Yank

8/26 - Downtown

Today we attempted to work a series of passes to mount and then submissions, but only got through one scenario due to numerous white belts who needed a lot of individual attention. This was exacerbated by the fact that none of the blues/purples paired up with the white belts. When newish white belts pair up with each other, that's generally not a good recipe when we're covering advanced topics. Since many of the non-white belts are competing soon, I suspect that had something to do with the pairing. Ah well.

Rolls with Kelly, Ben, Drew and Julio. Kelly professed to be tired today, and it did seem like I was having a bit more success than usual. His 'bolo attempts ended up in scrambles. I wasn't on top much, but I also wasn't getting choked out as much as usual.

The usual tough roll with Julio, but he didn't get any subs on me. I don't know if it's b/c he's trying new things or that my defense was that good today. I was very conscious on not allowing point positions if possible, which is what I think he was focusing on.

Ben doesn't yet know how to roll relaxed. He uses a lot of strength, and today, even more than usual, it seemed like he was trying to yank limbs to his desired position. I was getting a little PO'd by mid-roll. He was in front mount or quarter guard and was trying to rip my arm in one direction or the other. I was in quarter or half guard quite a bit and he was just yank, rip, yank, rip. Nothing wrong with it, and I expect it out of even seasoned white belts, but the repeated nature of it was rubbing me the wrong way. I was half mad at myself for not being able to fully execute an escape, but I was so focused on trying to protect my arms that I didn't. At one point I had to calm myself down when I was in mount, b/c I was starting to extend my arms in some dumb vain attempt to push him back.

Drew is relatively new. He did BJJ for a year, took a year off and is starting back up with us. I went through the same scenario, so had a lot of empathy for him. He was a bigger ball of energy than I was expecting, and on the heels of Ben I was thinking oh s, here we go again. However, he's not as big as Ben and more spazzy. He left a lot of space and I was able to sneak to his back when he had a headlock thing from reverse kesa gatame (despite him trying to push my head into the mat to prevent it...ugh). I finished with a bow and arrow. He took my back briefly, then I escaped and somehow finished with an omoplata.

Overall I'm happy with the rolls and how I handled my emotion with the overt use of strength. I'm not happy with the fact that I was baited into a triangle that was subsequently smashed. I could see it coming all the way and I still went for it.