No Loitering!

Prepare for a late-night ramble. ;)

On my first day of class, people I grappled with all told me the same thing: "Just move!" Unfortunately for me, I had no idea where to move or how to move. But since I was told to keep moving, I flopped around, landed in bad places and eventually learned to at least imitate the movements they were all looking for.

Now, I am still having to work on keeping moving. Being that I like to react to what other people are doing in a grapple, sometimes I stall out and sort of sit back, waiting to see what the other person will do. This is fine sometimes....when I'm in a good position! But when I'm not, or when we're in the middle of a scramble, that is not the time to let the other guy take the lead. No. That's when I need to keep moving and regain control. It's definitely not the time to stop and ponder the concepts and various techniques that I may or may not employ!! lol

That's how pretty much all of my grapples went today. I rolled with almost all senior belts who were very patient. They all told me I need to keep moving and not to stall out in inverted guard. Also, since Fabio put out a hit on my legs to make me learn how to defend leg locks better, I was thinking way too much about legs and not enough about the rest of what was going on. Everyone I rolled with went for my legs, but they let me work out of them, so good practice there.

Perhaps one day my grappling will be less schizophrenic! ;)

One thing I'm really enjoying about BJJ right now is finding little puzzle pieces to fit into my overall game. "Oh, I can use that here. If I turn it that way, it fits here too. Um...that one doesn't seem to fit anywhere right now, but I'm going to hold onto it just in case."

Also, I've been enjoying trying weird crap out during grappling. "What will happen if I swim this and push that and try to get my leg in there? Oh. A tap. Note to self. Don't do that again. Ok, well what about if I grab this and flip under here and close that space. Oooh. Mount. I think I like that one."

I feel fortunate that I can roll with a group of guys that I trust enough to experient with. They could destroy me on any given day, if they so chose, but instead, they let me fumble around and try weird things (that usually end up working toward their advantage anyway) and it's really fun. I hope they get some fun out of it too.

In the next few weeks my focus will be two-fold: 1) Protecting my legs. They are exposed all the time, so I can't leave them unattended for even a moment! lol 2) I need to work on using my inverted guard to sweep or submit. Right now, I'm using it mainly to keep my opponent at bay. But I need to be more offensive with it. But that's going to require a lot of the experimentation I was talking about. It's a weird position to work from.

As warned, I am rambling. Going to spare you anymore fatigue-induced nonsense. Hope you guys are rolling safe and happy!