My Wrestling Coach Said You Need Three Training Partners

When I was wrestling, one of my coaches used to say that you needed three different kinds of training partners in the practice room.

• You needed the person you could beat frequently.

• You needed the person you could beat about half the time.

• And finally, you needed the person who could beat you frequently.

I've thought about that a lot over the years, and I think it's one of the simplest explanations of what a good training environment should look like. Most people understand the value of having someone better than them. That's usually the first thing people look for when they talk about finding a good gym. They want experienced people who can challenge them and expose the weaknesses in their game.

That's important, but it's only one part of the picture.

If every person you train with is significantly better than you, you're going to spend a lot of time defending, surviving, and trying not to get caught. You may become very good at recognizing problems because you're constantly being put into them, but you won't necessarily get many opportunities to develop your own offense. You can know exactly what you're supposed to do and still never get enough chances to actually make it work against resistance.

That's why you need all three.

The Person You Can Beat Frequently

At first, this might sound like the least valuable training partner in the room. If you can beat someone regularly, what are you really learning?

The answer is that you may be learning quite a bit.

This is the person who gives you an opportunity to practice your offense under resistance. You can work on a guard pass, a sweep, a takedown, or a submission and actually get far enough into the exchange to see what happens. You can experiment with something new and make adjustments when it doesn't work perfectly the first time.

That doesn't mean this person should simply let you do whatever you want. They should still resist and try to win. But there is a difference between working against someone who can give you meaningful resistance and working against someone so far ahead of you that you never get a chance to initiate anything in the first place.

You need opportunities to practice success. If you only train with people who consistently beat you, you may become very good at survival, but survival is not the same thing as developing an offense. At some point, you need to be able to attack, transition between positions, and put together the things you've been practicing in class.

The person you can beat frequently gives you those opportunities.

The Person You Can Beat About Half the Time

This might be the most valuable training partner you have.

When you're evenly matched with someone, neither of you can rely on simply overwhelming the other person. Sometimes your technique works and sometimes theirs does. Your mistakes matter, but you are also good enough to capitalize when they make mistakes of their own.

These are often the rounds where you find out how good you actually are.

When something isn't working, you have to make an adjustment. If your opponent starts recognizing your favorite attack, you need to figure out another way to create an opening. You begin developing timing because the opportunities aren't simply sitting there waiting for you. You have to recognize them, create them, and take advantage of them before the other person does the same thing to you.

The person who beats you about half the time gives you honest feedback. You're good enough that your skills can work, but not so good that you can get away with doing everything wrong. These rounds are competitive, unpredictable, and often force both people to think.

That is an important place to spend a lot of your training time.

The Person Who Beats You Frequently

Then there is the person who beats you.

This is the training partner everyone understands the value of, even if they don't always enjoy training with them.

The person who consistently beats you exposes weaknesses that may not show up against other people. They put you in positions you aren't comfortable with, shut down techniques that usually work for you, and force you to deal with problems you might otherwise be able to avoid.

That can be frustrating. Nobody enjoys getting dominated every round. But there is valuable information in finding out where your current limits are.

If you only train with people you can beat, it's easy to convince yourself that your game is working perfectly. Then you train with someone better and discover that your favorite sweep only works because the people you've been using it on make the same mistake every time. Your guard works until someone knows how to pass it. Your takedown works until you run into someone who understands how to defend it.

That's useful information.

The person who beats you frequently shows you where you need to improve next.

There is obviously a limit to this. If someone is so much better than you that you spend every round completely overwhelmed and have no idea what is happening, there may not be much learning taking place. The goal isn't to find the best person in the gym and get destroyed by them every day.

Ideally, you want someone who can consistently push you beyond your current level while still giving you enough opportunity to understand what happened, make adjustments, and gradually improve.

Why You Need All Three

The interesting part of my coach's advice is that each of these training partners gives you something the others don't.

The person you can beat frequently gives you opportunities to practice and develop your offense. The person around your level tests what you currently know and forces you to solve problems in real time. The person who beats you exposes weaknesses and shows you where you still need to grow.

If everyone in the room is worse than you, you may feel like you're getting better without ever being forced to address the weaknesses in your game. If everyone is roughly your level, you can have a lot of competitive rounds, but you may not get enough opportunities to experiment or enough pressure to expose some of the deeper problems. And if everyone is better than you, training can eventually become little more than survival.

You need some success. You need some struggle. And you need some failure.

That's a pretty good formula for improvement.

A Good Training Room Changes

The other thing I like about this idea is that the three training partners don't stay the same forever.

The person who used to beat you every round eventually becomes someone you can compete with. The person you used to beat easily starts making you work. Someone who was once your equal may improve faster than you and suddenly become the person you're chasing again.

Then, eventually, someone new walks into the gym and you realize that you've become the experienced person who beats them frequently.

That's one of the ways you can measure progress even when it doesn't always feel like you're improving. You may not notice dramatic changes from one week to the next, but over time the relationships in the room begin to change. The people who once seemed impossible to deal with become competitive rounds. The things that used to work effortlessly against you become things you can defend. You gradually move through the room. And then the cycle continues.

You Are Also One of Those Training Partners

There is another side to this that is worth remembering.

Your training partners need you too.

If you're more experienced, the newer person needs someone who will give them opportunities to work without simply overwhelming them every second of every round. That doesn't mean letting them win or giving them techniques for free. It means giving them honest resistance while remembering what it was like to be new.

The person around your level needs you to push them. Those rounds should be competitive, and both of you should be trying to solve the problems the other person presents. Sometimes you'll get the better of them, and sometimes they will get the better of you. Ideally, both of you leave the round having learned something.

And sometimes you're the person who needs to challenge someone who is less experienced without making the entire round about proving how much better you are. You can expose someone's weaknesses without trying to crush them every chance you get.

That's part of being a good training partner.

A good room works because everyone contributes something to everyone else's development.

The Goal Is to Keep Moving

I don't think the goal is to eventually become the person who beats everyone in the room.

There will always be someone better. And if there isn't, you may eventually need to find some new people to train with.

The goal is to keep moving.

The person who beats you frequently today might become the person you beat half the time next year. The person you beat half the time might eventually become someone you can beat consistently. Then someone else improves, someone new joins the gym, and you find yourself facing a completely different set of problems.

That's one of the things I like about martial arts. You're never really finished.

There is always someone who can expose another weakness. There is always something you can improve. And there is always someone newer who is working through the same problems you had when you started.

My wrestling coach explained it much more simply. I think he was right.