Does YOUR instructor allow you to visit/train at other gyms??!!

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SheerTechnique

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The academy I train at now has an open door policy and most of our upper belts regularly visit and train at other gyms and share our experiences with the instructors. They don't care and actually encourage it to help our learning to see how other people teach and train. He also welcomes our friends to come train with us and take classes from time to time, free of charge. I feel that at this point in my BJJ (5.5 years, currently purple), training all over with different training partners/instructors is very beneficial for my improvement.

I have seen other gyms where they either are highly discouraged from visiting other places with friends or they have to be very secretive about it. I feel that it's unfair for an instructor to be a dictator and not allow his/her students to train with other people at other gym's open mats/training sessions.

Does your instructor allow you to go visit/train at friend's academies or not? Do you feel it's necessary for you growth in BJJ?
 
We train wherever we want, my instructor doesn't care (though in all fairness, he can't 'allow' me to, he's my instructor not my parole officer). I find it helps a lot, you get to roll with people whose games you don't know and who don't know your game, which tells you a lot about how effective your game really is. I would be suspect of a gym that totally discouraged it.
 
Why would you need somebody elses permission to visit another gym? Would seem like a sign of insecurity if said teacher would not want his/her students to visit another gym.
 
When your dojo/team competes then it gets a little more complicated. Probably this is the main reason why it's frowned upon when you visit other instructors
 
My gym definately encourages it. Although.. my gym had a split last year (between instructors) And I went over to the other gym that opened up from that, to talk to them about training at both (because I liked both sets of instructors that split) And they said I had to choose one of them. They wouldn't allow me to train at their gym as long as I was still training at the other...so yea.
 
entersherdog said:
When your dojo/team competes then it gets a little more complicated. Probably this is the main reason why it's frowned upon when you visit other instructors
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Yeah, i can see your point there. But really in the end we are all friends doing the sport that we love to do.
 
That's a grey area I think. I can train wherever, I'm an adult. But we don't want gym hoppers popping in and out, we have built a nice atmosphere of loyalty where we train. Yet, I do see that we suffer without the outside influence at times, especially tournaments.

I would train more places but I just can't afford it.
 
I train at mma gyms all the time and he doesn't care, I don't know how he would feel if I went to a bjj only school because im on the competition team, I doubt he would care though.
 
I think it becomes more of an issue with instructors who have a TMA background but as a generalisation I'd say it's something more associated with TMA schools. Yu know,the whole show loyalty to your master and his techings blah blah.

I went to a school where I felt so much had to be done out of obligation to the school that it really felt it was domintating your life and what you could or could not do.
 
It's not a big deal to visit if you do it the right way. The reason why a lot of instructors frown on it is that most people don't know how to do it the right way.

The right way is to just pop in a friendly gym occasionally to visit with a friend or pay respect to another teacher. This is not normally an issue.

The issues come up because people try to train indefinitely at multiple gyms at the same time. While this can work in some scenarios, it requires serious coordination between all of the instructors involved because training has to be cohesive overall. Most instructors don't have the time to be dealing with this all over the place for each student so they just don't allow it.

Where most people run into problems is they don't realize that it is impossible to train regularly at multiple places if the places aren't on the same page. If the programs are uncoordinated, they will clash and all parties involved will get frustrated. You could sit everybody down and get the programs coordinated, but that is a lot of work and isn't practical in a lot of situations.
 
Mine encourages it.

Really, if you want to expand your knowledge and improve at an optimal level I think it's necessary to keep an open mind and train sometimes in different areas.
 
My instructor doesn't have a problem with. He encourages it.
 
My instructor has rolled at other schools in our area. It can only help to pick your game up. I want to roll anywhere I can, but I am always going to come back home.
 
nowadays, here where I live in Brazil, its totally fine with almost all the top instructors i know... On weekends me and friends get together and hire another friend of hours who was black belt world champion to teach us.

But my instructor was telling me the other day that back in the 90's and even early 2000's it was not unusual for there to be serious confrontations at championships and even fires shot, etc.... Instructors that are super cool and super zen nowadays used to be extremely brutal... its changed alot for the better, becoming a more professional thing, with more philosophy i guess...
 
Well stated Balto!! The way you do things plays a major factor. I've seen situations where the instructor is cool with it then sees his students face on an opposing schools team picture. Lol. Being surprised is NEVER good.

On a side note: I want to nominate Balto for poster of the year!!
 
raines513 said:
I train at mma gyms all the time and he doesn't care, I don't know how he would feel if I went to a bjj only school because im on the competition team, I doubt he would care though.
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Curious, what does being on the "competition team" mean or entail exactly? If you werent on the competition team, would you still be able to compete if you wanted to or would your instructor outright forbid you?
 
SheerTechnique said:
The academy I train at now has an open door policy and most of our upper belts regularly visit and train at other gyms and share our experiences with the instructors. They don't care and actually encourage it to help our learning to see how other people teach and train. He also welcomes our friends to come train with us and take classes from time to time, free of charge. I feel that at this point in my BJJ (5.5 years, currently purple), training all over with different training partners/instructors is very beneficial for my improvement.

I have seen other gyms where they either are highly discouraged from visiting other places with friends or they have to be very secretive about it. I feel that it's unfair for an instructor to be a dictator and not allow his/her students to train with other people at other gym's open mats/training sessions.

Does your instructor allow you to go visit/train at friend's academies or not? Do you feel it's necessary for you growth in BJJ?
Click to expand...

Yes. I sometimes drop by C Gracie in SF or Heros gym depending on my travel schedule. Sometimes they ask for $20 and sometimes they let you come for free.
Sandro Batata is the only one I've seen get weird about coming in for open mat though when you're not a student.
Just depends on the mood.
 
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