443 - Twenty-seven Red Flags to Avoid When Picking a BJJ Club

Speaker 1: Hi, my name's Stephan Kesting. I'm a jiu-jitsu black belt. I've been training in the martial arts for over 44 years at this point. So I think I've got a pretty wide base of experience. And what I'm doing today is running down the red flags for jiu-jitsu gyms in general, and maybe quite a few of them apply to other martial art gyms as well, that might be of interest to you, especially if you're looking for a new school or you're new to the art and you want to start training in the art. Now, some of these are based off of cult dynamics, the things that keep people in cults, the ways that cults manipulate people. And other things are just things that drive me insane because I feel that they're exploitative. And I'm sure you'll agree with some of them and disagree with some others. As New York City Mayor Ed Koch once said, if you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, get your head examined. So let's go through this list of red flags to start with, and then there's a few orange flags, which are mostly rants about specific topics that aren't necessarily disqualifying, but would make me a little bit uneasy if I was going to be training at that school. Hey there, I'm Stephan Kesting and this is the strenuous life podcast. Number one, are clubs that don't allow any kind of cross-training. If you train at this place, then you're not allowed to train at other places. You're not allowed to go to open mats anywhere. You might not even be allowed to show your techniques or trade techniques with friends that train at other clubs. This brings me to related point number two, which is anything, whether it's a ban on cross-training or anything else, that attempts to separate you from your friends and your family. This isolation and this making people sever their social connections and focus in on the cult is a classic cult manipulation tactic because it increases the cost of leaving the cult. If you've joined, the Hare Krishnas, and the Hare Krishnas make you reject, make you cast out members of your family that aren't Hare Krishnas, then when you come to think about leaving the Hare Krishnas, it's a burned earth strategy. There's nothing left for you because you've severed all these connections, making it extremely hard for you to leave. So, beware of jiu-jitsu clubs that do that as well. Number three are clubs that don't allow trial classes. If you're looking around, you should be able to try out a class. Now, this is controversial because friends of mine do not allow trial classes and they have some pretty good reasons for this. They argue that it brings people in who could injure their own students. And some of them just get driven insane by the fact that there are people in a sufficiently large urban center who just go around from free class to free class, to free class, to open mat, to drop in, to free class, to free class, and essentially freeload off the system. I understand their frustration, but at the same time, I don't think I would ever train at a place sight unseen if I didn't know a whole lot about it to start. So this train before you sign up is extremely important to me. And you better have some very good reasons for violating that rule yourself. Maybe you you've talked extensively to the people that train there. Maybe you already know a bunch of the people who train there or the instructor. Then maybe, but in general, no free trial for me is an automatic pass. Related to that are other tactics like not allowing you to talk to the students who are actually training there. That sounds extreme, but I have seen it done. In addition, some clubs won't even allow you to watch a class. If you can't do a free trial class, okay, that's one thing, but at the very least, you should be able to watch a class and make sure that the teaching methods are effective, to make sure that the students seem to be respected, that the instructor isn't insane, and that people are taken seriously. And you, especially if you've been around the martial arts a little bit, will be able to pick up on this just by watching a class. So if you can't watch a class before you sign on the line that is dotted, just hit that eject button and get the hell out of dodge. Another huge red flag is if you Google the instructor's name or the name of the school or the name of the assistant instructors and the words sexual assault, and you get results. Either you get results, or as has happened in the jiu-jitsu community in the past, the Lloyd Irvin scandal brings to mind, you come across hundreds of pages all designed to dilute that search term. Yes, we prevent sexual assault at our school. Here's our special sexual assault training. Uh, the head instructor has received a badge of sexual assault prevention. Well, maybe those first 100 results are to cover up the 101st result, which is a news item or a forum post about that instructor actually being accused of sexual assault. Now, there is a difference between being accused of sexual assault and being guilty of sexual assault. But, by and large, this should be something that should make you very worried about signing up at a at a school, even if it's not proven. It definitely begs further investigation. Now I'm going to run into trouble. I really hate the term master being used in martial arts. Master has a specific meaning. And unless you're in a BDSM relationship, master should not be used on the