If you have someone in your gym that you will not promote due to their character flaws, why keep them as a student at all?

I will not promote someone if they're an asshole.

If you have someone in your gym that you will not promote due to their character flaws, why keep them as a student at all?

Because, as I see it, our job is to teach more than joint locks and chokes. Teaching character is part of teaching Jiu-Jitsu. If we just throw this person out because there a jerk we don't teach them much. If however we keep them around and show them the way. Maybe, eventually, they might just pick some of it up. Especially if we keep other students of high character around. Eventually, you become who you hang out with.

Because, as I see it, our job is to teach more than joint locks and chokes. Teaching character is part of teaching Jiu-Jitsu. If we just throw this person out because there a jerk we don't teach them much. If however we keep them around and show them the way. Maybe, eventually, they might just pick some of it up. Especially if we keep other students of high character around. Eventually, you become who you hang out with.

I do certainly agree with a lot of this. Character plays a role for my gym. When I'm looking to promote to bb in freestyle judo, almost half of it comes down to character. At that point they have the technique to do it. One thing I *sorta* disagree with however is the undermining the coach.. of course depending on what you mean here. Let me explain.. I fully support the 'sempai kohai relationship' where say a purple takes on a blue and shows her/him a particular way that will work better for say like their body type or style. More like individualized training. The way I run things is I show my variation for the whole class, the sempais that are working with their kohai might change it a bit for them. Which is fine. There are limitless ways to skin the cat. If their kohai is just getting into it, they might just work the absolute basic way if doing it just to understand the concept.. while others might work something for bigger ppl (I'm a small guy) again I guess this might be more of a judo thing.. cuz I really don't see that happening in my bjj classes.. In any case, for about 99% I agree.

Great point David that I can definitely clarify. Something I talk to my employees , who are in leadership positions, about is the balance of respecting hierarchical structures that we choose to operate within but not blindly. A jiu-jitsu example would be, if a Coach says there are no heel hooks allowed during live rolling and you and your training partner choose to heel hook each other; you are directly undermining the coach, despite whether the person is comfortable with heel hooks or not. With that said, if the same student were to ask the coach if they can do catch and release, or drill positionally, or roll live because one of them have a sub only tournament coming up, then one of two things can happen: (1) the coach says no because I don't want other students seeing it and then thinking they can do it and accidentally hurting each other or some other reason. To which, whether you agree or not, should support their wishes or find another time to be able to discuss it. Or (2) they say yes to your alternate options and now probably also trust that you wouldn't go behind their back or directly go against their views in front of other students. If a move isn't quite working for one of my students, I create an environment where they feel comfortable asking me how to make it work. With that said, depending on the individual that same situation may manifest into the student saying this move doesn't work or I saw it done like this on XYZ, and then starts correcting their partner outside of what the coach has shown. And, that's when a good coach/leader, would hopefully take the time when appropriate to have a conversation with that individual to correct that type of behavior. If it continues past that, that's undermining and a lack of respect. On the spectrum of blind loyalty and complete disregard, albeit relatively situational; we should all desire a healthy balance somewhere near the middle.

Because, as I see it, our job is to teach more than joint locks and chokes. Teaching character is part of teaching Jiu-Jitsu. If we just throw this person out because there a jerk we don't teach them much. If however we keep them around and show them the way, maybe eventually they might just pick some of it up. Especially if we keep other students of high character around. Eventually, you become who you hang out with.

My short time around the sport would appear to me that most lacking character don't generally last and move on....

Stick with it, you'll run into plenty of them down the road in this sport, I promise :D

Exactly. Hopefully, we are all creating entitlement that weed out those type of people.

This has, unfortunately, been my experience as well. In BJJ I think it's tough to come up with universal criteria concerning who exactly is a 'douchebag', and who isn't; if we can't decide on a universal approach to belt promotions then how could you ever objectively qualify a 'douchebag'? I thought it was interesting that after a solid string of credible reports and even convictions of predatory behavior exhibited by some of those in the upper echelons of the BJJ hierarchy, the Jiu-Jitsu Federation of Rio de Janeiro decided not to address any of this behavior at all, but instead to make a point to ban anybody who isn't a black belt from teaching BJJ (https://www.jiujitsutimes[...]e-janeiro/). I think this goes to show where the priorities of some of our oldest and respected institutions really are, and this is very unfortunate. While 'douchebaggery' is very difficult to quantify in its entirety, I think that it would be fairly easy to outright ban predators from training with you. Our gym recently did something of a 'purge' of sorts, where we ran a background check on our members, and we asked those with substantial, clear-cut predatory backgrounds to leave our gym. This was a fairly time-consuming and slightly expensive endeavor, but in the end I feel good about taking some extra measures and do my part for our community. I also know that there have been other gyms/programs/affiliations that have taken a stand against obvious d-bags, and I'm glad to see bigger names in the game, such as Gracie Academy, have also made an effort to weed out some of the trash (https://www.jiujitsutimes[...]necessity/). But in a world where all the guys with the fanciest of belts continue to tolerate, or even condone anything from assaulting and sucker-punching the competition at tournaments, to turning a blind eye to obvious cases of coercion and manipulation (this list could go on) we will unfortunately continue to fall far from being the 'douchebag filter' that is often cited when talking about how BJJ is so awesome. Worst yet, we will not even have TRIED to make it a priority.

You are not responsible for someone personal decisions outside the mats. If the person does whats is necessary during the classes and show their technical evolution this person must be promoted.

Strongly disagree. If somebody is an arsehole, I don't care how good their BJJ is, I'm never promoting them. Though yeah, it's also true that if they are good at hiding they're an arsehole, the instructor isn't going to know. Generally your personality will shine through on the mats, I've found, but some arseholes have better self control than others.

Fortunately for me, it very much is my right. I'm not running a public service, it's a private business. So I get to choose who I want there. Surprisingly, I don't want to spend a large amount of time with arseholes. ;)

In such (rare) cases, I sit them down and recommend other places to train as they aren't suited for my gym and my coaching style. No point working with people who aren't on the same wavelength as trying to 'fix' them requires a different skill set that I don't possess nor providing as a service. Don't go to the pizza store asking for a steak. For many people, they don't need martial arts, they need therapy.

Well written, Vince!