Wed Morn Defeatism

So-so day of training. I can't decide if it's a blessing or curse that I'm planning on doing night class as well.

Technique was straight-forward enough. Spiderguard to a lasso from opposite arm sweep and transitioning to a hammer sweep if the lasso doesn't work. Picked up quite a few details on both of those that will hopefully help me be more successful.

During rolls, I tried to focus on the passing fundamentals from Ryan Hall that I watched last night. I was interested mainly in trying to make the knee over (split) pass work. I had some success with Sarah, and noticed that I was naturally keeping my head low and using it to help pin her down. I had to really work for it, as she wasn't going to just let me lock her hips down. I was patient, stuck with it and eventually got the pass. I was really, really happy that I was methodical and (hopefully) technical. Keeping my hips towards the mat was *not* intuitive.

Then a roll with Antone, where I tried to do the same thing. Much less success, as I couldn't or wouldn't get my hips down. He ended up sweeping and immediately getting to some awesome top position. He might tapped me with something, don't remember. I think we restarted and I tried to fall to the side (just like Ryan Hall) when he sat up with a DLR hook but that didn't work out well for me either. He went completely inverted, and I tried to pin one side down but he wasn't having it.

Rolled with Kelly, who was just toying with me while he was trying to get a lapel guard sweep to work. 

This is probably what started the deterioration in my mood, which was not helped by a roll with Ben (not teacher Ben). He passed by quickly stuffing my knee, smashed to side-control and then smashed to mount. Once in mount, he worked and worked for a submission, which he eventually got with some sortof choke. I could tell he was getting somewhat frustrated by the fact that I was in pure defense mode and not trying to escape. Fair enough, but I decided I'd rather wait for him to (hopefully) make a mistake during a submission instead of spend a lot of energy trying to escape. I had tucked my chin deep, so the submission was mostly a matter of him smashing my chin into my throat, which was totally on me, not him. He has technique for sure, but he also muscles the shit out of everything and has a significant size/strength advantage. It's frustrating, b/c I got into that zone where I was like screw it, just get your sub already so that we can reset. I really dislike when I have that defeatist attitude, but it is what it is. When we reset I let my frustration out a bit by going harder than usual, but the round was almost over so not much happened.

He complemented me after the roll that my elbows were hard to isolate, which was nice and all, but it sounded a lot like a I-just-kicked-your-ass-but-I'm-going-to-complement-you-because-you're-clearly-pretty-frustrated.