mats. Now, I know some people are going to say, well, this is a term that we use to people who are seventh degree black belts or above. But you know what? I have a Master of Science. I have a Master of Biology at University of British Columbia. Do I run around introducing myself as Master Kesting? No, I do not. Do I make the, you know, when I go to Starbucks and I get a coffee and they ask for my name, I don't say, make that out to Master Kesting. The term master really implies a super hierarchical thing, which I'm going to get into later when I talk about professor, which I think is a yellow flag, not a red flag. But the term master drives me insane. And in addition, there's clubs and martial arts schools where the term master gets used way before the seventh degree black belt excuse kicks in, especially in the traditional martial arts. So, master, giant blinking red flag. Another red flag are the schools that insist that there's no sparring before blue belt. Now, I like introducing people to some form of sparring or training against resistance right away. I could maybe, maybe see an argument for no sparring until you have your first stripe on your white belt. Maybe. I don't like it, but I'm willing to let that slide. No sparring till blue belt. Think of the time, the money, and the commitment that you've invested to get your blue belt. At minimum, it's going to be a couple years and multiple thousands of dollars. In addition to the opportunity cost because you could be doing something else. You could be training elsewhere. And now you've done this huge investment of your time and now all of a sudden you find out whether it works or not. I'm going to call bullshit on that. If sparring or at the very least training against resistance in some sort of structured game or structured scenario-based sparring isn't part of your training right away, keep walking. Back when I trained in Kung Fu, Hung Gar Kung Fu and Northern Shaolin Kung Fu and other related types of Kung Fu, it was really common to discourage students from asking questions. I was the guy who asked a lot of questions in Kung Fu class. That meant I would ration about one question per month of the head instructor. And already, I was getting pushback from the assistant instructors like, oh God, here he goes to ask yet another question. You are paying good money. You are investing your time. You're representing the school. The school and the school owner are providing services to you. And you have a right to ask questions. Doesn't mean that the guy has to know the answer every time. The guy saying, I don't know the answer to that, but let's find out together is a perfectly valid answer to having a question. But what's not valid is not being allowed to ask questions. And although this is very common in traditional martial arts, I've also run into this in jiu-jitsu. Either you're not allowed to ask questions or you get really flippant answers. You get uh, I remember one guy when you'd ask him, how do I not get armbarred? His answer was, grow shorter arms. And what he was actually trying to do was funnel people into taking private classes and to pay him a hundred bucks an hour, which was quite a lot at the time, to learn an armbar defense. So, beware of discouraging people from asking questions in the first place, or people who don't really uh, answer your question to the best of their ability. Again, even if that answer is, I don't know the answer to that, let's find out together. A real simple red flag is if they don't clean the mats. Jiu-jitsu is about as intimate as two people can get, short of having sex. And the amount of infections that get spread on the mat, typically ringworm or staff, is is it's a considerable problem. So, if the if there isn't an emphasis on hygiene, these problems are just going to get worse and worse. So that includes washing the mats. That includes at some point the instructor when you start the sport, sitting you down and going, hey, if you have a big red circle on your arm, don't come to class. Don't come to class, go get some Lamisil and try putting it on there. Or if you have staff, God help you, you go get that treated before you come back to class. You're not going to die from ringworm, but people have died from staff and had horrific infections. I I remember taking staff seriously for the first time when there was a UFC fighter called Kevin Randleman. Absolutely one of the most athletic and explosive and toughest fighters that there's ever been. Just an absolute beast, so talented, so hard-working. And the staff infection that brought that brought his career to a halt. It didn't kill him. It was another bacteria that killed him. The staff infection that brought his career to a halt just ate the side of his body away. The photos from that that were circulating were just horrific. So, you know, yes, you are big, tough, strong grapplers. And those are teeny, tiny little viruses and bacteria. But you know what? A little teeny virus can take you out. At the very least, the club should be practicing hygiene. Cleaning the mats between classes, making sure that the people who train there don't knowingly bring infections into this training area. Another red flag are high-pressure sales tactics when you go to check out a club. There was a uh, system of jiu-jitsu sales, and I again, I could be wrong about this, but I believe it was perpetuated by Lloyd Irvin, who kind of brought into jiu-jitsu from the whole Dan