Witch Hunt

I noticed something about myself yesterday during rolling that bothered me.

For a long time now, I have had a love/hate relationship with new, big, white belt guys. I hate that they muscle me and smash me and scare me with their spasmatic explosions. But I love that they challenge me and force me to learn new ways to deal with their insanity.

At first, they intimidated me and I stayed in guard. Then, over the last six months or so, I forced myself to move more. What has happened is not I am a white belts destroying machine.

I am not saying that I always end up "destroying" all white belts guys I go with. There are two white belt guys in particular that I can think of right off the top of my head that frustrate me to no end because I can't seem to adapt to their particular brand of smash.

But, in general, I am able to out-move most of the newer white belt guys. And I HAVE to, because they are all coming after me with everything they've got. It's kind of a kill or be killed situation.

At this point, I don't have the technical skill to be able to be like Fabio and a lot of the higher belts and roll all relaxed. I can get into dominant positions and get submissions, but I have to really fight for it most of the time, especially if the guy is a lot bigger.

Here's where my problem comes in: not all white belt guys are the devil. Not all of them are trying to smash me. Some of them just haven't learned how to calm down and not use muscle. They aren't trying to be jerks. They are just new. Unfortunately for them, I look at them and my brain says, "Must submit hard and fast!" And that is what I try to do.

Yesterday, I was grappling one particular guy who is pretty new; somewhere less than six months. He also is smaller than a lot of the other guys. Still considerably heavier and stronger than me, but not average beast man. He was coming after me and was quite spastic. He even picked me up like he might slam me at one point--I mean up to where he was standing up completely--and I said, "If you slam me, I am going to be pissed." That's the second time I have had to say that in the past few classes. And this was a different guy. Anyway, he put me down gently and Fabio pointed out to me that next time I need to just hook his legs and take him down. He'll learn if I do that. Anyway, other than that, this guy wasn't anywhere near hurting me. But instead of relaxing a little bit, though, I went after him with everything I had.

He was rubbing his arm after that grapple.

I apologized for hurting his arm. But the whole experience left me feeling confused. He was coming after me. And he was spastic. When I feel spasticness, my brain automatically shifts into "go mode" out of self preservation. What I did felt reasonable during the grapple. But afterwards, I felt like I had done something mean.

I need to find a balance. With some guys, I really do need to submit them hard and fast if I am able. But that's not every white belt guy I come into contact with. Even with guys who use muscle and who move unpredictably with a lot of force, I need to learn to use restraint. They might be out of control, but I SHOULD be in control of how hard I put on submissions.

UGH!!

Instant Turn Off

Despite the upcoming holidays, I'm in a bad mood today. This post is going to be crabby. Sorry. Just need to get something off my chest.

There are few things that instantly repel me more than arrogance. I know we all say dumb stuff sometimes, but I really dislike it when I hear people talk about how they want to fight people. I'm not talking about fighting people in the ring, in an organized competition. I'm referring to guys who talk about how they want to beat some guy up because they talked crap or because they looked at them wrong or whatever. Some guys seem to be looking for offense just so they can have a reason to get into a fight.

Example: Koschek on this season of Ultimate Fighter. I know that he's probably hamming it up for TV or whatever. But he isn't making himself look awesome. He's making himself look like an idiot.

It's even more annoying when I see this kind of attitude in young guys who sometimes come through the gym. You know, the ones who know a little bit; just enough to get themselves into some real trouble. They're still newbs (like me lol) but they don't realize they're still newbs.

So, macho guys, let me tell you how girls view your I'm-going-to-pulverize-anyone-who-looks-at-me-wrong attitude. We are not impressed. We think you're meat heads who don't have enough intelligence to solve problems with words. You're not as awesome as you think you are. Grow up and learn how to act like adults.

Now I am going to grow drink my coffee and transform back into a non-rabid human being.

Submitting Whitebelts

I wasn't planning on doing another post today, but I just read an excellent post by Georgette about the struggle she has--and that I think a lot of us have--about whether or not we should use our training time with whitebelts to work things we can't work with more experienced people.

I am no authority on the issue. I have the same back-and-forth conversation going on inside my head when I grapple newer whitebelts. Should I catch that submission or let them work? Should I sweep or let them pass? Recently, though, I had an experience that has changed the way I think about training with whitebelts.

I have a female, whitebelt friend of mine who trains at the gym. She's doing really well, growing by leaps and bounds. But from the moment she started, I struggled with the idea of submitting her. It was not just her, I struggled with the idea of submitting any of the white belt girls that come to the gym.

