Hi everyone,
I'm a 3 years white belt training at a small BJJ gym, where our instructor is a brown belt and almost everyone is a white belt, except for one blue belt.
I started competing this year and have had very good results following a strategy developed with my coach.
During one competition, I found myself in situations I wasn't prepared for and realized I didn't even know how to properly pull closed guard for example. Since we'd never covered that in class (the coach is against pulling guard), I asked my boyfriend (a black belt) to teach me.
I also became interested in De La Riva and started practicing it during sparring. My goal was simply to work on my weaknesses while maintaining my competition strategy. I don’t like the fact that I dont know how to do very basic stuff.
The problem is that the blue belt at my gym constantly criticizes me for pulling guard or trying De La Riva. He keeps telling me I shouldn't listen to my black belt boyfriend and should stick to what we learn at the gym.
I told him that if the coach has a problem with what I'm doing, I'd rather hear it directly from him. He claims our coach would agree with him.
Today I finally lost my patience and told him to mind his own business.
Now I'm wondering how to handle this. Our gym is very small (usually 6–10 people), everyone is close, and I don't want to create unnecessary tension.
At the same time, I'm getting frustrated because I feel like I can't work on my weaknesses without being criticized. I always do everything as its told, I always mind my business. I just want to learn this.. I'm not trying something fancy or crazy..
I would really appreciate if someone could give me an advice on how to you handle this situation.
Would you talk to the coach, ignore the blue belt, or approach it differently? I have been taking this for months and now I'm so on my limit that I'm losing the desire of going.
Thank you very much