getting friends to train?

[Feria]

I've met some great people in the gym but would love for some of my pre bjj friends to train with me. Most of them like mma. But when I invite them to try it they don't give it a serious consideration.

Of course I don't want to force them but I genuinely think some would enjoy it. How do I help them get their foot in the door?

 

[The Tortoise]

I drove around with a football, mitts and a baseball in my car for years.
None of my friends would ever get outta the house and off the couch to toss em around and BS.

Realized my friends were lazy pieces of shit.
Got into weightlifting and mma training cause frankly you dont need anybody and others who think like you will gladly spar and roll.

You are different than your current friends and it's time for the shift.

 

[tk99]

You'll likely find that few people share your interest in grappling. Luckily for you, the guys down at the gym are probably cool as shit. Hang with 'em. You'll double your friends and accomplish your objective of making your friends roll with you.

 

[Fenwayfan55]

What I did was teach them the positions and a few very basic moves so that they knew the basic progression of jiu jitsu (guard to half to side to mount). then i started rolling with them extremely lightly, letting them progress through the positions on top and then letting them experience the same from the bottom, leaving openings to use the moves i showed them. that way, when they begin to have some success, they begin to enjoy jiu jitsu and have a clear goal when rolling.

 

[knees_n_elbows]

i have a friend thats a HARDCORE mma fan. will order every PPV and watch them by himself if he cant find some one to watch it with. he has been a fan for years as well...

that said ive been getting him to try to give BJJ a try and come to some classes with me and he aint having it. i even told him i can get him a free month at my acadamey... just give it a try it! to which he responds "its gay and i cant see myself rubbing on another dude getting all sweaty against each other."

i asked him "so what the fuck are you watching on TV then, gay porn"? he says "no, i like to watch the ground game but doing it is just too gay".

 

[SonOfZion**]

ive had 2 really good friends and my cousin all say they were gonna come train. Friends always make excuses, my cousin showed up once and did the drills but never rolled and never came back, he is "too busy" even tho i know he does sweet F all every night.


Oh well, like somebody said, make friends at the gym. Im becoming pretty good friends with a few guys there, we share alot of the same interests besides BJJ.


I used to really want my friends to join, now i dont really care. Im doing this for me at the end of the day because I enjoy it, im sure there are things my friends enjoy that i wouldnt want to do.


Gotta also realize that most ppl just flat out dont like grappling for real, they like the idea of being able to grapple but once the reality of how hard it is and how physically demanding it is, most ppl just think its not worth it.

My wife and kids train. I think it will be funny when they all get to the level of being able to whoop all my friends asses lol

 

[Fenwayfan55]

i guess i should add that, despite the success i had getting him interested, massive mat burn during my friends first class ended any hope of him training full time

 

[Jinzumkei]

forget it. dude this is like rule #2 of grappling: Your friends and family just won't understand.

 

[Clint07]

ive had 2 really good friends and my cousin all say they were gonna come train. Friends always make excuses, my cousin showed up once and did the drills but never rolled and never came back, he is "too busy" even tho i know he does sweet F all every night.

I have a few friends/co-workers that are the same way. they act interested and say they want to come but always have an excuse when you invite them.

 

[MMAwisdom**]

i have a friend thats a HARDCORE mma fan. will order every PPV and watch them by himself if he cant find some one to watch it with. he has been a fan for years as well...

that said ive been getting him to try to give BJJ a try and come to some classes with me and he aint having it. i even told him i can get him a free month at my acadamey... just give it a try it! to which he responds "its gay and i cant see myself rubbing on another dude getting all sweaty against each other."

i asked him "so what the fuck are you watching on TV then, gay porn"? he says "no, i like to watch the ground game but doing it is just too gay".

That's really weird.

Especially when sports like football aren't considered ''gay''. I've only seen 10 minutes of football in my entire life, and 9 of those minutes was a bunch of players laying in a big pile, from a tackle...

 

[Jagcorps_esq]

Some of my friends get it, some don't. If you find a few that do, awesome..but don't except many people to really understand.

 

[knees_n_elbows]

That's really weird.

Especially when sports like football aren't considered ''gay''. I've only seen 10 minutes of football in my entire life, and 9 of those minutes was a bunch of players laying in a big pile, from a tackle...

i think hes just scared to have his friend choke him out. :icon_lol:

 

[Zombles]

Just depends on the friends, I've gotten three friends to try out BJJ and two to try kickboxing. One of them, who smokes, thought it was too physically demanding and never came back. The other four all dig it, none of them are really looking to compete but love the exercise and the competition. Didn't take any doing on my behalf, they were just interested when I mentioned it, and came to check out a class.

Reckon an athletic background helps, three of the four that stayed played sports in high school.

 

[ElectricUncleSa]

I think it's just out of a lot of people's comfort zone and even though most gyms are incredibly friendly, I feel lots of people have this idea that they have to be some sort of athletically prime alpha-male type to even consider getting into it when it couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

[RAWilliams]

Lots of people prefer spectatorship (or outright fantasy) over action. Some people, however, are action oriented. People of the same type tend to mostly be friends with each other. This is why you get groups of overweight or skeletal people huddled around a table in someone's mother's basement, rolling dice and pretending to be Elves. At the other end of the spectrum you get groups of buff people huddled around complex pulley systems, sweating and paying money to pick up heavy objects and put them down again. These groups seldom if ever intersect.

Watching MMA, compared to training in a martial art that is a component of MMA, is a little bit like listening to a D&D dungeonmaster talk about what happens to your fantasy character while he's hiking up the side of a mountain. Sure, the fantasy is fun, but not as much fun as lacing up the hiking boots and doing it yourself.

It sounds to me as though most of your friends are not action oriented. Possibly you picked them up at a less action-oriented time of your life, or maybe you started out not action-oriented but changed. Now, you can share this cool new thing you found, but in order for your friends to get down with it they'll have to become action oriented. It's very hard for a person to change his or her basic nature.

You can lead a horse to water but no matter how much you hold its head under, you probably won't get what you want and eventually you have to start having a conversation about glue.

The upshot is that you cannot change your friends, and you're the odd one out. If you try, all that will happen is that they will bore you and you will terrify them. Better just enjoy them for their own sake without expecting much. They're nice people, but so are the folks at your martial arts gym. Make friends with some of them instead.

 

[max13]

i have a friend thats a HARDCORE mma fan. will order every PPV and watch them by himself if he cant find some one to watch it with. he has been a fan for years as well...

that said ive been getting him to try to give BJJ a try and come to some classes with me and he aint having it. i even told him i can get him a free month at my acadamey... just give it a try it! to which he responds "its gay and i cant see myself rubbing on another dude getting all sweaty against each other."

i asked him "so what the fuck are you watching on TV then, gay porn"? he says "no, i like to watch the ground game but doing it is just too gay".

Sounds like a closet gay to me...

 

[5050buttflopper**]

the way to get your friends to roll is to just grab them and start choking the shit out of em, they have to roll or they will die!

 

[Calvo]

I have a friend who says he wants to do martial arts. He was in the marines. After the Marines it took him more than a year to start looking for a job. I'd imagine it will take over a year for him to start BJJ or even attempt a free class. I drove him to the school because he said he would watch a class, he walked to dunkin donuts and came back at the end of class.

 

[knees_n_elbows]

Sounds like a closet gay to me...

he has a fiance but im beginning to wonder. tbt i think he has a i bit of a ego and is afraid of having it smashed.

 

[Commissar]

The guys at my club train together and we hang out together. But I still have some other friends who don't train, and although a few of them have tried it, they don't stay.