Little Talk

I was at my wit's end regarding feeling like crap after class so I asked James out for lunch last week to get some advice. I was looking for suggestions on how I could approach my training in order to see/make progress during rolling. 

It was a great discussion. I told him that I haven't felt like I've made any progress in my rolling over the past year, and the fact that I'm getting dominated by some of the blue belts makes me feel like shit. He said something to the effect of "Well, you aren't thinking about quitting, right?" and I responded that I have, in fact, seriously thought about it multiple times. He made the point that sometimes when you're improving in an art you don't necessarily improve in all areas at the same time. My overall knowledge and my teaching abilities have improved over the past year even if my rolling hasn't.

What I really appreciated about the discussion is that he didn't sugar coat things. He said that he was coming up on similar feelings because his game has stalled a bit b/c he doesn't want to "lose" to his students. He said he knows at some point it's going to happen and that it would favor him to just accept it and try new things anyway. 

I felt pretty good about things after the talk. Not amazing, but it did help. Went to morning class the next day and immediately got destroyed and felt like super poop again. I suspect that hormones are also playing a role, which is really exciting. 

Went to Sunday class for the first time in several weeks and had a good class. Didn't have a plan going in, but decided to work on the shin-to-X-guard and sweeps. Got a lot of different looks and quite a few repetitions. Had some decent rolls on Sunday and Monday morning.

I'm going to have to come to grip with the fact that my brown belt rolling ability is not going to be like Kelly, Chaz, Jason or any of the other guys' rolling ability. That is a difficult truth to accept.

Going to take a look at Ryan Hall's Arm Triangles series and probably the Passing discs again. Also picked up a couple of other instructionals that were on Black Friday sales.

Takedowns I Don't Hate

Lots of drilling last week, not much rolling. I was helping Sarah and others prep for their purple belt tests. They smashed the test. One of the purple best tests that I've witnessed thus far. It was awesome to see James get choked up talking about his wife. I had a feeling that he wanted to say more but was unable to get the words out. Great stuff.

I was part of the shark tank for Chris, and holy cow did he suffer. He had Kelly twice. Kelly did a particularly brutal KOB for an extended period of time. I think I stayed away from KOB, moreso stayed on top side, mount or harassed him from the back. I don't think he was prepared for the savagery of it. 

Seminar with Victor was terrific. He started with takedowns, to which I was thinking "Uggggghhhh takedowns...".  But this stuff clicked. Like...immediately clicked. I'm sure there's a fancy Japanese term for it, but basically your opponent has a cross-collar grip, so you get a grip under their arm (if they have a cross-grip on your right lapel with their right hand, you get a grip on their right lapel under their arm with your left) and then do some fancy shit from there. My favorite was a roll-under technique, but the very best part is that I felt relatively competent at most of them.

He also did some top half guard passes, including a back-step variation that completely flew in the face of the way that I've learned and taught it. I think if you're Victor, the variation will work well. If you're me, probably not so much.

Rolled on Thursday night and Friday morning, pretty much got my ass handed to me. Didn't get terribly discouraged by it though, just a bit. Still can't believe that people can take months off at a time, multiple times a year and still manhandle me. I'm such an egalitarian, but I need to quit thinking about jiu jitsu like that.

Was feeling kindof poo poo today so no advanced class. 

Fun Roll with Sensei

Completed the CF workout on Saturday. We did better than I thought we would, finishing the workouts faster than we had practiced, completing all of the presses unbroken and even getting in five overhead squats when I thought we may not even get one.

My shoulder was fine through most of it until the overhead squats, which were in the second to last workout. Several days later it feels much better and is probably around 90%. I'm really very happy that it doesn't appear to be something serious.

Drilled with Sarah during the rolling portion of class yesterday. After class I was getting ready to change for work when I decided I'd try to hit up James for a no gi roll since he's doing No Gi Worlds this weekend. We ended up having a fantastic and super fun roll, hitting a bunch of different positions. I wish I could remember more about the roll, but it's enough that we were both pretty jazzed about it. I came close (or he let me come close) to taking his back, I fended off back-takes and a number of submissions. Probably my best no gi roll in I don't even know how long. I was happy with my movement and how I was (trying) to control his body to get to my next position. Instead of trying to do specific techniques, I was thinking about how to manipulate our various body parts to achieve a specific position. Those are hands-down my favorite type of rolls.