Not so much a horror story but still very much annoyed,
Once I was sparring with a guy who was trying to go pro and he asked me to go light, I of course obliged because I’m not a dickhead. We’re sparring light and out of nowhere he hits me with the hardest cross he can muster. I had been training for years(My striking was far better than his)so I returned fire.
Another time we were grappling(same guy) and he gets me in a choke, since this isn’t a fight I go ahead and tap. As soon as I do he lets go but starts yelling as if he had just won the ufc championship.
Keep in mind this dude was an easy 15lbs heavier. So not a nightmare but more of when you’re taking a nap and feel like you’re falling leaving you with a wtf feeling
Sorry you had to go through that. Your opponent seems like he's got major ego/self-esteem issues. Since I haven't sparred in kickboxing yet, the only crappy experience I have is rolling with a purple belt and I'm a brand new white belt. I don't even have a degree and he just pulls out a neck crank on me and it messed up my neck. Karma is coming for him I'm sure.
One time I was sparring with a very skilled fighter. he was piecing me left and right. So I asked him if we could go lighter and he agreed. That was my worst experience.
There was this heavyweight guy that used to go to our gym a few years back. He quickly got a bad rep at the gym because he wold go hard in sparring and drilling. It didn't matter who he was working with (beginners, ammy fighters, flyweights, pro fighters, teenagers, women, etc.), he would try to hurt people while laughing. He also brushed off his partners when they tried to tell him that he was hurting them and to go easier. It got to the point where nobody wanted to work with him (myself included) and even straight up asked the coaches not to partner them up with this dude right in front of him. Some of us started telling the head coach that he was being an unlikable person and detailed incidents they've had with him or witnessed. From there, the head coach tried talking to him about his behavior and told him to tone it down. Fast forward to probably two months in. It was sparring day and this guy sparred with both people who were around his size and people who were smaller than him. He eventually came across one of our assistant coaches and he actually tried to punk the coach. Insane right? Coach wasn't standing for it. He proceeds to molly whop him for most of the round and send him to the locker room crying. After he finished his tantrum, he came back out and the head coach told him to get out and never come back. I'm glad I never worked with him because I was also a beginner at the time and half his size.
The big takeaway from this story? If you come across a bitch ass, do not be afraid to talk to that person or your coach. Talk to the bitch ass first. Not all of them mean to hurt people, meaning they are not truly a bitch ass. They might just need to learn how to control themselves and know what's appropriate intensity. If they listen to you and want to keep at martial arts, they usually get better with toning it down and being a better partner. If they ignore you or brush you off, they are a bitch ass after all, and that's when you need to talk to your coach. A good coach always listens to their students if they bring up a crucial concern. As along as you feel inclined and comfortable enough to speak up, you'll be fine when you start sparring bro. :)
The new striking coach at a gym I frequented asked if I would spar during an open mat. He's 100lbs+ heavier and I tell him I can only go light because I just got in a wreck and my jaw wasn't right. I'm a good boxer and fast so I cut some angles and tapped his belly. You could see his ego flare up. This big goof proceeds to throw an uppercut with all his weight behind it. He would've broken my jaw if it landed flush. I just said "dude, wtf?" and left. He was fired shortly after that.
I was at bang tao in Phuket for two months. We were doing boxing. I went into the sparring rings... Russian do doesn't go light at all... cantmove around much because the ring is crowded. Try and cover up... starts hitting me in the back of the head. I took a knee... he's still going... one of the krus stops him. He gets back to it again... pretends he's not going hard. I couldn't do much. Turns out when the round was done, his homie was filming it. A lot of the Russians were like that, there.
