Monday Meh

An utterly meh day on the mat. The instruction was good (lapel guard), but rolling was just blah. I was a little tired this morning, but otherwise my body felt good.

Rolls with Sol, Savannah, Jason (b), Dennis, Ryan and Chuck. I tried to work my side-control escapes with Sol, but he was doing a good job of transitioning from cross-face to kesa gatame and back again. There were numerous points where I'd get close to an escape, and he'd just back off and let me regain guard. I should have said something right away to let him know that I wanted to see if I could legitimately escape, but that thought didn't occur to me. Instead, I was unhappy with myself for NOT legitimately escaping. 

Every time Savannah rolls with me, she tries to pass my guard like it's a finals match in the Mundials. I wasn't in the mood for it today, so I didn't fight it off until the very last second like I usually do. That's not to say that she wasn't getting the passes on her own, b/c she was. She'd get to side-control, I'd reguard, and we'd do it all over again. I'm tired of having the exact same roll with her every time, but I can't seem to stop her from initiating the knee slice. So...there you have it. She's told me several time that she's made her mission to pass my guard, which is fine, except I don't want every damn roll to end up the same way. I'm apparently not good enough to dictate it how I want it to go, so it's just frustration central.

My roll with Dennis was the best, as he didn't give me quarter and it was somewhat evenly matched. I don't quite remember the movements, but I was especially pleased at one point when I controlled his far arm during a scramble to get back position.

Jason (b) demolished me. At one point, he was working three or four submissions on me at the same time. It was a bizarre position, I think a leg-in triangle type thing? The worst part is that I could inexorably see him reeling me in for an arm-bar, which I tried to defend but ended up in an omoplata, but then my leg got involved and he had a choke, shoulder lock and arm-bar all kindof going at the same time. I couldn't help but smile at the end of that one, it was just too much. After we reset we ended up in a scramble, and he let me have his back. Again, I wasn't in the mood for people to give me shit like I was a charity case just so that I could work some offense.

Chuck is new to our gym and a two or three stripe white belt. He's a relatively young kid and has done some MMA. I went into the roll cautious, b/c he seemed like he might be spazzy, and indeed he had that tendency, although he wasn't too over the top. He gets me into a DLR, but doesn't really do anything with it except for keep me at bay. I wanted to work the dive-under pass, but was having a hard time breaking his sleeve grips. I finally back-stepped, worked to top side-control, transitioned through some things and finished with an arm-bar from s-mount. We reset and again he's chilling with DLR. I back-step again, take his back and was in the midst of a bow and arrow when time ran out.  He then proceeded to instruct me on how to go about breaking the DLR hook. Thanks dude.

Last roll was with Ryan. He passed my guard and then proceeded to try to get to mount and/or submit me with arm-bars, kimuras and the like. I was able to defend everything, but it was disheartening to have this kid who's been doing jiu jitsu for 5 months in top position for most of the roll. What. The. Fuck. Not happy with my game today.