Kennedy school of marketing, of really, really cranking up the the scarcity and the time pressure for people who are considering signing up for you. It'd be go something like this. Well, thank you so much for checking out our club. Normally, we have a, you know, a $500 initiation fee. But if you sign up right now, we'll waive that. And you're going, oh my God, I'd better sign up right now or I'm going to lose that $500. No, the whole point of that is to stop you from going to the next club and the next club and the next club and comparing. If you're starting out jiu-jitsu, what I've said every time somebody's asked me for help finding a club, if I didn't have a specific recommendation for them, is go train at a whole bunch of different clubs within your radius. Make a list, make a spreadsheet, I'm a nerd. Make a spreadsheet of the locations, where they are, the hours, and then go train at every one of those places. Do your trial class. Then make notes because you're not going to remember. And ask about their pricing structures. And at the end of that, at the end of going to five, six, seven, 10 clubs, your decision will be obvious. It'll be really clear to you because you'll had a chance to compare them head to head. And the club that I choose might not be the club that you choose. You might value competition, and I might value camaraderie. Mazel tov, great. You do your thing. You might want to do no-gi, I might want to do gi. Great. You might want to be more MMA-centered. I might be old and broken and just want to have a fun roll with friends. Great. These clubs all exist, but we all want to steer clear of the scammer clubs and the abusive clubs. So, go train at all these places and if you really get pressured by somebody who wants you to sign up right now, uh, you know, whatever that specific tactic is, I'm going to say, pass. Go to the next place. Another red flag comes from the traditional martial arts like Taekwondo, where you stand there in military formation, and there's no talking between students. Either you're drilling or you're standing at attention, and the instructor's the only person who's talking. And this is sometimes justified. We don't want the students giving each other bad habits. Well, along with high-pressure sales tactics and along with a bunch of other things that were imported from those traditional martial arts systems into today's sales systems and funnels and basically, you know, how buy a package that teaches you how to run your school, often times it's no talking during class or no talking to your training partner. Now, of course, talking to your training partner can devolve into practicing a technique a couple of times and then chit-chatting about the latest Netflix Netflix show. Sure, that can happen. But if you weigh it against the alternative of no talking with your training partner during class ever, that's really a red flag because it it it implies that the only source of knowledge comes from above, from the instructor, and that they have this platonically ideal image of what the martial art should be, and that you would be a fool to not actually, you're not only a fool, you're transgressing morality itself by talking. And I'm going to say that's bullshit. Yeah, when you're training, try to focus on training. Try and hit more reps. And you could if an instructor goes, hey, come on, mice. Like, let's do some actual training. Cool. But if it's a blanket rule against talking to your your training partner, then hard out. Related to this is an instructor who never quite went into the army, but is pretty sure he would have been the best Navy SEAL of all time. So he runs his club like a boot camp. He lines everybody up. Everybody's standing there at attention. He's yelling and screaming, usually right after having given a lecture on how jiu-jitsu improves self-control, and then he's losing his self-control. You are not a boot camp recruit. You're a grown adult. And this is not your drill sergeant. This is a person that you are paying to teach you jiu-jitsu or whatever other martial art. He's a coach, sure, but he's not your he's not your drill sergeant. He's not your regimental sergeant major. He's not above you in some strict military hierarchy. If they want to do that crap, great. Let them join the army. Let them see if they can make it through boot camp and eventually become a drill sergeant. Then they can do that to recruits, but not to people who are paying for the privilege of being taught. Another red flag is somebody whose primary pitch is how bad all the other schools are. Or somebody who in class keeps on going on about how everybody else, other than him or her, but usually him, is doing everything wrong. There's more than one way to skin a cat, right? There there's people with very, very different approaches to the art have won the world championships in gi and in no-gi. So there is no one truth, light, and way. So anyone claiming to be the sole recipient of the only right way to do it, that's a giant red flag. Maybe it's a right way to do it, but what this speaks to is the size of their ego. And you might end up finding out that there's not enough room in that dojo for the size of their ego and actually taking care of their students. Another red flag is an instructor who chronically dates their students. Now, I'm willing to cut a tiny bit of leeway here. People date based on proximity. If they're spending a ton of time, yeah, it's quite likely that, you know, if you're single and there's somebody else at the club who's single, even if you're an instructor, that that relationship could happen. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is the instructor who basically bangs every single hot girl that passes through his club. Even if he's married himself. So, you know, I again, I'm willing to cut a tiny bit of slack for an instructor who feels an attraction for a student, a student who feels an attraction for an instructor, and they carefully navigate that in a way that doesn't make everyone else feel uncomfortable and makes sure that the instructor isn't taking advantage of his status as an instructor to essentially trick or force people into a relationship. But the serial dating students, red flag, hard out. Then there's galaxy brain. This is a term that's entered the popular vocabulary, and it was coined, I believe, by my friends over at Decoding the Gurus podcast. And this is the idea that just because somebody's an expert in one field, that they are now qualified to dispense advice on every field. Right? You yes, I'm a jiu-jitsu black belt, and that qualifies me to be pretty much a medical doctor, pretty much a financial investment advisor, pretty much an expert on crypto, an expert on all things astrological and astronomical. This is a huge red flag. Again, it speaks to their ego, and it speaks to the current culture where people think that listening to a thousand episodes of Joe Rogan is pretty much the equivalent of a university degree in the school of life and the school of everything. That's just not the case. So, this is a red flag that you have to watch out for because you can get sucked into this. It's a very natural thing to say, well, this instructor's really good at taking bodies apart, so maybe he knows a thing or two about putting bodies back together. I just want to reiterate that some of the worst medical advice I have ever received came from martial arts instructors. The one that comes to mind was I had polycystic kidney disease, which was causing my kidneys to fail, resulted in a kidney transplant. And a martial arts instructor who did a bit of jiu-jitsu and Taekwondo, so he he did both and taught both, called me up in a panic one day about how I shouldn't be trying to treat my kidneys with, you know, allopathic, which is a huge uh, red flag, allopathic modern medicine. Instead, I should do herbs and meditation. If I'd followed his advice, I'd be dead. Modern medical science is an amazing thing. I'm alive today because of modern medical science. And so are many of the people who are around you every day. So this idea of galaxy brain that just because you have a black belt, you feel qualified to pontificate on areas that are outside your your area, outside what you've actually studied. That is, in my eyes anyway, a disqualifying feature of a potential instructor. I should have said this earlier, maybe on the cross-training section, but another red flag are clubs or associations that don't allow you to compete. I can understand an instructor who isn't wild about competing. Cool. I can understand an instructor who maybe isn't super supportive of it. He's not going to come down and he's going not going to coach you. That's not everybody's bag. But if you're not allowed to compete, if that's not even an option, that's a huge red flag. What they're trying to do is again, is to limit your social circle. They're trying to prevent a situation where you're going to go and test your jiu-jitsu, which might be straight out of 1975, against modern jiu-jitsu. Because if you go to a tournament and you're a blue belt and you get your ass handed to you by a white belt, it might make you question about how effective the stuff is that you're learning or whether your instructor has kept up with the art that's evolved quite rapidly. This brings me to another red flag, which is the whole peaked in high school phenomenon. Now, every instructor came up. They went through white belt, blue belt, brown belt, purple belt, brown belt, black belt. Okay? So they went through that sequence. And at some point, they were at their fittest, they were at their sharpest, and usually it's around, I don't know, purple belt, brown belt. And then they ossify because, you know, life comes along and the sport keeps changing so rapidly. Okay, now we have 50/50 guard. Oh my God, now I got to learn about 50/50 guard. Now along come leg locks. Oh my God, inversions. Oh, crab ride. No, stop. And the whatever the latest meta is. It can be really exhausting to keep up with everything. And if something brand new comes along, the wo-lock, say. It it comes along, hasn't been taught or disseminated publicly. Then when the instructor's trying to learn it, he's at the same level as his students. Everybody's a white belt at this technique that they've never done until they've done it a few times. So many instructors try to insulate themselves from this by saying, no, no, no. I practice the real jiu-jitsu. The real jiu-jitsu from the 2010s, from the 1990s, from the 1980s, from the 1970s, or in the case of classical jiu-jitsu, from the, I don't know, 1340s from some warrior clan in Japan. I'm not saying that every instructor needs to be an expert on every new meta. But if the only, quote, real jiu-jitsu is stuff that stuff that he was doing when he was at his peak, that's a problem. The sport is evolving. And with competition and the internet, new things come and go. And