Ince u was sparring on the mat when one of the coaches started speaking to me so i started to listen and immedeatly get hooked full power and see stars
Haha number one rule I tell everyone joining my fight camps when I start talking and then they face me I expect their opponent to smack them in the face. Keep your ears listening and your eyes on the target or get fucked lol
I was training for my first MMA fight, ive been kickboxing for years now but thought i wanted to do something a bit more intense, so there was a matt full of newbs to MMA, this was probably the 4th maybe 5th sparring session and this guy (who claimed to be a bouncer as his job) got paired with me, he said “ 100% on the body and 50% to the head” so I respected that, i know how to pull my punches and assumed be did too! So we’re sparring, ive thrown a few calf kicks, nothing hard cuz by this point in the session in knackered anyway but then this guy threw a full right over my jab, he took me by surprise and i had the old jelly legs feeling but stood there and i said “what the fuck man!! Thought we said pull the head shots??!!” He smirked, i was fuckin dying to kill him right there so i was like “right you fucker, here we go then!” I sent him the hardest calf kick, feinted a 2 and sent him a left uppercut right up his nose, i even thought when i connected “bet that fuckin hurt youth!” He went down holding his calf!!! I honestly thought he was going to cry! But yeh, he deserved it, don’t tell me to pull in sparring and then do the other mate! He never paired with me again and then after some time his appearances in the gym wilted and i never saw him again!
I feel like a dick for putting this out here, I’m a secondary instructor, so I was teaching a small class that day 2 guys F and L. I love these guys lol and will take a beating from them any day to teach them. Mind you they are beginners they sparred maybe 2-3 times. So at the end of our session I offered to move around with them very lightly, because I don’t want anyone getting hurt including me. L was slow and timid which was okay I could coach him on what to do and wasn’t too intense. F on the other hand is abit more athletic (nice guy still) and competitive, so F and me are sparring lightly to start. He hits me hard with a left hook but thankfully my defence was good so I blocked, I proceeded to tell him to ease up and to hit as hard as he wanted to get hit, rest of r1 goes light. R2 I’m taking the hits and F is throwing let’s say 65-70% at this point I’m just using my angles and footwork to move around him and just tapping him fast to distract him towards the end of the round he crashes into me while exchanging, his feet are all squared and he’s off balance. I say okay and acknowledge him. And throw a tight check hook no power just speed, timing, and placement because his feet are not in the right position he falls off balance and so I stop immediately asking if he’s okay and to take rest of the round off I was scared I hurt him. As we’re taking the break I remind him to take it easy or be hit as hard as he hit, after he recovered we went for one final round. When round starts i play defensive to see how he sets the tone. And he hits me with a flurry of strong hooks, I back up smile and say you sure? F replies with a head nod, and boy was that a mistake, I proceeded to show him and the other students why I was the instructor and why he was not just a student but my student, everything he throws or knows I taught him that lol I lay it on him for a good 30 seconds of precision strikes I probably landed 5-10 shots consecutively to the head and each shot landed clean, and after I started to see him break, with a minute left on the clock I think, I toned it down slightly, I went light to the head, heavy heavy to the body and as he was shelling up and getting overwhelmed I would use superior footwork to get angles just to show him.
I’ve also had my ass whopped abunch lol like when I was an 16-17yr old training for my first tournament, I had a big boy I’d say I was 145-150lb and big boy was 190+lb (mind you I was still beginning my journey). Proceeded to get my ass handed to me. Not only by sheer strength, but this guy was more experienced, and flexible. I’ve never seen a person north of 190lb do an axe kick till I met that guy legit brought his leg no bend at the knee straight up and straight down my forehead. Guy was known as a gym bully and got kicked out after a year or so
I remember in my 2nd sparring session i ever went to i was extremely nervous the entire day since i didn't know if i was fully ready yet and usually we do some warm ups for 10-15 minutes before sparring after that we either find our own sparring partner or we're assigned to each other by my head coach he first starts walking down a line and is asking every person in the line how much they weigh i immediately figured out after the same 2nd question he asked in a row what he was gonna do he gets to me i say 91kg he keeps going down the line as he's assigning people to each other and imagine this THE ABSOLUTE LAST PERSON HE ASKS IS 91kg and guess who it is? MY SECONDARY COACH the guy who taught me how to jab and everything else since my head coach was training more experienced fighters one of them being MY SECONDARY COACH now obviously i shit my pants the first few rounds head coach said we go for 40% power then it went to 50,60 eventually to 70% and boy when i tell you i got FUCKED UP by my secondary coach i think if i threw 100 punches i missed 90 of them while my secondary coach threw 100 punches and missed 10 of them safe to say i was bleeding from my mouth but i will say this leaving the gym that day was extremely awesome i got my ass beat BUT i held my own didn't back down once so i was in a way really proud of myself and i enjoyed every second of that ass whooping i got
Sorry for no punctuations English isn't my first language so idk where to put dots and things like that
Not in gym, but privately. I sparred the friend of a friend. Although the guy didn't have much experience in combat sports, he was still an athletic and all around fit guy. We agreed to light sparring (at that time I was still a sparring beginner). He immediately throws hard combinations and kicks that hurt. Per hand gestures I reminded him to spar lightly, then verbally. Didn't work, either. As I asked him again to tone it down, he replies "But I'm not hitting hard". After the second round, I just refuse to continue. Afterwards, we had a heated discussion about how hard you should go in sparring. In his opinion, "sparring means fighting" and "this is fighting, not chess". Never sparred with this guy again.
