Unintentionally hurting students and trainers

So I am a 22 year old guy at about 5'10 with a fair amount of muscle upper body and a lot on my lower body. My calves are 19in circumference and 23in on the thigh measuring 5in from the knee cap. This is muscle mass I naturally have from my dads side of the family. I am training in BJJ, Jeet Kun Do, Muay Thai, Kali, Silat and MMA for about 2 months now with Krav Maga training 6 years ago for six months.

Right now every 2 weeks more or less, outside of the BJJ classes, I end up hurting/injuring someone to the point they need to step off the mat. Today while doing Judo drills doing a leg sweep with my back facing the instructor, I bent my knees on the way down, his leg got caught on mine and caused an ankle injury which left him limping.

The thing is, I am either tensing up before/during a drill or sparring because I am afraid of hurting the other person. Even when I tell myself I won't hurt them and relax, when I think I am moving lightly with no power I end up causing an injury/hurting them. The instructors tell me each time to make sure I take it slow, control myself and take it lightly. Only the BJJ instructor has no problem with this, even encouraging me to learn more since the size of my legs makes it very hard for the larger guys of the class to take me down unless they get on my back while standing or kneeling.

However my question is, what can I do to remedy this issue? I want to be able to relax and be light when sparring, so I can get the muscle memory in better while learning the techniques effectively, but without hurting the other person by accident. I don't intend to stop training, but it's pretty discouraging and don't want to be the reason less people attend classes.

 

What injuries are occurring? The only one you've described is just an unfortunate accident. You seem to be doing quite a lot of training, so 4 injuries in 2 months may just be bad luck. If it's not happening in the BJJ class then it may not be you.

 

It might just be bad luck, beginner mistakes or I am not pairing up correctly. One thing I notice in the BJJ class is the group consists of larger guys who are pretty experienced and the atmosphere is a lot more competitive. Even with the smaller guys/gals there is an emphasis on using strength, endurance and technique to gain an advantage.

As far as injuries/hurting people goes...

First time was when my partner anticipated my left kick with thai pads and held them so it was covering from his neck to halfway up his stomach. Because that leg was a big harder to flex than my right it ended up hitting him stomach/waist near his groin due to the size of my calves.

Second was during eskirma drills with foam springy type sticks and without thinking I ended up parrying and then a top blow to the head. No bleeding or any serious injury, but the guys bald head was a little red after.

Third was during a drill with wedges and kicks. This time I kicked a bit too high near the groin, nearly missing it, and my fingers tapped a little too hard on my partners throat. It caused him to jump a little, but no damage.

Fourth, during an MMA class on mounting and re-positioning into an arm-bar, I put a bit too much weight on the guy the momentum was a tad too fast for a slip second. He was a little in pain, but no breakage and was a little harder for him to use it the rest of the class.

 

First: pad holders fault. It's up to them to set the pads up and protect themselves. Maybe if you see someone setting high on that leg tell them what happened last time.

Second: don't know.

Third: pull your strikes more and slow/calm down

Fourth: putting weight in is fine. Loosing position due to poor base is just a mistake... sitting back to fast leads us to the advice for the previous incident.

Overall I'd say you might need to chill out a bit and be more mindful of your bodily movements? Sounds like a mix of bad luck and poor proprioception maybe.

 

So naive padholding, normal knocks from normal training, and just one of those things.

 

Good suggestions. At this point I have conditioned my legs to kick a bit more accurately. My friend from the Navy said to focus on finesse and taking it a bit slower without the fear of hurting someone. This will probably clear up me striking/kicking the wrong locations as I learn to control the direction of my moves more finely.

As far as the fourth injury went this was when I was performing an arm bar and not the other way around. I had good position and flow was good. I might have just gone a bit too fast.

I am going to talk to the main instructor the next time I see him and get his opinion about this. Otherwise I am learning a lot, learning quickly and am really enjoying it with no plans to quit. Heck I am one of the few students who attends almost every class/multiple classes per day. Even the BJJ classes used to have me pretty sore the next day, now I feel as if I did a good hike and am a tiny bit sore.

 

Sounds like you care about your partners but have minor problems with knowing your own strength and with impulse control .