you should at least be trying to keep up with, you know, have some vague awareness of this. And again, I have way more respect for somebody who says, man, I don't know this this trend lock. I don't use it. It looks like it might be useful. Why don't you play with it and get back to me? That's the best kind of instructor as opposed to, nope. Leg locks are bullshit. For whatever magic time it was, we practice the real jiu-jitsu from that magic time in the past. And right now we're trying to make jiu-jitsu great again by going back to this imaginary past. Another red flag is a little bit harder to see until you've been training at a club for a while. But it's important to keep track of these red flags once you've been training at a place because eventually you might go, you know what? I don't like it here anymore. And now I know why. So one thing that many instructors are guilty of is just focusing on their very best students. Their competition students, the students who are winning the medals and bringing vicarious glory to the instructor. And they may not be able to compete anymore, but the thing that really makes them feel validated is when their student wins. And thus they focus all their time on those top students. Or alternatively, they spend all their time helping the hot females in the class. Once you've been training for a while, you can get a good sense of where the instructor's attention goes during an average class. And if if they're going if it's not fairly uniformly distributed, then that should be a red flag and might encourage you to move on and find a place where the instructor cares about everybody, including you. Related to that, and sad to say, I've seen this happen quite a bit, are instructors who teach a technique and they go and then they're on their phone for the next 15 minutes. And then they go teach another technique and then they're back on their phone. And then when their students are sparring, instead of like either sparring themselves or keeping an eye out to make sure that people aren't seriously going to hurt each other, back to the phone. So beware of the instructor who focuses on their top students, the hot females, or their phone instead of teaching a class more generally. When you're looking at different clubs, you're going to ask questions. How much is it a month? If you're a little bit more savvy, you're going to ask, is there an initiation fee? But something a lot of people miss is, is it possible to put my membership on hold? If for whatever reason, if life comes along, if my kids get super sick and spend months in the hospital, can I put my membership on hold? Or is this going to keep on chugging along? If if I have to focus on, I don't know, finishing my degree, can I take a six-month hiatus? If I get injured, if I tear my, I don't know, ACL and I'm going to have to take six months off, can I put my membership on hold? If you can't, if there's a no reason, no how, uh, policy there, I would suggest that this is not a place that cares about you. It cares about the finances much more. And it's a short-term thing because eventually tactics like this will drive away people. That club will get a bad name. And they're actually going to lose money by saying, no putting your membership on hold. Because they'll have less members in total. This is the ironic thing. This is the golden goose fallacy. I've got you, Fred, as a student. I'm going to squeeze every dollar out of you. Cool. You've killed the goose to get at the magic golden egg. But you know what? A happy student lays a golden egg every month. And a happy student brings in other geese that also lay golden eggs. Another thing that drives me insane is instructors who say things like, we don't tap to that submission around here. I've told the story before, but I was once training in judo. Back in the early days of jiu-jitsu, when getting actual jiu-jitsu instruction was quite difficult, I spent a ton of time training a lot of newaza, groundwork, in judo. And one day, we were visited by a foreign team from Japan. It was a college team that had exceptional grip fighting and exceptional throwing. And during the throwing part of class, they were murdering us. They would have won almost every match. But then it came to the groundwork, the newaza portion. And what this guy's coach had been inculcating in them and telling them is, you don't tap to arm locks. You don't tap to a choke until you go unconscious. You don't tap to arm locks until something pops. And that was the only honorable way to tap out. By the end of that newaza session, I had to leave partway through it, but at the end of it, there were about four or five guys sitting holding their arms, holding their elbows, holding their shoulders. All the Japanese guys who'd been told not to tap. This is insane. We don't tap to that. Well, maybe the instructor is immune to certain submissions. Maybe the instructor is immune to, I don't know, a bicep slicer. Maybe the instructor is immune, has very flexible shoulders and it's hard to tap him up by omoplata. But you know what? You might not be that flexible. You might have bad luck. And you might get some guy with huge shin bones who's strong. And he when he explodes the forearm bones in your in your in your arm with a bicep slicer, you're going to go, man, was that ever stupid that say that we don't tap to that submission. So, I'd say that's a pretty severe red flag. And the final red flag I'm going to go