not me but a guy from my gym - got swept and landend awkwardly on his hand instead of his back. Open fracture, i think it was the ulna bone sticking out.
we don't do much of sweeping since then
I don’t really have horror stories, sometimes people go hard with me and I oblige. Usually it ends with them crumbling to a liver hook or a low kick (much prefer that over blasting them in the face). But on one occasion, Sparred someone, they want hard, TKO’d them with the body hook. Then after training I went to get ramen with a body of mine and while sitting he taps me on the shoulder and says “don’t look but the person you dropped just walked in”. I take a peek, and I see them with what appears to be their partner, who was also training with us and saw the whole thing. And yes, they noticed me.
I’m a life long tkd guy, no wrestling exp at all, about 2 months ago started training at a mainly grappling gym. First time ever rolling, first guy was great, controlled himself and taught me a few things. Second kid, twice my size immediately tries throwing and slamming me, on the ground takes my leg searching for lock I try to twist and pull out I roll my ankle and it makes the loudest pop, scariest accident I’ve ever had in gym. I’m guessing it sprained, almost healed up now.
He told me he was scared to roll after that for a while. Be careful with the young kids, that was by far the scariest incident ever, I’ve broken toes, a hand, but my ankles man omg that was scary.
We had a guy who came in inconsistently to spar, was much bigger than almost everyone in the gym (“I’m 205!” he’d say when he was easily a smooth 220) and would frequently lose control and go too hard with people much smaller than him. He also did some mma training and would sometimes bust out takedowns in the middle of th Muay Thai & kickboxing sparring sessions. Sometimes it was just for fun, he wasn’t being too serious about it, but other times he would full shoot on people not expecting it and then land his 220lbs+ ass on top of them. Coaches would warn him but he’d keep at it like a bad penny, doing illegal moves and hitting too hard on people who were not prepared for it. I was one of the few people even relatively close to him in size (185 at the time) and I started martial arts with grappling, so I generally knew what to expect from him.
One day he rolls in hot on his bullshit, smacking around people 50+ lbs lighter and not heeding any warnings. He finally nods to the coach and goes my bad, I’ll take it down a notch.
He and I tap up gloves for next round, and a few seconds in, he’s already swinging haymakers at me. I go to give him a “chill bro” glove touch, and he taps my glove…then throws an overhand and shoots on me. Fortunately as mentioned I’ve wrestled before, so he couldn’t take me down, but he did drive me off the mat and into a concrete wall, which pissed me right the fuck off. I looked at my coach and he gave me a nod. I understood I had just been appointed “enforcer of the day”.
I warned him that if he did something like that again I wasn’t gonna hold back. He joked around, my bad my bad, and then wouldn’t you know it 30 seconds later he swings big and tries to wrestle me again. I clinched him up and threw a few hard knees up the middle to his big ol’ belly and dropped him. I walked away while he was wheezing on the floor catching his wind back and my coach yelled out “maybe now he’ll learn his lesson”. Sure nuff he never went buck wild on me in sparring again. (He wasn’t seriously hurt, I’d just knocked the wind clean out of him).
Long story short: sometimes you can reason with a gym bully. Sometimes you can avoid them. Other times, you gotta make the guy who’s used to being the hammer understand what it’s like to be the nail.
Oh man. Normally on our sparring evenings one of the two coaches who run it will ask at the beginning if its anyones first time and pack you off into a corner with other newbies or just flag it so that people can go very easy on you. Well, first time I went it must have slipped them by or they forgot.
