Keeping Training Safe
People starting jiu-jitsu are often concerned about the possibility of injury. It would be irresponsible and dishonest to suggest that injury will never happen. As with all sports, injury will always be a possibility, but we take the following steps to minimize its likelihood in our academy:
- We build a culture of responsible training. Remember: We’re here primarily to learn and have fun! Practitioners are expected to modulate the intensity of their sparring in accordance with their own skill level and the skill level of their sparring partner.
- We take extra care with takedowns in particular. A great many of the injuries that happen during training occur during the transition from standing to the ground. Proper, safe falling techniques (known as “breakfalls”) are practiced as a part of the warmup for each and every class.
- Certain high-risk techniques are either not allowed or limited to more advanced practitioners. Some techniques are simply more likely to cause injury than others. Within the academy, jumping closed guard, scissor takedowns, neck cranks, and slams of any sort are explicitly prohibited. Heel hooks and other turning leg techniques are important and are thus included in the curriculum, but their use in sparring is limited to blue belts and above.
There is nothing in the gym more valuable than one’s training partners. We do everything we reasonably can to keep everyone safe from injury so we never lack friends to share the mats with.
Maintaining Health
Jiu-jitsu is a grappling art, and it puts people in very close contact with one another. If hygiene within the gym is not maintained, people can get sick. We take the following steps to keep our members healthy as they train:
- Mats are cleaned and sanitized at the end of every day of training.
- Sick students must stay home. If you have anything that may be communicable to other members, you must stay off the mats and at home until it is resolved. This includes colds, skin conditions, “pink eye”, COVID, and anything else that might be passed on while training.
- Members must not compromise the hygiene of the training environment with their clothing. This means no shoes on the mat and no bare feet while off them, especially when using the restroom.
- Members must keep nails trimmed and clean.
As with the measures to prevent injury, preventing sickness keeps the mats full of training partners, ensuring that everyone has plenty of people to work with. We ask that all of our students respect the health of their peers just as they would like others to do for them.
