By Tammy Yard McCracken of Kore Krav Maga

From a post on her new blog, Beautifully Dangerous:

When I teach self-defense or Krav, and I hear “Sorry!” on the training floor the participants have just served up a teaching moment.

No one is bad or wrong for saying I’m sorry. It’s hard core social programming. I’m Sorry is our universal request for impunity.  When we make contact we didn’t intend or the contact was experienced as “harder” than we purposed by our training partner, we say sorry. 

The social programming is being applied in the wrong context. Every time someone says I’m Sorryduring training they are unconsciously undermining their training and the mindset they are working to wire in.

Maybe it’s worse. Maybe all the I’m Sorry business on the mat is poisonous. Little sips of toxic thinking day after day, class after class.

On the mat, this apology gets heard by your brain as apologizing for being powerful. Fuck that.

Continue reading at Beautifully Dangerous…

I also think there are problems with helping/being helped up off the ground by a training partner. Not quite the same thing, but related.