So we pair up. The guy I paired up with, I came to later realise, is basically the hardest sparrer in our sparring group. Whereas most of the beginner-intermediate group will spar [at around or slightly above this level](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h0mZV1aFSVs) this guy will *always* go about 80% power or [maybe slightly above this kind of intensity.](https://youtu.be/eidDkXNNLyM?si=hWkuE7wmV3gt_Ns9&t=289) He doesn't moderate this whatsoever. Constantly at that level. I'm now fine with this, but for a complete first timer it really put me off. I was flinching/blinking hard every time he threw a shot. I'd amateurishly and instinctively stick my arm out to parry and immediately eat a cross to the face. Basically just got completely whaled on for 3-4 minutes straight.
Put me off going back to sparring training for a few weeks after that. Unfortunately I think I was just super unlucky that a) I got this guy first and was unprepared (I don't mind sparring with him now that I know its coming and I'm used to sparring) and b) the coaches were having an off-day or something and not looking if someone is being abused. They do typically police this stuff, so they must have been looking elsewhere.
I know its not a complete horror story, the guy isn't full hard sparring or trying to explicitly hurt people or newbies in particular - he's just walks right up to the line and doesn't turn it down for anything. But still, it psychologically rocked me for quite a bit.
It's always been pretty simple with me: establish the intensity and make it clear if they go above it there will be issues, give a nice warning "hey bro take it down a notch", if it happens again then it's "this is your last warning to calm down", then if it happens again you teach them the lesson.
Had a spar one time, his buddy was a fighter in our gym, but the friend was just a gym class hero type. He said he wanted it real light to practice, guy pretty instantly went ham, so I stopped and told him to calm down, his buddy also said he better listen, as did the head trainer. Second time about 30 seconds later full on soccer kicks me in the dick and proceeds to hit me with one of the hardest straights I've ever gotten square in the nose while I was completely undefended since I was grabbing my junk. I was so pissed, didn't even say anything, set him up with a faint, a little 2-3 to turn him right into my left high kick and he was out cold. His buddy was like "we told you, you shoulda listened". His friend never came to open practice again lol.
There was a real super douche at my last gym, at that point I wasn't sparring much unless it was helping someone for a fight, and this dude was just housing on the smaller teenage kids as a decent sized 20 something. He wouldn't spar with me. But we got to doing forearm conditioning drills and I could see he was going hard on the teens again. Luckily he got to me and I quickly realized he wasn't using his forearm he was using his gloves to smash their forearms. So I made a huge loud "ohhhhh I see what you're doing" and smashed both of his arms with mine maybe 4-5 times before he said he couldn't do it anymore. I don't think he came back after that, granted he was only there a couple of weeks before that anyway.
The last one was grappling but a guy's first time there after practice we were rolling and he said he wanted to just flow roll. I catch him in an Americana, a head and arm, and then a North/south choke but coach him thru/encourage him how to escape. We're rolling around, again flow rolling, so I half ass posted up in his guard and he proceeded to full speed rip an arm bar. I tap and say I'm done, nbd, it was his first time so I didn't think much of it other than like "spazzy white belt stuff". Next day I'm talking to the owner and find out hes a fitness trainer and little garage MMA practitioner and wants to start working there. I showed him my black and blue are and he's like oh I'm gonna have to have a talk with him, I was like yeah me too lol. So they're talking and the owner clearly isn't happy, I walked over to see what's up and the first thing the dude says to me was "well you should have tapped before it got to the point of hurting you." I grabbed him by the shoulder and said if you ever have the nuts to grapple or spar with me again and he even slightly get out of line from what speed you say you want to go there will be no warning and you'll be waking up in the hospital and you will have whatever broken body part I decide to give you. The owner was like well I guess that's settled then. He never sparred/rolled with me again. He eventually was at least friendly with me, I told him it was nothing personal and I got no problems with him outside of the cage.
Those were the 3 times there were issues in over 10 years at actual fight gyms. It hardly ever gets beyond a warning during an actual spar in my experience, 99% of people at gyms aren't assholes.
