Unfortunately, we live in a world where you can sue and file a lawsuit against anyone for pretty much anything and get something out of it. I am not well-versed in law, but I do know right from wrong, and what it means to value the people around you. This is especially true for jiu-jitsu and any martial art. We all harp on the fact that the people you train with are your family, but what I heard the other day bothered me to the point I needed to let everyone in the jiu-jitsu community know.
Everyone trains for a different reason, but we are all there for the same purpose. We are there to have fun, make friends, feel better mentally and physically, and forget about any worries that we have. As we all know, the schools you belong to and train at, along with the jiu-jitsu community as a whole, is a tight knit group. Just think about when you meet someone new and they say they train jiu-jitsu – you instantly turn friends.
Jiu-jitsu isn’t all fun and games though. Of course, we all know that there is a possibility for injury. None of us want to get injured, and we don’t want to hurt our training partners. Also, I know damn well no one wants to worry about getting sued for accidentally hurting a training partner. All of us have been injured, and most of the time, it is by someone we train with. However, that doesn’t mean they intentionally did it or we should demand them to pay for any hospital bills associated with it.
We are all taking a risk when we do jiu-jitsu or any martial art that we obviously all think is worth it. If you get hurt, examine why it happened. What could you have done to avoid it? Should you have tapped earlier? Did you try to defend the wrong way? Was your ego getting in the way? This is a true story where a teammate sued another teammate for something so small! It wasn’t even an injury where they would have off the mats for any period of time. All instructors and gyms owners should beware of this potentially happening at their gym.
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