Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Advice for people training jiu jitsu about when it's paranoia and when it's not....

I received an incredibly disturbing email telling me a story about a relationship in an academy.  It went something like this.

Whitebelt meets brownbelt.  Brownbelt (BB) helps whitebelt (WB).  BB crushes on WB, asks WB for a romantic relationship even though BB is already committed elsewhere.  WB says no, let's be friends.  BB tells WB at one point in TKD as a teenager, they intentionally hurt a person they trained with "on accident" because that person wouldn't date them.

Later on, BB tells their mate that they're in a relationship with WB (not true) and BB's mate attacks WB verbally at the academy.  Instructor gets involved, tells mate to stop.  WB no longer trains with BB.  But now BB hurts WB's friends when they train with BB.

Should WB tell their instructor or does it make them look paranoid???


TELL THE INSTRUCTOR!!!!

hell, tell the cops.  Please.  Save your poor teammates who wander around with sore arms, ankles, shoulders, knees and wonder what got into that BB.

I don't know what else to do.  Advice???

6 comments:

Elyse said...

WB's friends can all refuse to train with BB on the grounds that he/she is injuring them unnecessarily. Leave the hearsay out of it, since it was obviously already reported to the instructor and they are unable to control the BB's actions.

Unless there are only 4 people in this academy, then this seems like a very adequate / simple solution.

J.B. said...

It sounds like this jackhole has already hurt a couple folks..
If the brown belt has hurt more than one person, it should be very easy to tell the instructor:
"He hinted that he hurt someone before because they wouldn't go out him, so I won't train with him, but then he hurt blue belt bob, and purple belt pete, I think it's because they're friends of mine."
The instructor should be able to see the writing on the wall.

SavageKitsune said...

If I was this instructor, I would want to know about this.

Some people have disagreed with me when I opine that honor and character (on and off the mat) are (or should be) a factor in promotions. If I was teaching, I wouldn't want to promote an asshole to black belt and give hir that sort of power. The above is behavior unworthy of a high-ranking martial artist, and should be addressed.

Kintanon said...

Regardless of the character issues that Kitsune brings up, there's the fact that if one of your brown belts is injuring your other students that's flat out bad for your school, bad for your team atmosphere, bad for your students, bad for everyone.

It only takes ONE person like that to completely destroy a gym.

JiuJiu said...

I'm late to the game, but WB should tell the instructor. The instructor cannot fix anything that they aren't aware is happening.

A brown belt has enough control that if they are hurting people, it's likely intentional. They have a lot more body control due to their time on the mat.

Tell the instructor.

Do you have a follow up to this yet?

Georgette said...

WB has informed instructor and other training partners and feels safer now after some **** changes have been made (I'm not sharing more out of respect for WB's anonymity and privacy, but I think they're in a much better space now..)

Thank you :) :)