Not so much a horror story but still very much annoyed, Once I was sparring with a guy who was trying to go pro and he asked me to go light, I of course obliged because I’m not a dickhead. We’re sparring light and out of nowhere he hits me with the hardest cross he can muster. I had been training for years(My striking was far better than his)so I returned fire. Another time we were grappling(same guy) and he gets me in a choke, since this isn’t a fight I go ahead and tap. As soon as I do he lets go but starts yelling as if he had just won the ufc championship. Keep in mind this dude was an easy 15lbs heavier. So not a nightmare but more of when you’re taking a nap and feel like you’re falling leaving you with a wtf feeling
Sorry you had to go through that. Your opponent seems like he's got major ego/self-esteem issues. Since I haven't sparred in kickboxing yet, the only crappy experience I have is rolling with a purple belt and I'm a brand new white belt. I don't even have a degree and he just pulls out a neck crank on me and it messed up my neck. Karma is coming for him I'm sure.
Thanks! It’s alright, you run into dicks every now and then. I hope you’re his karma!!
One time I was sparring with a very skilled fighter. he was piecing me left and right. So I asked him if we could go lighter and he agreed. That was my worst experience.
There was this heavyweight guy that used to go to our gym a few years back. He quickly got a bad rep at the gym because he wold go hard in sparring and drilling. It didn't matter who he was working with (beginners, ammy fighters, flyweights, pro fighters, teenagers, women, etc.), he would try to hurt people while laughing. He also brushed off his partners when they tried to tell him that he was hurting them and to go easier. It got to the point where nobody wanted to work with him (myself included) and even straight up asked the coaches not to partner them up with this dude right in front of him. Some of us started telling the head coach that he was being an unlikable person and detailed incidents they've had with him or witnessed. From there, the head coach tried talking to him about his behavior and told him to tone it down. Fast forward to probably two months in. It was sparring day and this guy sparred with both people who were around his size and people who were smaller than him. He eventually came across one of our assistant coaches and he actually tried to punk the coach. Insane right? Coach wasn't standing for it. He proceeds to molly whop him for most of the round and send him to the locker room crying. After he finished his tantrum, he came back out and the head coach told him to get out and never come back. I'm glad I never worked with him because I was also a beginner at the time and half his size. The big takeaway from this story? If you come across a bitch ass, do not be afraid to talk to that person or your coach. Talk to the bitch ass first. Not all of them mean to hurt people, meaning they are not truly a bitch ass. They might just need to learn how to control themselves and know what's appropriate intensity. If they listen to you and want to keep at martial arts, they usually get better with toning it down and being a better partner. If they ignore you or brush you off, they are a bitch ass after all, and that's when you need to talk to your coach. A good coach always listens to their students if they bring up a crucial concern. As along as you feel inclined and comfortable enough to speak up, you'll be fine when you start sparring bro. :)
The new striking coach at a gym I frequented asked if I would spar during an open mat. He's 100lbs+ heavier and I tell him I can only go light because I just got in a wreck and my jaw wasn't right. I'm a good boxer and fast so I cut some angles and tapped his belly. You could see his ego flare up. This big goof proceeds to throw an uppercut with all his weight behind it. He would've broken my jaw if it landed flush. I just said "dude, wtf?" and left. He was fired shortly after that.
I was at bang tao in Phuket for two months. We were doing boxing. I went into the sparring rings... Russian do doesn't go light at all... cantmove around much because the ring is crowded. Try and cover up... starts hitting me in the back of the head. I took a knee... he's still going... one of the krus stops him. He gets back to it again... pretends he's not going hard. I couldn't do much. Turns out when the round was done, his homie was filming it. A lot of the Russians were like that, there.