into before I go into some orange flags and try and nuance this a little bit, is this idea of mat bullies. Jiu-jitsu attracts a wide variety of people. Sometimes it attracts bullies. I've said before that jiu-jitsu does not make you a better person. It makes you a more confident person. And if you're an asshole before, now you're a more confident asshole. So these people do exist. And it's the instructor's role to rein them in. If if your instructor isn't controlling the mat bullies and isn't weeding them out or at least severely adjusting their attitude, or even worse, if he's a mat bully, walk. Getting good at jiu-jitsu is not worth ruining your body for 99.999% of people, and that means you. And, you know, injuries happen. Of course, injuries can happen in skiing, injuries can happen if you're rollerblading. Injuries happen. But you want to minimize those chances. You don't want to go and get hurt maliciously by some guy who has very little care for your personal safety and your physical integrity. And that's the instructor's job. This comes from the top down. If there's some guy at the club who's notorious for hurting people, for being the neck rank guy, or being the ripple leg lock guy, or being the not letting you go when you tap guy, yeah, he's an asshole. But you know who's really to blame? It's the instructor. That's the that should be a blinking giant all hands on deck, Defcon 5 kind of alert for the instructor. And that guy maybe, maybe gets one chance. I know some clubs that say, if you injure two people in a certain in a year, you're out. You know, injuries happen, but if it's two people in a year, get the hell out. So policies like that really cut down on the unnecessary injuries in the sport. Now, if you'll allow me, let me just offer a few more orange flags. I wouldn't say that these are automatic disqualifiers, but enough of them, and I'm getting real uneasy. Number one, and this I'm old school. When I started jiu-jitsu, we were wearing judo gis. We were training in t-shirts or no shirts at all because we all wanted to fight MMA. But the result was kind of an anarchistic approach to uniforms. And now, many clubs make uniforms mandatory. Well, they make uniforms mandatory, but they make their uniform mandatory. And you have to wear this uniform. And guess what? They bought it for $70 made in Pakistan. And now they're charging you $400 for this. This is the best gi. Well, it's actually not the best gi. It's the cheapest gi with their logo embroidered on the back. So, if they if they want to sell a gi, if they want to sell a rash guard, if they want to make those available to you, awesome. Make your choice. I mean, you're already paying enough for jiu-jitsu in terms of money and opportunity cost to have the right to not be shaken down for another $200, $300, $400 for a mandatory uniform, especially kids who are growing and are going to go through two uniforms or two gis a year as they grow in size. So, this I I think this is more Stephan bitching about things he doesn't like, but Stephan really doesn't like the mandatory uniform policy. Related to hidden costs, burying mandatory uniforms, I really don't like being forced to pay for promotions or for belt gradings or examinations. Jiu-jitsu, as I said before, is already a fairly expensive hobby. It it there's a lot of things you can do for a couple hundred dollars a month, month after month after month after month. And now to throw on an extra $40 fee, $50 fee for a a BS examination that almost everybody passes and a $5 belt. Man, your instructor can take five of the $200 that you paid that month and buy you a belt and give that to you for free every couple of years. They're the classic grift at a couple of clubs I trained at was every time right before the instructor went to Brazil, went back to Brazil, everyone started coming to class. Why? Because they knew that that instructor needed a whole bunch of money to go back to Brazil. And therefore would do a big set of promotions right before going back to Brazil. So, uh, you know, it was a way for him to collect a whole bunch of money. And it was pretty mercenary. It was also holding something over the heads of the students. I mean, what does every white belt want to become? More than anything else, they want to be a blue belt. Right? So you're holding this back. Well, you can be a white belt for as long as you want to be. So promotion fees and examination fees, yeah, yellow flag. Another thing Stephan doesn't really like and thus designates as an orange flag is the bowing to photos on the wall. I can accept with some trepidation doing a quick bow at the beginning of class. Yeah, it it is sort of an Asian-ish martial art. Okay, cool. I don't like it, but I'm willing to accept it. But bowing to photos of dead people on the wall, these mythical founders who could do no wrong. But you know what? They pooped just like you poop and just like I poop. Everybody poops. It's not like their poop didn't stink. And the more you dig into these mythical founders, most of the time, they're pretty rotten people. Uh, the notable exception there is Jigoro Kano from judo. And people are going to say, yes, Stephan. But they bow to pictures of Jigoro Kano in judo. Well, two things. I don't like it. And number two, the judo clubs I trained at, they didn't do that. Now, they were again, pretty uh, independent thinking and not very traditional. And I guess that's me at a core to the core that I will