I decided to take Monday off. Tuesday Rodrigo had us working on a lot of physical, grappling-oriented work We drilled partner sprawls, keeping away from the collar ties and sleeve control and focusing on shooting for pant grips near the knee. After that we worked on the ground, pummeling and fighting for underhooks from the butterfly guard, with both guys fighting for the underhook and the bottom guy trying to avoid having his back put all the way on the mat. I worked with Shawn the brown belt, who was both good and tough to handle. Rodrigo focused on a couple of techniques: scooting the hips out to the side to get a better angle to avoid being pushed to your back, using your head to get lower and better leverage, using your forearm to counter and lift the other guy's head if he tries to dip low ...
For the specific, we did a variety of things mount/escape mount, side control/escape side control, guard/pass guard. After a bunch of rounds of that, we finished up with a pair of 10 minute sparring sessions. I rolled with Benny and then with Shawn.
A good day back on the mat. Rodrigo seemed to be teaching as if everybody had been crushed in 90 seconds by a wrestler on Saturday. He emphasized speed, explosiveness, the physical aspect of grappling and the importance of being able to get to the top instead of settling for the bottom and playing guard. It will be interesting to see how long this emphasis holds.
Answering questions about my own performance on Saturday was less than pleasant, and brought back some of the unproductive thoughts I'd been trying to keep under wraps over the past 48 hours. I've had this same embarrassing "how did you do?" conversation after every Revolution tournament this year, after every Gracie Barra Seattle Invitational and there is nothing positive in it at all. It's more than a little mortifying to realize that of the advanced belts who compete as often as I do, virtually all of them are not just successful when it comes to competition, they are very successful: Casey, Steve, Lindsey, Jesse, Chris Serna, Sauleh, Brock ... even some of the advanced guys who are relatively fresh to competing like Andrew and Shawn, managed to either get a draw or place.
As Batman would say: La-Di-Da-Di-Da ... The bottom line is that I'm going to need a barge-load of good jiu jitsu experience to make up for what has been a singularly disastrous year on the mat whenever anyone was keeping score. And it is increasingly obvious that barge won't be setting sail from the sideline of any competitive tatame anytime soon.
That leaves other options - options I've seen others take. Sooner or later, the decision will be made for me. I don't see myself competing very much at black belt, and even brown belt opportunities seem spotty. My own subpar performance in 2009 notwithstanding, sooner or later I will advance, and advance again, and the opportunities to compete locally will grow fewer and fewer.
Of course that offers a tremendous clue about where my energies are probably better spent - something I actually remember hearing Charles Barkley say on TNT one night in a conversation about Allen Iverson and what should be his new role in Memphis.
And I can live with that - even if I still wouldn't mind one alley-oop dunk for the first and only frame of the highlight reel.
158.4 on the scale post-training. A solid, beginning-of-the-week, number. Given that I dropped 10 pounds over the course of last week without too much fuss, I'm sure I'll be under 155 by this time tomorrow night.