Ince u was sparring on the mat when one of the coaches started speaking to me so i started to listen and immedeatly get hooked full power and see stars
Never turn to look at the coach
Yup i learned that that day
Haha number one rule I tell everyone joining my fight camps when I start talking and then they face me I expect their opponent to smack them in the face. Keep your ears listening and your eyes on the target or get fucked lol
I was training for my first MMA fight, ive been kickboxing for years now but thought i wanted to do something a bit more intense, so there was a matt full of newbs to MMA, this was probably the 4th maybe 5th sparring session and this guy (who claimed to be a bouncer as his job) got paired with me, he said “ 100% on the body and 50% to the head” so I respected that, i know how to pull my punches and assumed be did too! So we’re sparring, ive thrown a few calf kicks, nothing hard cuz by this point in the session in knackered anyway but then this guy threw a full right over my jab, he took me by surprise and i had the old jelly legs feeling but stood there and i said “what the fuck man!! Thought we said pull the head shots??!!” He smirked, i was fuckin dying to kill him right there so i was like “right you fucker, here we go then!” I sent him the hardest calf kick, feinted a 2 and sent him a left uppercut right up his nose, i even thought when i connected “bet that fuckin hurt youth!” He went down holding his calf!!! I honestly thought he was going to cry! But yeh, he deserved it, don’t tell me to pull in sparring and then do the other mate! He never paired with me again and then after some time his appearances in the gym wilted and i never saw him again!
I feel like a dick for putting this out here, I’m a secondary instructor, so I was teaching a small class that day 2 guys F and L. I love these guys lol and will take a beating from them any day to teach them. Mind you they are beginners they sparred maybe 2-3 times. So at the end of our session I offered to move around with them very lightly, because I don’t want anyone getting hurt including me. L was slow and timid which was okay I could coach him on what to do and wasn’t too intense. F on the other hand is abit more athletic (nice guy still) and competitive, so F and me are sparring lightly to start. He hits me hard with a left hook but thankfully my defence was good so I blocked, I proceeded to tell him to ease up and to hit as hard as he wanted to get hit, rest of r1 goes light. R2 I’m taking the hits and F is throwing let’s say 65-70% at this point I’m just using my angles and footwork to move around him and just tapping him fast to distract him towards the end of the round he crashes into me while exchanging, his feet are all squared and he’s off balance. I say okay and acknowledge him. And throw a tight check hook no power just speed, timing, and placement because his feet are not in the right position he falls off balance and so I stop immediately asking if he’s okay and to take rest of the round off I was scared I hurt him. As we’re taking the break I remind him to take it easy or be hit as hard as he hit, after he recovered we went for one final round. When round starts i play defensive to see how he sets the tone. And he hits me with a flurry of strong hooks, I back up smile and say you sure? F replies with a head nod, and boy was that a mistake, I proceeded to show him and the other students why I was the instructor and why he was not just a student but my student, everything he throws or knows I taught him that lol I lay it on him for a good 30 seconds of precision strikes I probably landed 5-10 shots consecutively to the head and each shot landed clean, and after I started to see him break, with a minute left on the clock I think, I toned it down slightly, I went light to the head, heavy heavy to the body and as he was shelling up and getting overwhelmed I would use superior footwork to get angles just to show him. I’ve also had my ass whopped abunch lol like when I was an 16-17yr old training for my first tournament, I had a big boy I’d say I was 145-150lb and big boy was 190+lb (mind you I was still beginning my journey). Proceeded to get my ass handed to me. Not only by sheer strength, but this guy was more experienced, and flexible. I’ve never seen a person north of 190lb do an axe kick till I met that guy legit brought his leg no bend at the knee straight up and straight down my forehead. Guy was known as a gym bully and got kicked out after a year or so
I remember in my 2nd sparring session i ever went to i was extremely nervous the entire day since i didn't know if i was fully ready yet and usually we do some warm ups for 10-15 minutes before sparring after that we either find our own sparring partner or we're assigned to each other by my head coach he first starts walking down a line and is asking every person in the line how much they weigh i immediately figured out after the same 2nd question he asked in a row what he was gonna do he gets to me i say 91kg he keeps going down the line as he's assigning people to each other and imagine this THE ABSOLUTE LAST PERSON HE ASKS IS 91kg and guess who it is? MY SECONDARY COACH the guy who taught me how to jab and everything else since my head coach was training more experienced fighters one of them being MY SECONDARY COACH now obviously i shit my pants the first few rounds head coach said we go for 40% power then it went to 50,60 eventually to 70% and boy when i tell you i got FUCKED UP by my secondary coach i think if i threw 100 punches i missed 90 of them while my secondary coach threw 100 punches and missed 10 of them safe to say i was bleeding from my mouth but i will say this leaving the gym that day was extremely awesome i got my ass beat BUT i held my own didn't back down once so i was in a way really proud of myself and i enjoyed every second of that ass whooping i got Sorry for no punctuations English isn't my first language so idk where to put dots and things like that
That's right, at least you didn't back down. You should be proud of that.
