I can respect the person.

And I can still protect myself.

Maybe that is another kind of maturity the mat teaches.

When I was younger, I thought strength meant being able to handle anyone.

Now I think strength sometimes means knowing who I do not need to handle at all.

Not every good person is a good training partner.

And not every person I understand needs to be given the same access to me.

📚 Leader’s Library

​A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens​

Why?

Dickens begins by describing a world filled with contradictions:

• Wisdom and foolishness
• Belief and disbelief
• Light and darkness
• Hope and despair

He was writing about the turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, but that opening survives because human beings keep discovering the same truth:

An age can contain extraordinary progress and extraordinary danger simultaneously.

That is worth remembering whenever somebody tells you that everything is getting worse.

Or everything is getting better.

Usually, reality is more complicated.

It is often both.

And leadership begins with learning to see both clearly.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck