Being a Good Student and Training Partner

This topic was requested by one of my students, and I believe it's very relevant. I would say that the majority of people fall into the "good training partner" category, however there are some that fall outside at one extreme or another. I'm taking this a step further into what it means to be a good student. First we need to establish what a good training partner is. Everybody who goes to a bjj class receives some kind of instructions, the first step in being a good student is really listening and watching the instructor, if you don't understand something then ask. So to be a good training partner you need to be a good student. As an instructor, there have been cases where I show a technique then ask my students to drill it and see some of my students trying to do it, but it looks nothing like the way I showed the technique. Now if it was difficult to understand and interpret, then that is my fault as an instructor, but if it was straightforward and the student wasn't really paying attention, then he wasn't being a good student. So first off and most importantly be a good student and pay attention. Pay attention to what the instructor is doing, listen to what he has to say.

A good student is somebody that treats a BJJ academy like they would any other school. While there is no assigned homework, thinking about bjj shouldn't end when class ends. When you're bored, go over the techniques you learned in your head, the more you think about it and analyze it the better chance it has to be ingrained into your memory and hopefully your game. Also being a good student means being proactive about the techniques, if you have a question about the execution of the current technique, ask ask ask away, it's better to ask and receive an answer than to not ask and continue to question yourself. At the same time, students like to ask questions irrelevant to the current technique. While it's great to see your enthusiasm, wait until after class to ask questions on other techniques.

When drilling with your partner you don't want to be a dead fish. I see people practicing a sweep with enough holes in it that you couldn't sweep your grandmother with it, but their training partners fall over none the less. I look at it this way, I give very little resistance when my training partner is doing the technique, as he becomes comfortable with it I increase the resistance just ever so slightly. I never get to a point where I'm actually fighting to be swept, but I do want my partner to know what it feels like to have a little resistance. If my training partner botches a technique, I don't let him execute it. If somebody goes for a sweep and it doesn't sweep me, then it doesn't sweep me. You need to look at it this way, make it seem realistic without the resistance. There are some guys within a minute of showing a technique, one guy is trying to sweep with 100% strength and the other guy is trying to resist the sweep 100% and neither guy gets better because of it. Something some people need to understand is that instructors teach techniques in a particular way with attention to detail because that's how the students need to learn it. I see it every day, students just WANT to skip steps they want to get from A-Z in 1 step instead of going from A to B to C etc... Do the techniques RIGHT.