She and I talked and she said that she wanted me to go for things on her so that she could grow. Ok, I thought. I'll go for some more things. But I kind of didn't. I still felt guilty, like I was taking advantage of her by going for things. I moved a lot more and got more dominant positions, but I still didn't submit her very much.

Then, we recently went to a tournament. Her boyfriend, who also trains, was talking to her before her match and he said something that really took me aback. He said, "Remember, these girls aren't Allie." I wasn't sure exactly how he meant it, but I think he meant something to the effect of, "Remember, these girls aren't going to be nice to you like Allie is."

This girl fought and she did really well. But the girl she went up against was a very aggressive attacker. As soon as my friend escaped a submission, the girl would go for the same submission again, keeping my friend on constant defense. My friend never got submitted and never gave up any positions, but the other girl won by advantage.

The thing is, the submission the other girl kept going for is one that I know and use on other people. I just never used it on my friend.

When we got back to training after the tournament, my friend asked me to start submitting her more. She said she needed to learn how to escape things. I felt horrible because, this whole time, I was kind of doing her a disservice by not catching submissions on her. This is something Fabio warned me about. Her boyfriend warned me about it too. I just didn't listen. She could have learned to work out of that submission that she was faced with in the tournament, but because I held back, she had never seen it before.

Now, I know that this isn't the kind of story that applies to everyone. My friend has an excellent attitude. She know that if she wants to grow, she needs people to attack her. Some people don't have that attitude.

Also, I know that no matter what, there are always going to be submissions that she could have been caught with that she had never seen before. She fought well, but sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. That's how it is. I know. It just bothered me because I love that submission and haven't done it on purpose because I didn't want to be a jerk. And now I managed to be a jerk anyway. lol

Anyway, moral of the story for me is that I am going to go for more submissions on white belts. I'm not necessarily going to finish them and I certainly won't be a jerk and crank anything. Bu I am going to at least catch them, though, and make them work out of it. Same thing with sweeps. That is what the higher belts do for me.

Garbage

That's pretty much what I felt like tonight.

I rolled with a guy I have never rolled with before. Whitebelt. Nice guy. Always been friendly with me. I'm thinking we're going to have a nice, relaxed grapple.

Wrong.

He sits down in front of me and says, "Go easy on me." But as soon as the grapple starts, he is after me. He stuffed my guard pretty easily, which was frustrating (lol), and then went on to a lot of smashing. Shortly into the grapple, he goes for a heel hook. I tapped. Didn't want to mess with it because I'm not the greatest at heel hook escapes. After that, I was on defense for most of the rest of the roll. I kept returning to my guard or half guard. He kept smashing and passing.

It sucked. I sucked.

I was already feeling pissy after that and then I rolled with another guy who is relatively new and notorious for spazzing and not tapping. I mentioned him a couple of weeks ago. Same kind of stuff. He kept trying to go for heel hooks from starting position. And he kept doing this thing where he waved his hands in front of my face to try to distract me or something. Didn't work. Just annoyed the garbage out of me. I got two heel hooks but had to let them go because he wouldn't tap. He kept spazzing out trying to pass my guard. Finally, after he kept trying to choke me from inside my guard, I arm-barred him. Twice. Nasty, tight ones too. I let go as soon as he tapped, of course, and I didn't pop his elbows or anything, but still. I don't normally go that hard on anyone, let alone some new guy who just doesn't know how to calm down. A few of my buddies in class told me they think the kid needs to be tapped out like that so that he calms down. But I just felt even crappier after that.

I guess the reason why I feel so crappy is that I know I lost my temper. I wasn't trying to hurt him. But I was like, "Alright. That's it." And then the barring ensued. Normally, I am able to tolerate spastic guys like him. Yeah, I get annoyed. But they don't send me into outer-space like this guy did tonight. If I'm honest, I know the reason why I got so mad was because I was frustrated about the grapple before. And I took it out on this other guy.

Yeah, let the hate comments roll in.

After that grapple, I was even more frustrated and angry, so when Fabio started to put me with another white belt guy, I just asked to sit out. I knew already I wouldn't be able to relax and grapple without being insane. After class, I apologized to the second guy for going a little too hard.

I talked to Fabio about it too and he told me a lot of the same stuff my other friends said. The guy needs to tap. Don't worry about it. But he also said he is going to keep putting me with the first guy who frustrated me until he doesn't frustrate me anymore. I know it will force me to grow. Fabio put me with him specifically because he likes to stuff inverted guard. I need to focus on developing other things and this will force me to do that. But I am not looking forward to it.

Anyway...I am going to stop with the angry blogging and go to bed.