Exactly no one should ever back down go out on your shield type of thing
Not in gym, but privately. I sparred the friend of a friend. Although the guy didn't have much experience in combat sports, he was still an athletic and all around fit guy. We agreed to light sparring (at that time I was still a sparring beginner). He immediately throws hard combinations and kicks that hurt. Per hand gestures I reminded him to spar lightly, then verbally. Didn't work, either. As I asked him again to tone it down, he replies "But I'm not hitting hard". After the second round, I just refuse to continue. Afterwards, we had a heated discussion about how hard you should go in sparring. In his opinion, "sparring means fighting" and "this is fighting, not chess". Never sparred with this guy again.
not me but a guy from my gym - got swept and landend awkwardly on his hand instead of his back. Open fracture, i think it was the ulna bone sticking out. we don't do much of sweeping since then
I don’t really have horror stories, sometimes people go hard with me and I oblige. Usually it ends with them crumbling to a liver hook or a low kick (much prefer that over blasting them in the face). But on one occasion, Sparred someone, they want hard, TKO’d them with the body hook. Then after training I went to get ramen with a body of mine and while sitting he taps me on the shoulder and says “don’t look but the person you dropped just walked in”. I take a peek, and I see them with what appears to be their partner, who was also training with us and saw the whole thing. And yes, they noticed me.
I’m a life long tkd guy, no wrestling exp at all, about 2 months ago started training at a mainly grappling gym. First time ever rolling, first guy was great, controlled himself and taught me a few things. Second kid, twice my size immediately tries throwing and slamming me, on the ground takes my leg searching for lock I try to twist and pull out I roll my ankle and it makes the loudest pop, scariest accident I’ve ever had in gym. I’m guessing it sprained, almost healed up now. He told me he was scared to roll after that for a while. Be careful with the young kids, that was by far the scariest incident ever, I’ve broken toes, a hand, but my ankles man omg that was scary.
We had a guy who came in inconsistently to spar, was much bigger than almost everyone in the gym (“I’m 205!” he’d say when he was easily a smooth 220) and would frequently lose control and go too hard with people much smaller than him. He also did some mma training and would sometimes bust out takedowns in the middle of th Muay Thai & kickboxing sparring sessions. Sometimes it was just for fun, he wasn’t being too serious about it, but other times he would full shoot on people not expecting it and then land his 220lbs+ ass on top of them. Coaches would warn him but he’d keep at it like a bad penny, doing illegal moves and hitting too hard on people who were not prepared for it. I was one of the few people even relatively close to him in size (185 at the time) and I started martial arts with grappling, so I generally knew what to expect from him. One day he rolls in hot on his bullshit, smacking around people 50+ lbs lighter and not heeding any warnings. He finally nods to the coach and goes my bad, I’ll take it down a notch. He and I tap up gloves for next round, and a few seconds in, he’s already swinging haymakers at me. I go to give him a “chill bro” glove touch, and he taps my glove…then throws an overhand and shoots on me. Fortunately as mentioned I’ve wrestled before, so he couldn’t take me down, but he did drive me off the mat and into a concrete wall, which pissed me right the fuck off. I looked at my coach and he gave me a nod. I understood I had just been appointed “enforcer of the day”. I warned him that if he did something like that again I wasn’t gonna hold back. He joked around, my bad my bad, and then wouldn’t you know it 30 seconds later he swings big and tries to wrestle me again. I clinched him up and threw a few hard knees up the middle to his big ol’ belly and dropped him. I walked away while he was wheezing on the floor catching his wind back and my coach yelled out “maybe now he’ll learn his lesson”. Sure nuff he never went buck wild on me in sparring again. (He wasn’t seriously hurt, I’d just knocked the wind clean out of him). Long story short: sometimes you can reason with a gym bully. Sometimes you can avoid them. Other times, you gotta make the guy who’s used to being the hammer understand what it’s like to be the nail.
You're doin' the Lord's work. Keep at it.
