Often I write about things that I am thinking about or experiencing in my day-to-day training regimen. One realization I’ve recently come to is the importance of having a good training partner. What makes a good training partner? How does one select their “main squeeze” when it comes to a training routine?
The following is what I’ve found to apply to my own training patterns. I’m sure others out there have different opinions or experiences!
For starters, your main training partner should be of comparable size and strength. That is not to say you shouldn’t train with people much bigger/smaller/stronger/weaker than you, but your main training partner should be roughly on par with you. This allows you to gauge how your techniques will work against people in your tournament divisions.
Another CRUCIAL element to working with a regular training partner is a delicate balance of abandoning the ego while still being able to be roll hard with them. It is important to me to be able to go for submissions at full speed on my regular training partners knowing they will tap in time. At the same time it is important to know they will go for their submissions at full speed and will let go immediately when I tap.
The skill of one’s regular training partner should be roughly equal. If you’re training with someone much better or much worse than you, you either won’t be able to try new things or it will simply be too easy. It’s a delicate balance and one that is important to ascertain.
Training with this sort of person will be frustrating at times. Weeks will pass in which they are able to smash you, but then a subtle detail or adjustment to your technique will turn the tables on them. We need at least one person who is able to truly challenge us while still being beatable.
Drilling with your main training partner is a must. Because they become so used to how you move and can react to you almost instinctively, you should come up with different, complex chains of moves and see how well you can execute them. Doing this will inevitably smooth out your technique and help you truly sharpen your arsenal.
It takes all types of training partners to build a solid and skillful competitor, but having one as your “go to” with whom you can mutually benefit is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable training tools a jiujiteiro can have: an individual with whom you can grow and develop strategies.
If you have found this to be true for you, what benefits have you seen from having a person you can count on as your regular training partner? If not, what have you found to be the drawbacks of this?
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