Being a good training partner often means thinking of yourself as the other persons coach, and them as yours. Taking on a different mentality then if you where simply trying to beat them.
The senior people usually end up seeing this fairly easily, when working with new people you have to give them the opportunity to learn. Give them big glarring opportunities, don't give it to them though, make them fight for it, but make wure they get the chance, well chances, to do what they have been working on.
So if in class we worked on dealing with a counter punching opponent, then it might be a good idea for the senior to work counterpunching in sparring, giving the newer student the opportunity to work on what was developed. If it was on passing guard, make sure the newer person ends up in your guard a few times.
Does this mean giving them the training while you take it easy? No, far from it. If you force yourself to use different fighting styles you will improve. If you give your opponent help in setting up their attack, then telling them how to block your counters you will be forced to find new ones.
It's not about giving it to them it's giving them the opportunity, which allows them to get better, giving it to them does not. It also forces you to improve and leave your own comfort zone. If you are trying to get your partner to take an attack from side mount, you got to work from the bottom, not only that you get to tell them how to make it difficult for you to escape, how to immobolize you, how to isolate that limb.
So do yourself a favor, help the new guy beat you, but don't let him
On the flip side of it new guys also make for the testing grounds of the more experienced. Yes, if you are new you will likely find yourself on the recieving end of some strange experiments, some will work out, some might not. Yes, we test things on you, get good at doing them to you before trying them on more experienced people. It's a trade off
Another good way to train when you have a skill advantage is to call your shots. Decide what you are going to do to land / submit. And only use that. So pick a technique and you only can win / score / whatever you want to call it with that. To make it even trickier, tell the other guy in advance. Of course you don't want to do this to someone everytime you spar, while they are likely learning much about defending they also need to learn how to win
A similar thing happens when you got people with big size differences. Yes, you could toss that person around and just squish them because you outweight them by 75 lbs, but what good would that do? Protect your ego without learning anything and make them misserable? Not good training.
Smaller people have the obvious benefit of needing good technique to make anything work, they need to fight a different fight, a different strategy. Work their movement and mobility, learn to really use leverage.
But the big folks also have something to gain. Relax, slow down, be concious of what you are doing. Be esspecially consious that you are not simply forcing everything. Truthfully there is definately something to be gained even from working against smaller children, and yes, you should be losing once and a while, most of the time if they are better skilled then you, even if you could just squish them and overpower them by size. Take the opportunity to let the ego have a break, and let the brain do a little more of the work
The senior people usually end up seeing this fairly easily, when working with new people you have to give them the opportunity to learn. Give them big glarring opportunities, don't give it to them though, make them fight for it, but make wure they get the chance, well chances, to do what they have been working on.
So if in class we worked on dealing with a counter punching opponent, then it might be a good idea for the senior to work counterpunching in sparring, giving the newer student the opportunity to work on what was developed. If it was on passing guard, make sure the newer person ends up in your guard a few times.
Does this mean giving them the training while you take it easy? No, far from it. If you force yourself to use different fighting styles you will improve. If you give your opponent help in setting up their attack, then telling them how to block your counters you will be forced to find new ones.
It's not about giving it to them it's giving them the opportunity, which allows them to get better, giving it to them does not. It also forces you to improve and leave your own comfort zone. If you are trying to get your partner to take an attack from side mount, you got to work from the bottom, not only that you get to tell them how to make it difficult for you to escape, how to immobolize you, how to isolate that limb.
So do yourself a favor, help the new guy beat you, but don't let him
On the flip side of it new guys also make for the testing grounds of the more experienced. Yes, if you are new you will likely find yourself on the recieving end of some strange experiments, some will work out, some might not. Yes, we test things on you, get good at doing them to you before trying them on more experienced people. It's a trade off
Another good way to train when you have a skill advantage is to call your shots. Decide what you are going to do to land / submit. And only use that. So pick a technique and you only can win / score / whatever you want to call it with that. To make it even trickier, tell the other guy in advance. Of course you don't want to do this to someone everytime you spar, while they are likely learning much about defending they also need to learn how to win
A similar thing happens when you got people with big size differences. Yes, you could toss that person around and just squish them because you outweight them by 75 lbs, but what good would that do? Protect your ego without learning anything and make them misserable? Not good training.
Smaller people have the obvious benefit of needing good technique to make anything work, they need to fight a different fight, a different strategy. Work their movement and mobility, learn to really use leverage.
But the big folks also have something to gain. Relax, slow down, be concious of what you are doing. Be esspecially consious that you are not simply forcing everything. Truthfully there is definately something to be gained even from working against smaller children, and yes, you should be losing once and a while, most of the time if they are better skilled then you, even if you could just squish them and overpower them by size. Take the opportunity to let the ego have a break, and let the brain do a little more of the work