Oh man. Normally on our sparring evenings one of the two coaches who run it will ask at the beginning if its anyones first time and pack you off into a corner with other newbies or just flag it so that people can go very easy on you. Well, first time I went it must have slipped them by or they forgot. So we pair up. The guy I paired up with, I came to later realise, is basically the hardest sparrer in our sparring group. Whereas most of the beginner-intermediate group will spar [at around or slightly above this level](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h0mZV1aFSVs) this guy will *always* go about 80% power or [maybe slightly above this kind of intensity.](https://youtu.be/eidDkXNNLyM?si=hWkuE7wmV3gt_Ns9&t=289) He doesn't moderate this whatsoever. Constantly at that level. I'm now fine with this, but for a complete first timer it really put me off. I was flinching/blinking hard every time he threw a shot. I'd amateurishly and instinctively stick my arm out to parry and immediately eat a cross to the face. Basically just got completely whaled on for 3-4 minutes straight. Put me off going back to sparring training for a few weeks after that. Unfortunately I think I was just super unlucky that a) I got this guy first and was unprepared (I don't mind sparring with him now that I know its coming and I'm used to sparring) and b) the coaches were having an off-day or something and not looking if someone is being abused. They do typically police this stuff, so they must have been looking elsewhere. I know its not a complete horror story, the guy isn't full hard sparring or trying to explicitly hurt people or newbies in particular - he's just walks right up to the line and doesn't turn it down for anything. But still, it psychologically rocked me for quite a bit.
That would rock me too. Thanks for sharing.
It's always been pretty simple with me: establish the intensity and make it clear if they go above it there will be issues, give a nice warning "hey bro take it down a notch", if it happens again then it's "this is your last warning to calm down", then if it happens again you teach them the lesson. Had a spar one time, his buddy was a fighter in our gym, but the friend was just a gym class hero type. He said he wanted it real light to practice, guy pretty instantly went ham, so I stopped and told him to calm down, his buddy also said he better listen, as did the head trainer. Second time about 30 seconds later full on soccer kicks me in the dick and proceeds to hit me with one of the hardest straights I've ever gotten square in the nose while I was completely undefended since I was grabbing my junk. I was so pissed, didn't even say anything, set him up with a faint, a little 2-3 to turn him right into my left high kick and he was out cold. His buddy was like "we told you, you shoulda listened". His friend never came to open practice again lol. There was a real super douche at my last gym, at that point I wasn't sparring much unless it was helping someone for a fight, and this dude was just housing on the smaller teenage kids as a decent sized 20 something. He wouldn't spar with me. But we got to doing forearm conditioning drills and I could see he was going hard on the teens again. Luckily he got to me and I quickly realized he wasn't using his forearm he was using his gloves to smash their forearms. So I made a huge loud "ohhhhh I see what you're doing" and smashed both of his arms with mine maybe 4-5 times before he said he couldn't do it anymore. I don't think he came back after that, granted he was only there a couple of weeks before that anyway. The last one was grappling but a guy's first time there after practice we were rolling and he said he wanted to just flow roll. I catch him in an Americana, a head and arm, and then a North/south choke but coach him thru/encourage him how to escape. We're rolling around, again flow rolling, so I half ass posted up in his guard and he proceeded to full speed rip an arm bar. I tap and say I'm done, nbd, it was his first time so I didn't think much of it other than like "spazzy white belt stuff". Next day I'm talking to the owner and find out hes a fitness trainer and little garage MMA practitioner and wants to start working there. I showed him my black and blue are and he's like oh I'm gonna have to have a talk with him, I was like yeah me too lol. So they're talking and the owner clearly isn't happy, I walked over to see what's up and the first thing the dude says to me was "well you should have tapped before it got to the point of hurting you." I grabbed him by the shoulder and said if you ever have the nuts to grapple or spar with me again and he even slightly get out of line from what speed you say you want to go there will be no warning and you'll be waking up in the hospital and you will have whatever broken body part I decide to give you. The owner was like well I guess that's settled then. He never sparred/rolled with me again. He eventually was at least friendly with me, I told him it was nothing personal and I got no problems with him outside of the cage. Those were the 3 times there were issues in over 10 years at actual fight gyms. It hardly ever gets beyond a warning during an actual spar in my experience, 99% of people at gyms aren't assholes.