Pain in the Neck

I came back to class on Tuesday and did some grappling. It's funny to me that every time I take a little time off I worry that my body won't remember what to do when I come back. I know that makes no logical sense. I was only out for a week. But it was nice to get back in class and realize that I hadn't forgotten everything. :)

My neck felt alright during rolling. The first two grapples it didn't bother me at all. But my third grapple it started to bother me a little. Fortunately, that ended up being the last grapple of the class, so I didn't face the temptation of grappling when I knew I should stop. Haha.

One problem is that I do a lot of inverted guard. Which means pressure on my neck at times. I think this will force me to try new things and not rely on inverted guard so much. During my last grapple, I found myself trying different things to avoid going on my neck and some of them worked. Some of them...not so much.

A couple of the blue belts I roll with on a regular basis told me I need to work on varying my game. I have some things that I do pretty well (for my level) but I need to expand and try new things. This is the perfect time for me to do that, I think. I want to work on being a top player. That's exactly where I need to be in order to keep from putting unnecessary pressure on my neck. So that will be my goal.