Last night’s time on the mats in a lot of ways mirrored yesterday’s experience in the market. I lost money on bullish bets across the board, slow-moving big caps like Budweiser, speculative nonsense like Sun Microsystems and a field bet on the Nasdaq 100.
They were timely exits. I owned September calls, which meant that my positions in those three beasts had to reach a certain point by next Friday or I’d lose it all. Budweiser got whacked first and hardest, and after a few minutes of anxiety I decided to do the right thing and dump the position. Sun Micro looked like it was moving too vertically so that one had to go also. And the Nasdaq position hit a mandatory exit point, so bye bye QQQQ.
So I did the right thing, but lost money. Trading is like that much of the time.
I spent most of my time last night with higher belts about my size: Shaka with Greco takedown drills, later “king of the guard” with Tommy, Alex the Purple and Clint. Though I did okay in the general takedown work, I couldn’t do anything against Shaka when we started with double underhooks. He pretty much took me down at will—a good reminder not to let somebody get double underhooks.
“King of the Guard” was another exercise in humility. I don’t think I was ever in Clint’s guard. But I worked a few times against Tommy and Alex, mostly trying to work the wrist pin pass that worked on Clint back on Tuesday night. No dice. Tommy showed me a guard pass that is similar to the Saulo no-gi guard pass only where Saulo pinches his knees in to pop the guard open, Tommy uses his elbows to push out. I wonder how those two would work as a combo. I wouldn’t mind seeing Tommy work that pass again—I feel as if there is a detail I’m missing. But it was working for him last night.
Sparring was with Shaka, then Tommy, then Mike (the tall Asian white belt). As I said to Griff later, I’m still getting schooled by the guy’s who are supposed to school me. Shaka was typically hard to deal with and caught me in a couple of different submissions. Tommy was little different, catching me in body triangles twice I think and making me work hard to avoid some triangles. My time with Mike was a change of pace in that regard as I was able to work two keylocks against him in about six minutes.
There are two techniques I want to get some clarification on, both of which are ones that Mamazinho showed us. Tommy pointed out the idea of underhooking the far arm during a guard pass, which is what reminded me of the pass that Mamazinho showed us. There was also a way of dealing with the knees that I remember Mamazinho showing Lindsey weeks ago. I remember the general points, but know that I’m leaving out some crucial details.
Three training sessions in a row … it will be nice to get a break and digest some of what we’ve worked on and I’m trying to work through. Next week I’ll get back to two gi nights and one no-gi and try to get my “tournament” game a little tighter. I’m still convinced that the difference between placing and not placing will be my ability to pass the guard. That’s been the case in all seven tournament matches I’ve had over the past year. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all cake after that. But I pass the guard—or even maintain a solid base and posture in the guard—and two of my three losses become wins.
