Kurzy forgot to put in his mouthguard, he got a little hurt, and now is on the road to being ok. I train with him and know he's pretty good for wearing his mouthguard and even his headgear. Regarding wearing cups, all the tournaments out here ban cups so none of us wear them. I appreciate the responses from Zog and some of the more experienced guys regarding the whole discussion of never rolling without a mouthpiece and 'rolling hard'. I personally always wear a mouthguard, and it wasn't a $30 custom fitting one, it was a basic $3 mouthguard that provides enough padding in my mouth to protect me from concussions etc &i've never had an issue.
We train hard. To those people criticizing my club and how we roll, you are criticizing my instructor and I don't appreciate it. Kurzy got hurt in an accident and even said that. Feel free to come down and roll with us. You'll realize that most of the higher level guys and even the higher level, more experienced white belts, know how to roll hard but also how to roll without hurting their training partners. We're not doing ballet here, people will catch elbows and knees and shoulders in the face from time to time. I understand that some people just 'don't let people near their heads'. Roll with Stew for 5 minutes or Tim, one of our purple belts, and let me know how much fun you had keeping them away from putting pressure on your head and neck during a pass or crushing you with a dope choke.
I'm not saying don't take it easy once in a while or kill yourself everytime you train, but if it wasn't for Stew and how he has us train, guys from our club who compete wouldn't do as well as we do. So I appreciate your advice on how you think we should roll, but come talk to me when you compete as often as some of us do and train with Stew to appreciate his jiu jitsu and selfless instruction and coaching. Please don't talk about my club, telling us how to roll if you haven't trained with us. I've never been to HQ or Rochester, but from what I hear (&coach Zog confirmed this), those guys are rolling hard too.