Ever had a student or training partner snap?

[ThePainFactory]

You never know what is going on with someone, I totally understand that... but this past week we had a young man that had been training off and on at our gym since he was in elementary school (he is now 18) viciously attack one of his grandparents with a knife. This young man has never shown any signs of aggression, mean spirited-ness, and the guys that know him well said that drugs wasn't something he was into. It has really rocked our place. No one, myself included saw this coming. After the attack he phoned the police and confessed, so there is no doubt about his guilt.

I always assumed there would be some sign or way of knowing or recognizing someone who could commit a extremely violent act like this. I guess I have always hoped that through training and good friendships that someone could better deal with situations that like whatever made this young man snap. I am making this post mainly to see if anyone else has had to deal with something similar in their gym and what steps they took to help deal with the impact it has.

 

[Pierced7681]

One time a student punched another student after he got submitted, but never anything like what you’re describing. That’s tough man, sorry to hear.

I wonder how Barrett feels about giving War Machine a brown belt.

 

[mattemate]

Nothing quite like this. Damn. Too bad about that kid. What a waste.

Closest I know of was a weird dude at the UT Club. He's just off. Started trying tiget real fights going with other members, who were both better than him and would probably both stomp him. Sent racist messages in the context of a university setting, so you can imagine the school didn't like it. @Knock Out Ned could tell you about this winner.

 

[IReallyDoTrainUFC]

Violence is wrong. I only train because I can get close to other men who might feel the same way I do... I mean, about training.

 

[ThePainFactory]

I really never thought people would just snap and do something crazy but I had never seen anything out of him besides compassion toward others. From the time he first came in he was the guy who was bigger but always helping little guys train and being a big training bear while they worked technique on him.

Here is an article about it from the local news.
http://www.k105.com/2018/09/07/arre...ndmothers-throat-stabbing-her-multiple-times/

 

[ThePainFactory]

I wonder how Barrett feels about giving War Machine a brown belt.

Man I have thought about that before.

 

[shunyata]

There was an old thread where a black belt went into detail about a former training partner who went off the rails, home invaded and raped a woman, and is now locked up for years.

Unfortunately there was very little to learn from it in terms of "what can we at the gym do about this", the guy trained well and hard for years, dropped out of the community for a bit, and popped back up a violent felon.

 

[Pierced7681]

There was an old thread where a black belt went into detail about a former training partner who went off the rails, home invaded and raped a woman, and is now locked up for years.

Unfortunately there was very little to learn from it in terms of "what can we at the gym do about this", the guy trained well and hard for years, dropped out of the community for a bit, and popped back up a violent felon.

Cameron Earle.

Hopefully someone here can dig up that thread so TS can read it.

 

[Balto]

Damn that's rough. I've seen a lot of stuff, but I can't say it's been to the level of slashing your own grandma's throat.

As far as just tough times in the gym, probably the toughest I've seen was a well liked gym member killing herself. It was pretty sudden so it hurt for a while. But ultimately everyone got through it.

 

[Muppettoker]

Sounds like mental illness.
Metal illness is often not easy to spot. People put on a facade and try to cope and you often don’t realise until they stop coping. Society(especially the macho environment of a gym?) can be a hard place to voice your emotions and vunrabilities and that shit can take its toll on your mental well being.

I guess you and your gym must just accept that some people are afflicted with mental illness and fucked up shit can be the result.

 

[Dirty Holt]

One of the boxing coaches at my old gym got drunk in the parking lot after training one day. Drove home and killed a lady and injured several others. 12 years in prison.

One time we did a 90 minute grind match, no break. One stipulation was that at 90 minutes, you couldnt stop until someone tapped (you tap way faster after 90 minutes of super hard live rolls). Well we had these two meat heads who were on steroids going against each other. Another class comes in and now they are waiting on these guys to start practice. They hit about 115 minutes and still no one was able to get a tap and they started talking shit to each other about stalling. Ramped up the intensity super high. One guy gets a guillotine and the other guy wont tap. Goes out cold and hes out for like 3 minutes, I started to get a little nervous. He comes too and goes full blown roid rage. Screaming, beating the shit out of stuff, punching things, leaves the room and you can hear him just breaking shit all the way to the locker room. The waiting class had like people run out and hide because they were scared. I told him he has to leave and calm down. Both guys came back to practice the next day, trained together like nothing happened.

 

[MaxMMA]

I've seen quite a few people get butthurt from being tapped over the years. Including myself a few times. Which I usually just slapped the mat real hard and yelled some curse words, I didn't verbally attack my training partner for doing what he was supposed to be doing.

Lots of people yell at the dude that taps them, which makes no sense. They just handed you your ass, you want them to kick it again?

The funniest is when people get mad and try to tell you you wouldn't have gotten the sub under different circumstances or rules. "We don't allow neck cranks in this gym!" "Be careful with X technique, it's not allowed in such and such tournament" "let me know your going for x technique before we roll next time, I wasn't prepared for that!"

 

[judoka loca]

When wrestling in high school I tried to do sumi-gaeshi and ended up using it more like a kick, my training partner, a smaller dude than I was, got pretty pissed, balled his hands into fists and screamed "Kick me again!" at me. The coach broke it up before anything could happen though.

At my old judo school a big guy who had been training there for a few months was picking on the newer students and smashing them hard during randori, my coach at the time who was generally very chill asked to spar with him, then hit him with kani-basami and turned it into a heel hook, holding it even after the guy tapped for a second. I was incredibly tense watching that. He really put him in his place, as that guy never did anything again.

