Investing in your teammates is investing in yourself

Before I opened up The Clinic Muay Thai Gym, I had a day job doing building maintenance at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. In one of the buildings there was an old African Proverb written on the wall that said, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I love that thought, and after watching some sparring sessions the other day, I was reminded of that saying.

When we train, we’re constantly thinking about making ourselves better. It’s natural. We all do it, and I encourage it. I hope you’re showing up trying to better yourself. The downside is that sometimes we try too hard to make ourselves better, so we don’t think about the others in the gym. This can be short sighted.

In the process of winning every rep you do you may be hurting someone else’s reps. Why is this important? Because, in order to grow, you need people that challenge you. If you only focus on making yourself better without helping others, who is going to challenge you down the road?

This doesn’t apply to every aspect of training, of course. If you’re on the heavy bag, you better make every rep count. If you’re hitting pads, you better do it to the best of your ability. But when you put all of your effort into hitting pads and then don’t put that same effort into becoming a better pad holder, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Sure, maybe on that day you got better, so why should you care? But what I would ask is if you would rather win the day or win the year?

If you make yourself better but don’t help make anyone else better you’re eventually going to become the best person at a low-level gym. I’d rather be the worst in a room full of killers than the best in a room full of kittens. Coaches can only do so much for your growth. You need good partners. Good partners don’t magically show up—they are created.

This pops up the most in sparring. If you are more advanced than your partner, slow things down. Help them build themselves. That doesn’t mean stop and correct them. You don’t need to stop every five seconds to coach them. When you do that, no one gets any work done.

It also doesn’t mean you have to let them land whatever they want. It simply means slow things down. After you land a strike, let them try things without countering every time. Use this opportunity to work on things you want to improve on. There are many things you can do when sparring someone you are more advanced than and still get good work in.

Sometimes when I work with someone new I pick one thing to work on. Maybe I want to work on my slips. So whenever they kick, hook, knee, or teep, I let them land (assuming they are controlling their power) so they build their technique. But when that jab or cross comes, I’ll slip and throw a light counter. Otherwise I’m just moving and letting them work. That’s just one simple example. There are a lot of different ways to accomplish this.

Now I know it sounds like I'm telling you to hold yourself back, but this is investing in your future. You are investing in better partners for the future. I’m not saying do nothing but help others. Diversify your training. Spend time working with someone more advanced than you and hope they will slow down for you. Then work with those on an equal level and you both can push yourselves to the limit. Then work with someone where this blog applies. It doesn’t have to be in that order—mix up your partners where applicable.

There’s one last benefit to being a good partner. You’ll never be alone in any of your hardships. I have never seen a good training partner not gain the love of everyone in their gym. When they fight, they have a loud cheering section willing them to victory. When their bf/gf dumps them, they have more shoulders to cry on than they have tears. When they need extra reps on the pads to let off some steam, they have multiple people willing to stay a little late after class to give them those extra reps.

So yes, please focus on making yourself better. And if a newer sparring partner asks you to show them how advanced you are, you have my blessing to embarrass them (I mean they literally asked for it 🤷). But remember that you can only get so far alone. It may feel like you're getting better faster when you’re only focused on yourself, however, eventually you’ll get stuck halfway up the mountain. It takes a team to make it to the summit. In Muay Thai terms, you can win your first couple of fights easily just focusing on yourself, but if you want hardware around your waist, you’re going to need a strong team behind you…and no one wants to support someone that doesn’t support them.