A good training day surrounded by a lot of not-too-good off-mat.
Before training I did some skills work on JOEL, specifically a new choke series from side control that looks like it has been developing slowly under the surface of things for the past several. I was able to put some of it to use during today's training, which was pretty incredible. I'll be working on it more over the balance of the year.
My pre-fight existentialism got a little more nihlistic when Rodrigo told me my first opponent would be this wrestler from Marcelo's that I lost to in November. It was a terrible fight on my part, as bad as my worst loss to Sauleh (pick one, there are plenty), and while the Hollywood version of all this has me relishing the rematch, the reality version of me on the other hand wouldn't have minded a better chance of winning a jiu jitsu match after losing the last 11.
To that end, there is a huge chance that this will be the last go at competition for me. As much as I like the way training for competition hones and focuses things, losing over and over and over again does little more than make me feel badly about all the effort I put in.
As we say in the trading business, the easiest way to stop losing money in the market is get out of the market. So to steal a line, if "competition" is moving up, then I'm moving out.
