Owen Jones, one of Jiu-Jitsu’s most promising competitors, is willing to have the awkward conversation when a training partner makes the room unsafe.
On a recent podcast, he described telling one partner he would not train with him again:
I’ve literally trained with a guy, and I’ve just told him right around: “Yo, I’m actually never going to train with you again.” And he was like, why?
I was like: “ou’re so spazzy. You kicked me like four times. You almost spinning elbowed me. I’ve got nothing productive from this session.”
Jones also compared gym cultures:
Everyone takes it way more seriously in America, like themselves and Jiu-Jitsu… In the UK, everyone’s like, we’re all coming in late.
Maybe like some of them are high, we’re all talking mad s*it to each other, we’re like this guy sucks, this guy does this, and we’re all joking around.
And then we’ll sit there and talk about technique a little bit, and then we’ll train.
The relaxed mood does not water down the work, though:
Everyone wants to go to training because it’s enjoyable and you can still train hard…
When the rounds start, the rounds will still be intense and the rounds will still be hard and people still train with intention, but the environment is a little bit more relaxed.
He doubts the ultra-serious approach pays off:
I think enjoying training is quite important. It’s, like, if you go to the environment and you don’t want to be in that environment, I think it could be quite negative mentally.
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