The Best Training Partners Want You to Get Better

MMA is a competitive sport, so competitiveness is a good thing. I want athletes who want to win. I want people who push themselves, who don't want to lose, and who are willing to work hard to become better than they were yesterday. I don't think we should try to remove that competitive nature from a fight team. The problem comes when the desire to win becomes more important than the purpose of training.

The best training environments I've been part of have people who are doing two things at the same time: they are trying to beat each other, and they are trying to make each other better. Those things aren't contradictory. In fact, I think they are dependent on each other. I want my training partner to challenge me because that's how I improve. But I also have a responsibility to challenge him in a way that helps him improve. We're both trying to win the exchange, but we're also both invested in what happens to the other person over the long term.

That requires a different mindset than simply trying to prove who's toughest in the room.

If I'm a better grappler than my training partner, I shouldn't be trying to make every round a demonstration of how much better I am. I should be giving him enough resistance that he has to solve real problems while still allowing him opportunities to work on the things he needs to develop. Sometimes that means I beat him. Sometimes it means I deliberately put myself in a position where he can work on something. The goal isn't to make the round easy for him. The goal is to make the round useful for both of us.

The same thing applies when I'm the less experienced athlete. My training partner isn't there to make me feel good. I want him to expose my weaknesses. I want him to make me work. I want him to punish mistakes so that I learn not to make them. But I also need to understand that his job isn't to prove that he can destroy me every round. If he submits me six times in five minutes but I don't learn anything from it, neither of us has gotten as much out of the round as we could have.

This is one of the things that makes a great training partner so valuable. They understand the difference between winning a training exchange and winning the training session. Sometimes the best thing for their own development is to make the other person better.

That doesn't mean taking it easy. It doesn't mean giving people positions or letting them complete techniques. It means being an intelligent training partner. Give appropriate resistance. Make them solve problems. Take advantage of mistakes. Let them experience consequences. Then do it again. You're not protecting them from failure. You're creating useful failure.

I think this becomes particularly important as athletes become more experienced. Beginners naturally think training is about themselves. They are trying to learn the techniques, survive the rounds and improve their own skills. That's completely normal. But as someone becomes one of the better athletes in the room, their responsibility changes. They have more to contribute to the people around them, and their value to the team isn't measured only by how good they are at fighting.

A really good fighter can make everyone around them better.

They can give a beginner a safe but realistic introduction to live training. They can give an intermediate athlete the resistance necessary to expose weaknesses. They can help another competitor prepare for a specific opponent. They can push a teammate through a difficult round without turning it into a personal battle. They can demonstrate what good training behavior looks like without ever giving a speech about culture.

That's how a team develops.

I've always thought that one of the best things about martial arts is that our individual development depends so heavily on other people. You can't become a good grappler without someone willing to grapple with you. You can't become a good striker without someone willing to stand in front of you. You can't become a good MMA fighter without training partners who are willing to attack your weaknesses and let you attack theirs.

So there is a natural relationship between competition and generosity. I need you to be good enough to challenge me, and you need me to be good enough to challenge you. If we both understand that, we can train extremely hard without turning every round into an ego contest.

That's the culture I want at BLAST. I want people who care deeply about getting better and who want to win. But I also want them to understand that being part of a team means contributing to everyone else's development. The best fighter in the room shouldn't just be the person who can beat everyone else. He should be someone who makes the room better because he's in it.

Ultimately, that's what I think a great training partner is.

Someone who wants to beat you today, because he wants to help you become better tomorrow.