One of the interesting things about teaching grappling is that you communicate the rules, but you don't write the rules. Grappling writes the rules. Even if you find some new and amazing way to explain grappling to your students, you didn't invent it, you at most labelled it. If it works, it works because there is only so many ways two bodies can entwine and only so many ways you can dominate a person. You may point out those things, find a new way to make them clear, but they are bigger than you. I find this can be both frustrating and comforting. Frustrating because it means that all the hard work of teaching, the nuts and bolts of communicating truth to others, is yours, but the actual truths are not. No one owns the rules. No one owns grappling.
The comfort comes when you screw up. Sometimes, as the instructor you start to think maybe you are above the rules. That maybe you can break them here and there and since you are usually one of, if not the best grappler in the room, that you can get away with it. Then you get caught; you fuck up and if you're like me you take it to heart and you beat yourself up about it. You start to question your skill as a grappler and your value as an instructor. That's where the comfort comes in. No one is above the rules. That's why they are rules. You didn't get caught because you are a terrible grappler, you didn't get caught because you are bad at your job, you got caught because you broke the rules. If you can see that, if you see what you did wrong, then you can make sure it won't happen again. Wow, you're not a terrible grappler. If you can see it and you can explain it to someone else, they will be able to see it too. Wow, you're not a terrible teacher. No one is above the rules, some of us just forget it sometimes.