The knowing your own strength thing will improve over time as your technique improves. just listen to your instructors, take it slow and try not to force techniques to work. When you are rolling you can always say to your partner that you want to work slower and concentrate on technique.


Difficulties with impulse control can mean that you easily get over heated or to fizzy. Again this will get better with practice. Try to monitor yourself as you go along. Normally there are little warnings singhs that you are getting overheated. Power bleeding into strikes by accident or rushing into techniques. Nothing wrong with taking a 30 secound break just to collect yourself. Pause to talk through a technique. ask a question. breath a little, then get on with it again. If you are getting tired sit out for a few minutes and watch the senior grades working on techniques. Normaly impulse control is more difficult if you have low blood sugar. Coordination can begin to go if you are tired. Look out for the warning sighns toward the end of the lesson. and if you think that you are beginning to be a risk to others take a break for as long as you need.

Partner up with the higher grades where possible - they will be more able to look after themselves and have less to prove so they will be less likely to escalate and become overheated themselves.

Lastly dont worry about it. Your instructor will tell you if it is a problem. Your training partners should tell you if is a problem. And having one or two enthusiasts in a class is always good because it keeps the training honest.

 

Good advice from your friend.

Yeah I think being less speedy and watching your leverage would probably help.

No big deal overall! At least you are aware enough to notice and to care! The guys who really hurt their partners are often neither.

 

Now that you mention it I can start to see where things might go a bit array. Usually when I attend I am a tad tired or sleepy, but usually wake up during the class. Low sugars is another as I tend to avoid sugars in fruit or candy as I want to get into better shape. Overheating per your description happens from time to time, usually by the middle of the second class or after multiple conditioning drills. Most often the coordination starts to slop slightly when doing leg movements, but not very often and usually my energy slows before that. Otherwise it might be my impulse control also as I still have some muscle memory left over from Krav Maga involving heavy strikes to sensitive or weak areas. One reason I stopped training in it and opted for other disciplines. Great post and I really appreciate it your time in writing it!

 

While I fully agree with everything else you said and it was good advice; it's the training that should keep the training honest, and when it does you need safe, mindful practices to keep it sustainable. Luckily the OP sounds like he is on the right track regarding that.

 

Very true, even back in Krav Maga most guys I trained with were Ex/Current Military or LEO who were pretty large and bulked out. Needless to say I got quite good at taking hits, especially since the instructor was balls to the wall hardcore about using as much aggression as we could.

Personally one of the reasons I train is to become very strong and capable, but have the ability to remain gentle.

 

Hmmm....I'm not so sure with that. If I say to someone "left middle kick", hold the pads for that kick and then they blast me across the groin then I don't think that's on me being at fault.
IMHO it's a two way street...if the pad holder's holding the pads to high for your ability to kick then ask them to hold them lower.
But then having pads not held in quite the right position is just something you have to deal with when training with non-professional pad holders (ie other students just like you). You still have to kick the pad and not the person.

Although there's something to be said about the Thai style of pad holding where it's a little more combative and the pad holder has more of a job to do in protecting themselves.

 

Training in six different martial arts probably isn't helping.

 

The kicks we were doing were to the stomach area. The student holding the pad for me that day tends do things very loosely or sloppily as if he hasn't slept in days or his mind is somewhere else. Although to his defense my right kicks are a couple inches higher than my left, so I guess he probably thought it would land in the same place and didn't hold it close to his body enough.

 

Well in that case...sounds as if he needs to work on his padholding and you need to work on targeting so you can still work with people that aren't perfect pad holders.

 

Very true, but in practice different training partners provide different sorts of honesty in training. Some are good to improve your technical skills, some make you work hard, some keep you on your toes, and so on. That's one of the reasons that the more training partners the better, each new partner shows up something new for you to work on.

 

As a counter point to this he's been training 2 months and people are wanting him to do high kicks and finger jabs to the throat safely.

 

Out of interest - when I get tired and or hungry my coordination does not so much drop off as disappear down a precipice. Past a certain point and its pretty much guaranteed that I will accidentally knee or elbow somebody.

Do other people experience the same thing?

 

typed on one thread, posted on another???

 

I don't even have to be tired or hungry to do that.