Gym bullies--does talking to them ever help?

[BodybagJohnny**]

I was training today in a striking class. It's a small group of mostly regulars and a pretty chill class. We spar regularly, but go about 50-70%. There are only a few people who occasionally get amped up and go too hard.

Today I noticed a guy I've seen there before who usually trains at different time. This guy is highly skilled and I've seen him rough up a few people. He's always struck me as a bully, so I stayed away from him even for technique drilling.

Near the end of class the instructor had us do some body conditioning where we just struck to the body for three minutes. This is a drill where we smack each other pretty hard, but still don't go 100%.

We traded partners every round. I managed to avoid the guy I didn't trust, but noticed he paired up with a noob for the final round, some fat guy who'd only been training for about 6 weeks.

The gym bully worked this kid over so hard that he ended up puking in the trash can both from fatigue and blows. After a few minutes, the bully asked him if he was okay then said, "I was just trying to push you there and gas you out."

The fat kid said, "I was already gassed before we even started."

The whole thing seemed so disingenuous. What the hell is the point of beating the shit out of some fat guy? It's not like he's there training to be an actual fighter.

We had some extra time for sparring after class. I always spar unless I'm injured, but there was no way in hell I was going to risk getting matched up with that sociopath. He is way younger, quicker and better skilled than me. I might go hard with someone who is being a dick if I think I can at least hang with them, but I knew this guy would just give me a beating, and I'm not there to get brain damage.

One of the other fairly experienced guys did go with the bully. He was giving up about 30 pounds and got absolutely wrecked as the bully caught him flush over and over with 100% shots.

After that round the bully and the coach paired up. I figured that they were matched pretty evenly and was interested in seeing them war. Well, suddenly the bully finds his self control and they spar 60-70%.

So, 100% for people who he outweighs and has outclassed and controlled sparring for a peer. What a complete scumbag.

I left the gym pretty pissed off about the entire thing and vowed to walk out of any class where he participates. I will also talk to the instructor. He should not have allowed any of that to happen. He expects light sparring and has even yelled at me before just for matching the intensity of someone who was being a dickhead spaz.

So, I'm not sure why he let this go.

The other option is to talk to the bully, but the guy seems like a total goon who enjoys hurting people and I'm not interested. But it did bring to mind a question. See, people often counsel you to talk things through with gym bullies or spazzes, but does it ever actually work? Seems to me that the enforcement needs to come from the coach.

 

[4daLuLZ]

TS


(Pre Sparring)



(During Sparring)


(Post Sparring)

 

[Noodles03]

I always thought gym bullies were too scared to spar, but have no problem acting tough.

 

[Sanserif]

I was training today in a striking class. It's a small group of mostly regulars and a pretty chill class. We spar regularly, but go about 50-70%. There are only a few people who occasionally get amped up and go too hard.

Today I noticed a guy I've seen there before who usually trains at different time. This guy is highly skilled and I've seen him rough up a few people. He's always struck me as a bully, so I stayed away from him even for technique drilling.

Near the end of class the instructor had us do some body conditioning where we just struck to the body for three minutes. This is a drill where we smack each other pretty hard, but still don't go 100%.

We traded partners every round. I managed to avoid the guy I didn't trust, but noticed he paired up with a noob for the final round, some fat guy who'd only been training for about 6 weeks.

The gym bully worked this kid over so hard that he ended up puking in the trash can both from fatigue and blows. After a few minutes, the bully asked him if he was okay then said, "I was just trying to push you there and gas you out."

The fat kid said, "I was already gassed before we even started."

The whole thing seemed so disingenuous. What the hell is the point of beating the shit out of some fat guy? It's not like he's there training to be an actual fighter.

We had some extra time for sparring after class. I always spar unless I'm injured, but there was no way in hell I was going to risk getting matched up with that sociopath. He is way younger, quicker and better skilled than me. I might go hard with someone who is being a dick if I think I can at least hang with them, but I knew this guy would just give me a beating, and I'm not there to get brain damage.

One of the other fairly experienced guys did go with the bully. He was giving up about 30 pounds and got absolutely wrecked as the bully caught him flush over and over with 100% shots.

