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.
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