Should siblings train together?

Should siblings train together? Let's talk about it. Matt Thompson, Raising a Warrior.

Okay. Should siblings train together? Makes it easier, right? If they're similar aged. You sure about that? You sure about that? You sure about that. Well, I can drop them both in there and let them work.

The first consideration's going to be the personality of the two. How do they get along at home? If they tend to be fairly cooperative at home, it's a no-brainer. Bring them in, let them work together. Some siblings are less cooperative than others.

First, know that even if they are siblings who work together well, they're going to have a competitive element to what they're doing. How could they not? They're going to be comparing themselves to their big sis, little bro, whatever the thing is. And as they're comparing, just like any two people, one person may pick up on certain things faster than the other. Do you know how easy this is for me?

One may be very good at dealing with being at the bottom of a mount because if they're the smaller, younger sibling, they're always getting sat on by the big kids, so they just out of necessity learn how to get out from the bottom. The other one's maybe older, bigger, then they're going to be much more aggressive in their jiu-jitsu. Take jiu-jitsu for example. You can extrapolate it out for all the different martial arts.

So, the idea is pretty simple. They're going to start to compete with each other directly and indirectly. Indirectly via rank, or he had me warm up class today, whatever the thing is. And then the other one will be, you know, literally when they're sparring.

We've had some experiences here where I have two twins. They're right now about 16, but I've had them since they're, I think, like 11. And these two guys would come in and they would work with others and generally speaking great. Just really calm and playful and fun and laughing. Put these two savages together and it's somewhere between the Three Stooges and Ren and Stimpy. That was a firefight.

And sometimes it would get bad. As they got older they start doing jujitsu classes where people wearing gloves and actually learning how to defend against strikes. We do that weekly. And one of them was over here a few months back with this look of joyful glee on his face while he's punching his brother in the side of the head. And I'm like, what are you doing? Dial it back. It's light contact. We're just letting them know that punches are possible, not that hey, I'm going to scramble your brains. So you have to watch for it.

First, parents, you can't be too attached if they're doing tournaments. Okay, this one won, this one didn't win. You got to treat them both as hey, good job, good effort. The thing that you promote, the thing that you reward is the thing that you encourage repeated. So if you're treating one differently when they win, that's going to cause problems because it's going to be about the win, and you're not going to teach good sportsmanship, you're not going to teach integrity and patience. You're going to teach them to be cutthroat.

Doesn't mean the wins aren't important, but the process is important. That they're performing, analyzing, theorizing, drilling, and finding out through another performance if that stuff worked. Adhering to that process, the hard work, the dedication, the consistency, the Kaizen of it all, those little incremental improvements. That's the thing that mom and dad and coach really need to promote.

Yeah, we all like the win. You're not going to have to celebrate the win super hard. That will already be a thing that they celebrate. When it's ugly, when it's not fun, motivate that.

Beyond that, get them to also help each other. In the case of the little one that's stuck at the bottom getting out a lot, make sure that the bigger one, hey, you get on the bottom and you practice. That way you don't stink if there's a bigger kid involved, and that the other little dude can start to work on their attacks. That's going to foster leadership, cooperation, and them seeing that their success is tethered to the success of the other person as well.

That's good sportsmanship, all the things that you want, hopefully that you want from your kid when they come to class, will be there, assuming that you motivate that way. Make sure that the coaches at the school are doing the same thing. If you do it this way, you can raise a whole pack of warriors.

Watch the full conversation

Watch "Should siblings train together?" on YouTube

More Raising a Warrior posts

First class free with a loaner uniform, then a 10-day trial. Book your free class