After that round the bully and the coach paired up. I figured that they were matched pretty evenly and was interested in seeing them war. Well, suddenly the bully finds his self control and they spar 60-70%.

So, 100% for people who he outweighs and has outclassed and controlled sparring for a peer. What a complete scumbag.

I left the gym pretty pissed off about the entire thing and vowed to walk out of any class where he participates. I will also talk to the instructor. He should not have allowed any of that to happen. He expects light sparring and has even yelled at me before just for matching the intensity of someone who was being a dickhead spaz.

So, I'm not sure why he let this go.

The other option is to talk to the bully, but the guy seems like a total goon who enjoys hurting people and I'm not interested. But it did bring to mind a question. See, people often counsel you to talk things through with gym bullies or spazzes, but does it ever actually work? Seems to me that the enforcement needs to come from the coach.

It is the coach's job to clamp down on that kind of behaviour, not yours. The problem is if the coach is a friend of that bully and therefore is closing a blind eye to him as a result, or worse if he actually wants that guy to treat the other students like that so as to toughen them up etc. In which case complaining to him could make things worse for you as he could take that personally and the bully will also do the same. Just pointing that possibility out not to discourage you from doing the right thing to protect the newer students in the case but so as you realise there is this angle that could exist in your case.

 

[JohnPJones]

I was training today in a striking class. It's a small group of mostly regulars and a pretty chill class. We spar regularly, but go about 50-70%. There are only a few people who occasionally get amped up and go too hard.

Today I noticed a guy I've seen there before who usually trains at different time. This guy is highly skilled and I've seen him rough up a few people. He's always struck me as a bully, so I stayed away from him even for technique drilling.

Near the end of class the instructor had us do some body conditioning where we just struck to the body for three minutes. This is a drill where we smack each other pretty hard, but still don't go 100%.

We traded partners every round. I managed to avoid the guy I didn't trust, but noticed he paired up with a noob for the final round, some fat guy who'd only been training for about 6 weeks.

The gym bully worked this kid over so hard that he ended up puking in the trash can both from fatigue and blows. After a few minutes, the bully asked him if he was okay then said, "I was just trying to push you there and gas you out."

The fat kid said, "I was already gassed before we even started."

The whole thing seemed so disingenuous. What the hell is the point of beating the shit out of some fat guy? It's not like he's there training to be an actual fighter.

We had some extra time for sparring after class. I always spar unless I'm injured, but there was no way in hell I was going to risk getting matched up with that sociopath. He is way younger, quicker and better skilled than me. I might go hard with someone who is being a dick if I think I can at least hang with them, but I knew this guy would just give me a beating, and I'm not there to get brain damage.

One of the other fairly experienced guys did go with the bully. He was giving up about 30 pounds and got absolutely wrecked as the bully caught him flush over and over with 100% shots.

After that round the bully and the coach paired up. I figured that they were matched pretty evenly and was interested in seeing them war. Well, suddenly the bully finds his self control and they spar 60-70%.

So, 100% for people who he outweighs and has outclassed and controlled sparring for a peer. What a complete scumbag.

I left the gym pretty pissed off about the entire thing and vowed to walk out of any class where he participates. I will also talk to the instructor. He should not have allowed any of that to happen. He expects light sparring and has even yelled at me before just for matching the intensity of someone who was being a dickhead spaz.

So, I'm not sure why he let this go.

The other option is to talk to the bully, but the guy seems like a total goon who enjoys hurting people and I'm not interested. But it did bring to mind a question. See, people often counsel you to talk things through with gym bullies or spazzes, but does it ever actually work? Seems to me that the enforcement needs to come from the coach.

An actual bully? No, I can't recall a single story I trust as true being told of a bully changing their ways because you talked to them. Bullies are typically the way they are because they legitimately need therapy.

Now if he's a dude who thinks he's being helpful but hurting people, then yes talking to them can help.

 

[biscuitsbrah]

Yeah I hate people who go 100 on the new guy but tone it down when it’s someone actually good.

