Ruminations

Took today off from class, my body needed it after the past four days. Planning on doing another two-a-day tomorrow.

It struck me at some point in the past couple of days that it's no so much that I feel like my entire game is below the level that it should be, but moreso that my rolling is not up to par. I feel like my scope of knowledge and execution of techniques is where I'd want it after ~5yrs of training. Rolling, not so much.

This gives me a bit of hope, as I don't entirely feel like I'm regressing. I'm just not applying my knowledge during rolls.  I really don't want to be that grappler that can demo fifty different sweeps but can't execute a single one mid-roll. Unless I'm going against a new white belt, I almost never finish a sweep. That's a bit absurd. I don't expect to hit them on the regular against equally skilled opponents, but I don't think a 40-50% rate is out of line. 

So...what's the problem? 

1. I neglect sweeps in lieu of submission attempts, especially against equal or more highly skilled opponents. 

2. I'm often so busy trying to defend against a pass that I can't initiate offense. 

3. In general, I'm a passive player. 

4. I'm sick of being in bottom side-control, so I'd rather play it safe and maintain some sort of guard instead of risking sweeps (closely related to #1).

I think it's part of a larger issue, but when I sat down to think about what part of my game bothers me the most, it's my inability to maintain or improve my guard positions. It's especially frustrating b/c I really enjoy drilling sweeps, especially from DLR, lasso and 93 guard. 

I'm also frustrated b/c I feel like I don't learn from my mistakes during rolls. I do learn, but it's very, very slowly. I can't seem to immediately equate cause and effect. I wonder how I can better analyze a roll while it's happening or immediately after to determine why a particular technique is failing. One way is to solicit input from my training partners as to how they shut something down. Will try to be more cognizant of what's happening during rolls over the next couple of weeks and see if there's improvement in at least identifying what's going wrong.