Conan taught class last night. We had a pretty good warmup of rolling, shrimping, jumping, falling, tripodding, and more.
The theme was a guard sweep that started with holding the opponent's own arm around their neck. We did a sweep, a choke, a neck crank, another sweep, and then took their back. I can't wait to work on this more.
For open mat I started by rolling with Conan. I felt like I was doing better than usual as I was implementing some of the things we've been working on. I did some guard passes and I pushed his head to his hip side but eventually he got the best of me. I don't even recall what the submission was, I think a choke.
I worked with Greg next (blackbelt from california). He worked me in spider guard and x-guard which I have little experience with. When I roll with him and Conan I feel like I can't do anything right. They have perfect timing and use little strength and energy.
I also rolled with Carlos, who I hadn't rolled with before. I outweigh him quite a bit which helped me I think. He was hard to keep down though and we went back and forth with guard passes. Conan had us all stop and switch partners before either of us got the better of the other. I then rolled with David. I did a little better against him but eventually he crushed me and submitted me a couple of times. After we bowed out I rolled with Ken with the usual results. We started standing up and I realized that I need to be a little more aggressive instead of reactive, the person that attacks usually has some type of advantage.
There is no getting around it. I realized last night that I am a white belt and this is going to be a long road to greatness. Obviously I have been wearing a white belt, but before I started I felt I may have enough experience to quickly learn a few things and be at blue belt level in no time. This couldn't be further from the truth. Yes my experience has and will help but the real thing I've been missing is the mat time with this level of experienced people. I've just got to keep working hard and strive for the awesomeness to happen.
You're not the only one, Josh, I wrote a post a little while ago that addressed this issue You're No Good. Previous martial arts training does give you some advantages, but there is no substitute for mat time...lots and lots of mat time. I also recommend competing as much as you can, because I really believe it helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses faster.
ReplyDeletei think you will eventually be able to adapt Hapkido to your jiu-jitsu game. there are definitely places where wrist locks would work. Jiu-kido?
ReplyDeleteYou did pretty good when we rolled. You will get better the more you train. I still get tapped out by all of the white belts, blue belts, purple and black belts. I think that covers all of them. LOL. Carlos is an animal. He is to quick. He makes me feel like a white belt everytime. Don't feel bad. See you soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone. I'm starting to think that I complain too much in these blog posts. I'm working on finding the right attitude to project.
ReplyDeleteKen, it would be Hapki-Jiu-Jitsu like Aiki-Ju-jitsu