Communication is key but not in the way you think. All you need to do is spar, and when he comes up to you, just say something like “nah you’re way too crazy for me, not trying to go hard” or “I’m good, gonna sit this one out”
Of course the gym r-tard is gonna insist and say something like “nah man we’ll just go light and flow” or if he’s really aggressive he will insist with a “cmon man let’s go. Just spar” Just hold your ground and say “nah really I’m good”
Then walk to someone else or just sit on the side.

Ive done it a million times and continue to do it till this day. Some people don’t like me but it’s all good cuz I don’t want to socialize with them anyway.

Don’t complain or snitch. It makes you look weak and doesn’t really get anything done unless the coach is on it but just unaware IMO

 

[CFGroup]

What Biscuit said!

The guy is addicted to hurting people because he's emotionally pathetic, don't get faked with "oh I'll go light".

Don't spar or train with the dude no matter what he says....that'll psych him out way worse because it will nag on him that something is wrong with him which there is.

Not sure that gym is a very good place since it's obvious the HC knows his pet is trashing people and that speaks volumes to the underlying training environment.

Keep your head down, treat the newbies well, find the guys that treat you well, stay safe and avoid the physical/mental gym wars.

Eventually you'll be able to speak your mind because the insecure dude won't let it go and confront you. That's when you have the advantage to tell him9nicely) on your terms he's a scumbag and you don't train with scumbags.

 

[Badoldman]

We have several professional fighters in our gym. You know if you get in there with them they're going to hit you pretty hard. However, the heaviest handed pro in our gym rarely hits anyone hard. He is a big long heavyweight fighter with lots of knockouts and when this guy spars with you, all he does is defense and shell up. A jab here and there, a body shot occasionally. He has big hams for fists and seldom puts very much on his shots. I'm 57 yrs old and I spar this guy all the time. Now we do have some newer members who want to prove themselves and want to spar all out. They are the "contact" members who do not fight competitively. The best sparring partners in our gym are the "elite" level amateurs. They usually have a specific technique or defensive sequence in mind and work that with you. However, when they are in the deep end of a camp, they spar very hard. It's not like they take advantage of you either. You know when you get in there early in their camps, they're going to punch hard. But just last night there was a guy I had never seen before sparring. He outweighed his partner by 30 lbs and was cocking his right hand, and throwing with all he had. He hits his sparring partner hard with his right hand, and then twice more when he saw the effect his punches were having. I stopped my bag work when I heard the impact and started watching the sparring. The small guy's legs are locked up and he is stiff in the corner like those old west death displays in front of the saloon. The gym owner who is monitoring this starts yelling to stop. He tells "bad-ass" wait just a second, there's a lesson to be had tonight. This owner is a local MMA legend and elite level USA boxing coach and he stopped the session and asks the big heavyweight pro I mentioned to go a round with this gym warrior. No problem says the fighter. No mouthpiece, no headgear, no foul protector-he climbs in the ring with this guy who is breathing heavily from the beating he's been dishing out. Now this pro is big. About 6'5" and 230 lbs out of camp. Watching him strap up made me scarred and I spar him all the time. So it seemed to me that bad-ass was unaffected by his sparring partner substitution because he just stands there ready to go. I thought for a minute maybe this guy is really a bad-ass. No, he's just a dumbass bully in need of exactly what he got. They are across the ring from each other when the coach, timing with his phone now, says box. Bad-ass starts jabbing from the corner as he moves forward while still ten feet from the pro. When he's in range finally the pro dips straight down and hit him with a right hook. His mouthpiece is knocked out of his mouth and his head is turned to the left now and the pro throws a textbook left hook and hit bad-ass in the face bar. Down goes Frazier. The pro stops and looks at the coach and asks "we done here". Coach says "yeah, he's done". After this guy gets upright and gathers himself he's over at the pros locker asking him what he hit him with, how, when, why. The pro is polite but direct. He tells the guy boxing is his job and no, he's not a trainer and no, he won't show him what he did. The coach finally gets this guy over in the corner and woodsheds him. If it were me, lesson learned. We'll see if he's back tonight.

