White Gi covered in blood

Some time ago I was working some drills with one of my training partners. Before I even realized what was up, I noticed that he had some blood on his gi. I didn’t think much of it, it’s not the first time I’ve seen blood in training. But as we continued working, his gi kept getting more and more covered with blood. It was a lot of fucking blood. It didn’t clot up and stop, it just kept flowing and making his gi more and more red.

I get it, some of you people are really tough and will mock me for this post, but how much blood will you allow on your gi before it becomes unsanitary? This ain’t that type of a class and this ain’t that type of school. People were moving away from us because it was that bad. Mind you, I hadn’t yet perceived how much blood was in play.

In any case, when I get cut, I disinfect, tape it up and we are good to go. However, I later discovered that this guy’s wound was on the back of the head, near the base of the skull. That’s a bad spot to have a cut and it is impossible to tape that area up.

Truth be told, I hadn’t noticed that he had been bleeding on me. It wasn’t until I had one dude abruptly pull away from me saying “Dude, your covered in blood, don’t touch me.” We were going to triple up when he noticed all of the blood on my gi. I hadn’t even realized that I was covered in it, I was focused on my drills. This guy didn’t want anything to do with me, he pulled away and said he didn’t want to get any of it on himself. I understand that and I wasn’t offended by his reaction. But I was a bit surprised as I hadn’t noticed the blood on my gi. I then went to try and clean it off with some oxiclean and wipes.

Back in the days, we always bled on each other from grip fighting, mat burns or elbows to the face. None of us really cared, we’d just tape it up and keep working. For some reason, it feels a bit different now. These days I am not too keen on having someone else’s blood all over me, (especially on a white gi) and based on the reactions we got from the other people around us, neither are they.

How do you feel about blood in training?