rebel against imposed traditions that seem to be imposed for no reason at all other than to reinforce a hierarchy. This one's tricky. Instructors who don't roll themselves. This is tricky because I acknowledge that age and injuries are a thing. If somebody's been rolling for 10, 20, 30 years, they might be coming to the end of their sort of active jiu-jitsu career on the mats because, you know, they they only have a certain number of neck cranks or armbars left in them and they don't want to use them up. I get it. But it is also an orange flag if the instructor doesn't roll. For one, how's he going to stay current? How's he going to, you know, keep a skill sharp and adjust the ideas in his head against reality? And something you sometimes see is instructors who haven't rolled for a long time. They start showing techniques that they can dream up, but that they've never, ever tested. And none of their students have ever pulled off in competition. And it's just an attempt to keep on showing new material and basically keep keep people coming back. And so they try and think up these crazy techniques that in theory would work, so long as their opponent had had a stroke and was lying there and not resisting at all. So, either an instructor has to continue to roll or they really have to stay in touch with the current meta and really take a look at what's working at the high level currently and calibrate everything that they teach based on that. This is a tricky one, but I I do think something you have to watch out for. Another orange flag are clubs where almost everybody's a white belt or where there's no women at all. Has there been a massive exodus? It's one thing if it's a new club. It's just getting started. Okay, I get it. You're you've just got a whole bunch of new students. But the club's been around for 10 years and there's like two blue belts and no purple belts and no brown belts and no black belts. What happened? Why are all the senior belts leaving? Or alternatively, why are all the women leaving? And if you find out that there was a large exodus of women at some point, well, this is going to go from an orange flag to a red flag in a hurry because there was probably a reason why all those women left. But, you know, over the course of 5, 10 years, an instructor should build up a decent pyramid of of belt ranks. And finally, I'm going to talk about something that really grinds my gears that's going to be probably disagreed with by at least half the people watching this video. And that's the use of the term professor. Now, people are going to say, well, professor just means black belt or it means teacher in Portuguese. To which I usually counter, well, imagine a situation where the word in Portuguese for teacher was dickhead. Right? Just by some linguistic quirk, the word dickhead meant teacher in Portuguese, but it means what it means in English. Do you think that we'd be saying, you know, we'd be introducing our instructors as Dickhead Moreira or Dickhead Santos? No, of course not. Of course not. We would find a very another name for that very quickly. And I'm going to suggest that we have a name for that in the English language, and that word is coach. The reason instructors really like the term professor is because it it kind of equates in their mind jiu-jitsu, which is a physical skill, with the intellectual development of actually being a professor at university. Well, getting your black belt in jiu-jitsu is just as hard as getting your PhD and your postdoc in astrophysics. Really? Really? I've actually done quite a long video on this idea of professor and how this helps reinforce hierarchical structures within the sport that can then be misused. As opposed to having somebody beside you bringing you up through the ranks, you have this person at the top of the at the top of the heap, elevating you or or holding you back according to your good behavior or your bad behavior. Again, this is getting kind of cult-like. I'm not saying everybody who uses the term professor is bad, but it is an orange flag. And go on YouTube and take a look for the video that I called, Don't Call Me Professor. It should come up right away. And that goes into the the details and more about this idea of how words shape social structures and how the term professor has consequences, often negative, in jiu-jitsu. So those are my red flags and my yellow flags in jiu-jitsu that many of which will also apply to other martial arts. Before you head off, let me just say one thing quickly. Regardless of whether you're listening to this in audio format as a podcast or in video format on YouTube, there's not a whole lot of money to be made with podcast and YouTube monetization unless you've got some very nice Russian agents funneling money into your account to promote the speaking points that are favorable to them. Therefore, if you want to support me and my work, you can either check out my instructionals at grapplarts.com or these books here, Perseverance, Life and Death in the Subarctic, or Non-Stop Jiu-Jitsu. Perseverance is available anywhere that you get books. Non-Stop Jiu-Jitsu on Amazon. So, if you want to support it in some little way, take me from making almost no money in YouTube or on podcast to making almost no money selling books because there's not a lot of money in books either. I'd appreciate it if you'd grab one of those. And if you like either one of them, a review is always super appreciated. All right.