 

[shincheckin]

Unfortunately that behavior is pretty common place. And of course, when the other guy has the upper hand, now they go light. Another thing is the sparring partner seeing you as a threat, and wants to be "bettter" than you, so they want to win the spar to try to look good.
I'd say let's go light and have dudes say ok and be grunting throwing punches at me 30 seconds later. Oh yeah and......MMA. your training mma and he's a mma guy right? My guess would be yes.

 

[BodybagJohnny**]

Yeah it's an MMA gym.

I'm usually the old man in the room so I frequently get guys who go too hard when their egos get bruised after they realize they can't just ninja me up.

I'm certainly not the toughest guy around, but I'm better than people think I should be.

I've gotten to the point where I won't spar with people I don't know. I had one guy come in from a different gym who had 30 pounds on me and was 20+ years younger and he tried to take my head off.

I have too much pride to ask someone to ease up, so I just ramped up with him and finished the round, but I had no intention of going with him again.

Unfortunately that behavior is pretty common place. And of course, when the other guy has the upper hand, now they go light. Another thing is the sparring partner seeing you as a threat, and wants to be "bettter" than you, so they want to win the spar to try to look good.
I'd say let's go light and have dudes say ok and be grunting throwing punches at me 30 seconds later. Oh yeah and......MMA. your training mma and he's a mma guy right? My guess would be yes.

 

[shincheckin]

Yeah it's an MMA gym.

I'm usually the old man in the room so I frequently get guys who go too hard when their egos get bruised after they realize they can't just ninja me up.

I'm certainly not the toughest guy around, but I'm better than people think I should be.

I've gotten to the point where I won't spar with people I don't know. I had one guy come in from a different gym who had 30 pounds on me and was 20+ years younger and he tried to take my head off.

I have too much pride to ask someone to ease up, so I just ramped up with him and finished the round, but I had no intention of going with him again.

That's the way to do it. We've had this discussion on this forum many times. For MT what I call controlled hard sparring is best. You go 70%, when you get the chance to take the KO shot, you still take it, but you turn it down. Sparring is practice not a fight. Most people fail to ever reach the skill level to realize this. Mma is the cool thing for the kids to do. So the majority of your average Joe's seem to be a bunch of kids trying to be tough and cool. How can we forget the whole tough guy clothing style when tapout was king. Lifted truck, tattoos, smoke cigs, wear tapout, dont train.

 

[Dexter]

I've gotten to the point where I won't spar with people I don't know. I had one guy come in from a different gym who had 30 pounds on me and was 20+ years younger and he tried to take my head off.

I never agree to spar LIGHTLY with a ppl I don't know. That's a lesson I learned the hard way around 20 years ago, when I started to study boxing.

 

[BodybagJohnny**]

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do with people. I had some kid tell me he is training to be a fighter, but he was new and had absolute trash technique.

We start sparring and he's essentially got one move, a jab to the body from southpaw followed by a wild overhand left

He's hurling this thing at me like he's throwing a baseball. I can see it coming and avoid, but it made the session pretty useless.

Part of me was tempted to just blast him, but I try not to do that unless someone seems like they have genuinely bad intentions.

We swap partners and this noob immediately knees his partner in the nuts. The guy recovers and the noob kicks him in the nuts. The next thing I know the noob is on the ground getting the shit knocked out of him.

Never saw him again.

He probably tells everyone he's a fighter

That's the way to do it. We've had this discussion on this forum many times. For MT what I call controlled hard sparring is best. You go 70%, when you get the chance to take the KO shot, you still take it, but you turn it down. Sparring is practice not a fight. Most people fail to ever reach the skill level to realize this. Mma is the cool thing for the kids to do. So the majority of your average Joe's seem to be a bunch of kids trying to be tough and cool. How can we forget the whole tough guy clothing style when tapout was king. Lifted truck, tattoos, smoke cigs, wear tapout, dont train.

 

[RemyR]

From my experience I don’t think anyone like him looks at themselves as a “bully”, they tend to look at themselves like they’re trying to improve the team as a whole.

Maybe try letting him you have no intention of competing and talk to your coach if it continues.

 

[patos]

From my experience I don’t think anyone like him looks at themselves as a “bully”, they tend to look at themselves like they’re trying to improve the team as a whole.

