I don’t care how Bad Ass you are. That does not matter in a teacher.

I try to follow many martial artists, combat sports folks and self-defense experts on social media.

One thing I noticed is either directly or indirectly they constantly talk about how hardcore they are, how hardcore their training was, how hardcore their life experience was. They want to convince the world they are super-badass. And that by not training or agreeing with them, everyone else is not badass.

Sometime even if they aren’t cutting others down, they are constantly trying to communicate how tough they are or their students.

Now sometimes it makes sense, a teacher has to communicate how some of the stuff they are teaching works. That’s what most of them are doing. So I don’t even begrudge martial artists for bragging or humble bragging about shit they have scene, matches they have won, etc etc.

I do however have a problem when it’s to cut down everyone else that has also proven to teach useful stuff or at least helped people. I am not saying there is no such thing as martial arts that arn’t pure and utter crap, there are. But sometimes different people train for different goals, or martial artists bullshit is another’s gold.

For instance, touch contact point sparring has really gave Karate a bad reputation, and often for good reason. The world and the internet is filled with stories of a dude with six months of boxing beating the shit out of a touch contact sparring champion, or even people with no training. We have the first few UFCs and Thai boxers challenging the shit out of Karateka and smashing them.

Now point sparring is a complex topic, as old school point karate involved actually hitting and staggering a person to score a point, though that was not without it’s problems. Either way the point system was a detriment to karate overall.

I personally believe it was a net negative.

Yet Henry Cejudo and countless MMA fighters either use Karate training from their backgrounds to score an intercepting strike(Sen no Sen) and then get out to win fights, and score clean damaging hits. Some don’t even do karate, but would mimic point karate style fighting.

I personally don’t find it very useful, and for most people it is not. But MMA fighters at the highest level are now finding it useful. Perhaps point karate fighting isn’t foundational in MMA, but it is providing a useful skillset they are using.

And this is despite the fact point karate people often are not ‘tough’ unless they went into karate badass, or they cross train in kickboxing or another hard fighting art. It still has some use.

No one looks at this guy and thinks ‘bad ass’

My own experiences are another example.

Currently my Uechi-Ryu teacher Rick and my MMA coach Calen are my biggest influences in the last five years.

Rick has experienced some violence and dealt with it using his own violence, but I’ve trained with people with far more violent encounters than him, and my MMA coach isn’t what anyone would call a badass, though he commands respect.

Thing is, I’ve learned more from them than some of the most biggest and badass people I have trained under or trained with. One of my students is an ex-con that has been through violent encounters, and both my coaches could beat the shit out of him. He taught me stuff in the sense I could ask him questions about real violence, but otherwise as a martial artist I didn’t learn much from him. Another coach I had taught me a few things I found very useful, gave me a good training environment. But he taught technique based teaching, stuff he has not evolved in years, and his training methodology is outdated. He’s fucking scary tough

Meanwhile Rick and Calen(my MMA coach) have consistently evolved over the last five years, and keep on doing it. I can consistently go to them for advice or examination of things. Even with COVID there is evolution and growth.


And that’s the crux of it. Badassery matters a bit, but being able to think, analyze, critique and evolve what you are doing and other people are doing matters far more than how tough you are.

Now what about tough guys with tough students?

My answer to this question is simple:

DId the teacher make these guys tough, or was the training environment a place that attracted people that were already tough guys?

There are two ways gyms posess great fighters. The first is that you have to be tough to even stand the training or tolerate it, what Rory Miller would call ‘selection’ and thus you have a boxing gym where everyone spars hard all the time, with only young, fit, aggressive and athletic young men reside.

Or you have a place where all sorts come in, weak or strong. But the training methodology builds people up until they become tough, and then they can stand and bang with the best of them.

The first example is only useful to have sparring partners, but often learning in those environments can be limiting. People going hard all the time are afraid to experiment with their sparring and integrate new skills under fear of getting injuries and concusions. Such places makes it too easy to do what is comfortable and safe. It’s hard to personally evolve.

The latter gym often is a culture where hard sparring is more to test out skills already integrated, but the contact and energy is progressive. People go only as hard as needed to create success or failure to integrate new skills. Once new skills are integrated the hard sparring is a test. Rick has an entire concept on how to teach regarding learning, conditioning and testing.

MMA gyms like mine or associations like Straight Blast Gym have a training methodology that is similar. You create movement, broken timing and light resistance, but only enough that a person is on the verge of success or failure. When they can make that work, then increase resistance etc.

Going hard all the time does not allow those zones of learning that Straight blast gym or my karate teacher talk about.

Tough students sometimes are a terrible indicator of whether someone is actually going to teach you something.

If you’re a fat balding middle aged man recovering from a violent attack or a skinny teenage catholic school girl tired of harassment, going into a gym where they try to take each others heads off might not benefit them at all. If they have the gumption to stay, they probably will only go too far. Most likely they will just give up.

They are better off going to a teacher that can progressively cater the training to their needs and build them up to the level to take violence and discomfort.

A good teacher is not tough or simply has tough people training with him. A tough teacher must transmit skills and build you up. A tough teacher takes people who were never tough and makes them into something else.

That is what matters more.

And that is true badassery.