Friday Morning

Everyone decided to make Friday morning the return-from-holidays class. Biggest group I've seen on a Friday since Walter visited a couple of months ago.

We started off class with a bit more cardio than usual during warm-ups. It might be that James is getting serious about competition season. I didn't get my usual amount of sleep and was dragging in the morning, but it didn't affect me during warm-ups.

KOB transitions and submissions. We had a brand new guy, a couple of white belts and rack of purple belts and some blues. James spent alot of time with the new guy, so the rest of us got quite a few reps in. We did the far-side arm-bar which I feel pretty comfortable with, a transition into s-mount and then just transitioning the KOB from side to side. I love the far-side arm-bar but I miss a lot of details on it.

Today was KOTH with passes/sweeps, which is my kryptonite. I did have one successful sweep or pass, but otherwise it was one shutout after another. Sol just made me feel dumb with his sweeps. He broke my posture, pulled my arm across and over I went. It was like I was helpless to break his grips and maintain posture. Really poor showing against him on every occasion. I felt like I was getting close to passing Antone's guard and then of course he swept me. I was able to go against most of the guys a couple of times. Kevin S. is training with us, who I haven't trained with since 2009 or so. He was a new purple when I had just started, but he gave it up after awhile. I was able to get a spiderguard sweep on him, which I think is the first time I've ever legitimately got that sweep to work.

We had a couple rounds of KOTH with submissions instead of passes/sweeps. I did a bit better, but was still struggling.

Overall I'm displeased with the passivity of my game. The guys get their sweep/pass and I just accept it. I wish that I didn't, but I think I'm so sick and tired of getting crushed when I try to fight it off that it's easier to accept the bad position and start focusing on escapes instead of trying and failing to not accept the bad position. If that makes any sense. I think I'm unhappy about my game in other ways, although I can't quite nail down the problem. Maybe it's feeling like I should be a lot better than I am as a four stripe blue.