 

[georgegreece]

One of the boxing coaches at my old gym got drunk in the parking lot after training one day. Drove home and killed a lady and injured several others. 12 years in prison.

One time we did a 90 minute grind match, no break. One stipulation was that at 90 minutes, you couldnt stop until someone tapped (you tap way faster after 90 minutes of super hard live rolls). Well we had these two meat heads who were on steroids going against each other. Another class comes in and now they are waiting on these guys to start practice. They hit about 115 minutes and still no one was able to get a tap and they started talking shit to each other about stalling. Ramped up the intensity super high. One guy gets a guillotine and the other guy wont tap. Goes out cold and hes out for like 3 minutes, I started to get a little nervous. He comes too and goes full blown roid rage. Screaming, beating the shit out of stuff, punching things, leaves the room and you can hear him just breaking shit all the way to the locker room. The waiting class had like people run out and hide because they were scared. I told him he has to leave and calm down. Both guys came back to practice the next day, trained together like nothing happened.

Did they really hide?

 

[Dirty Holt]

Did they really hide?

Yes, they bolted out the door and got the fuck out of Dodge. My teammate legitimately looked like he was going to kill people. The class waiting was a college Aikido class full of nerds, chicks, and nerdy chicks.

 

[Gl0kta]

Had a bunch of people do it. Mostly the wrong 'uns who you could see coming, but sometimes it's a good guy - the brains a weird thing, get the wrong chemicals in there and anything can happen, can't blame a guy to much for that.

 

[Normot]

Had a guy I used to train MMA with who ended up on the news for stabbing a police officer, had another guy I wrestled with go to jail for fighting a police officer and had a weirdo who showed up to training one day who ended up stabbing the people he was living with a week later.
The first one was the only one that surprised me. He seemed like a completely normal and humble person but mentally illness can fuck a person up.

 

[Knock Out Ned]

A teammate of mine does a lot of traveling for work and drops in at a lot of different gyms.

He became friends with a guy while training at famous BJJ player’s gym.

The guy wanted to come live in Austin, so my friend told him he could stay at his house while he looked for a job and got on his feet. The guy also started training at our gym.

So after awhile this guy isn’t working, and he’s just hanging out at the house all day. My friend tells him that he’s either got to get a job, help out with household chores, etc., or leave.

This guy ends up going back to California for a Fight to Win and my friend tells him that he is not welcome at his house anymore.

The guy comes back to Austin while my friend isn’t home and breaks into his house. He sends him a text message: “Hey asshole, I broke in. Nice try”.

My friend shows up and tells this guy to get out, but he tells my friend to fuck off and to make him leave.

The cops show up and tell my friend that they can’t remove the guy because he invited him to stay there (even though he broke into the house). Austin has funny tenant rules.

My friend goes down to the police department and they tell him the same thing. They can’t get the guy out of his house. At this point my friend told me he was in tears from frustration. He asked the cops, “So, someone can break into someone’s home and that’s legal? What if this was your home”?

So, over the next couple of weeks this guy is living in the house and antagonizing the owner and trying to get the owner to fight him. This guy is eating the home owner’s groceries and watching T.V. on the couch when he comes home.



My teammate goes to the sheriff’s department to start the process of an eviction but they tell him it could take weeks.

He’a desperate and evens e-mails the dude’s coach in California but the coach never responds.

In the end the guy agreed to leave the house for $2,000.

 

[Calibur]

Over five years ago I was helping out with a BJJ class and I started having folks come up and ask for private lessons. I'm like "cool. sure." Didn't charge. Just wanted to spread the art.

My biggest fan was this youngish guy. He was the supervisor to most of the people I worked with and he would motivate people to train with me. That was great, but something about his demeanor gave me the creeps. He kind of came off as Incrediboy from the Incredibles movie.

He would always ask for extra details on technique, particularly on how to make moves more painful. He would cut other people off in conversation and people would just let him because of his job title. Worst of all (in my eyes) he would always opt to roll with people weaker than him and than do the most meatheaded of stuff. gi burns, unecessary knee on bellies. Grip breaks that look suspiciously like punches. Than when someone would give up in frustration he'd crack jokes about it. No surprise here, but since he was only targeting beginners, he was always getting surpassed and there would always be a day where the person he bullied would make him look dumb during rolling. Than like clockwork he would call out a skinny white belt or a woman and absolutely wreck them. One day I watch him take one of the most talented women we had and almost take her shoulder off with a kimura. She fights through the tears, comes back the next day like nothing ever happened. I was AMAZED she didn't quit or file a complaint.

The guy keeps on asking for privates on how to inflict more pain, I start ignoring his texts and he goes radio silent for a few months. Next thing I know he's in jail for aggravated sexual assault.

That is the last time I ignore my instincts when teaching someone. I knew the guy was a predator and down deep I feel like I am responsible for what he's done because I could feel what he was and I chose to give him tools to hurt people anyway. Never again.

Something else to that story. I later learn that this guy was secretly dating the girl he kimura'd. The shoulder break came shortly after she cut it off with him.

Yeah. Never again.

 

[ThePainFactory]

Goes out cold and hes out for like 3 minutes, I started to get a little nervous. He comes too and goes full blown roid rage. Screaming, beating the shit out of stuff

A few years back we had a guy go out and pissed himself. When he woke up and saw what he had done he went a little crazy. I think mostly to cover up his embarrassment.