During sparring on Friday, I got two far side armbars. Let me repeat that, because I have never successfully executed a far side armbar in sparring. Never as in ever. But Friday, I got two of them.
Not only that. But I circled to the left to get one. And circled to the right to get the other.
Good for me, right? It gets better.
Working out of half guard, I get a near-perfect Eddie Bravo Twist Back sweep. I say "near perfect" not because I landed in side control, avoiding the half guard and getting into a dominant position. I say "near perfect" because the only thing I didn't do was pin the ankle of the leg I was hooking.
Still I got the sweep almost effortlessly. Two points, side control and everything.
Eddie Bravo's Twist Back is, like the far side armbar, another technique that I have never successfully executed in training. I've managed some twisting sweeps--I spend enough time in half guard that I'm bound to get a twist sweep of some sort every now and then. But to have the leg and foot coordination to pull off the Twist Back ... well, that was something that had eluded me forever. Until Friday. And I hadn't been focusing on any of this stuff. I just saw the opportunity and, pretty deliberately I'll admit, moved what needed to be moved to get into position. And then executed the move.
Very "Oh ... okay ... do this ... and this ... and this, like ... this!"
By the way, there were also a perfect flower sweep to mount and a nice half guard pass to mount that deserve mention in this context.
But what did I spend all day Friday after training thinking about?
All day the only thing I thougth about was how embarrassed I was during sparring with one guy, when I sat and hid in his closed guard for at least two minutes, barely trying to pass.
I had my excuses. And I'm not going to bother repeating them here. What's important was that I felt haunted about that all night Friday. I felt like I had to get back on the mat as soon as possible to redeem myself for my terrible two minutes. I hardly thought about any of the very, very good things I had accomplished on Friday: the armlocks, the sweeps, the passes ... Whenever I thought about jiu jitsu, I thought about hiding in the closed guard, barely trying to pass.
It's always good to keep in mind your mistakes, the things that you do that you shouldn't do, on the mat. But I've always believed that is it as important, if not more so, to focus on what is working, what is going right.
Something will always be wrong with your game. Unless you are perfect, there will always be a weakness. And, all things considered, focusing on weaknesses in an effort to improve them is an outstanding thing. I know because of my terrible two minutes on Friday, I'll be standing to pass the guard like my life depended on it for the next several weeks. That's just how shame works.
But that shouldn't diminish--as it was all day Friday after training--some of the things that I didn't just do correctly, but did for the first time ever in real training. Thinking about it a little over a day later, I can't believe how nicely that Twist Back sweep worked, or how "okay" it felt crawling into that far side armlock.
It reminds me of hitting that butterfly guard sweep out of nowhere the other day--minus the bad vibes.
You've got to have both. You've got to be annoyed--shamed--enough by your mistakes to do what you have to do to stop repeating them. I've started to take that attitude about getting submitted by triangle choke--which may be a signal that, stop the presses, I should start developing a triangle choke attack of my own. I need to take that approach toward opening, if not passing, the guard.
But I've got to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. And one thing that is clear is that the more time I spend on the mat, the more techniques that I've always struggled with or been too intimidated to try are not only starting to appear, but are working on the first try.
No point in getting used to it. But I shouldn't be surprised if other "previously unseen" techniques start flying out of my gi as long as I keep up the accelerated training pace.