Maybe try letting him you have no intention of competing and talk to your coach if it continues.

Nah, never talk to them, your only conversation should ever be "thanks bro I'm good" like the guy above suggested. Fuck em.

 

[MixMartialFarts]

It sounds like your coach cares more about having this bully train there then he cares about his newbie students getting their asses kicked.

 

[Woldog]

I always thought gym bullies were too scared to spar, but have no problem acting tough.

Gym bullies are guys who train quite often but either don't fight or never win their fights, so on sparring day they pair up with new guys or smaller guys, so they can try and get that rare W in the ring. We had one gym bully at my gym a pro who was 0 - 8. Dude always went 100% and then acted upset if you bombed him back lmao.

 

[Zanderlini]

I gots the power, I just smack them back at 100 percent see how they like it (if we're relatively the same size, or they're bigger). Fuck those guys.

 

[deucesarewild]

I was training today in a striking class. It's a small group of mostly regulars and a pretty chill class. We spar regularly, but go about 50-70%. There are only a few people who occasionally get amped up and go too hard.

Today I noticed a guy I've seen there before who usually trains at different time. This guy is highly skilled and I've seen him rough up a few people. He's always struck me as a bully, so I stayed away from him even for technique drilling.

Near the end of class the instructor had us do some body conditioning where we just struck to the body for three minutes. This is a drill where we smack each other pretty hard, but still don't go 100%.

We traded partners every round. I managed to avoid the guy I didn't trust, but noticed he paired up with a noob for the final round, some fat guy who'd only been training for about 6 weeks.

The gym bully worked this kid over so hard that he ended up puking in the trash can both from fatigue and blows. After a few minutes, the bully asked him if he was okay then said, "I was just trying to push you there and gas you out."

The fat kid said, "I was already gassed before we even started."

The whole thing seemed so disingenuous. What the hell is the point of beating the shit out of some fat guy? It's not like he's there training to be an actual fighter.

We had some extra time for sparring after class. I always spar unless I'm injured, but there was no way in hell I was going to risk getting matched up with that sociopath. He is way younger, quicker and better skilled than me. I might go hard with someone who is being a dick if I think I can at least hang with them, but I knew this guy would just give me a beating, and I'm not there to get brain damage.

One of the other fairly experienced guys did go with the bully. He was giving up about 30 pounds and got absolutely wrecked as the bully caught him flush over and over with 100% shots.

After that round the bully and the coach paired up. I figured that they were matched pretty evenly and was interested in seeing them war. Well, suddenly the bully finds his self control and they spar 60-70%.

So, 100% for people who he outweighs and has outclassed and controlled sparring for a peer. What a complete scumbag.

I left the gym pretty pissed off about the entire thing and vowed to walk out of any class where he participates. I will also talk to the instructor. He should not have allowed any of that to happen. He expects light sparring and has even yelled at me before just for matching the intensity of someone who was being a dickhead spaz.

So, I'm not sure why he let this go.

The other option is to talk to the bully, but the guy seems like a total goon who enjoys hurting people and I'm not interested. But it did bring to mind a question. See, people often counsel you to talk things through with gym bullies or spazzes, but does it ever actually work? Seems to me that the enforcement needs to come from the coach.

Bro, what's the coaching like at your gym if they let an insecure douchebag strut around hurting others who are trying to better themselves.

Edit; talking to these worthless fym bullies won't help your situation out, they are too insecure to self reflect. They'll just try and be a bigger dick to overcompensate for the fact they are dickless losers.

 

[exclamatio]

It's a tough one.
You already have good advice here.
I also think talking to the bully doesn't really achieve anything. The coach should already know and if not that worries me, and it's really not your job.
I'd give friendly advice to the noob, "Saw you had a tough round there! Honestly that's me most weeks. When you're already tired and you get someone who goes a bit rough, you can try and last through it a while, but don't be afraid to tap out while youre still learning. All good training partners will understand, we've all been there." Get's a small dig in at the bully if you want them to hear too You could just wait to another session, "Saw you had a tough round last week, don't worry about it! etcetc, try XYZ next time!"