Hats off to the 62 year old blue belt who stepped on to the mats with me for Gi and No-Gi matches. Even 18 years his junior I am humbled by an older warrior getting after it. At our age, winning or losing the match is largely irrelevant to what you can take from it in terms of improving your skills going forward.
Two years ago my first match, as a white belt, resulted in a popped rib. At the time I regretted not fighting through the pain, but once the rib popped the outcome of the match would be my loss by either points or submission. I lack the ability to just ignore pain, at least at the level needed to deal with a popped rib. So I didn’t compete again until today. In two years I was awarded a blue belt, and I learned a lot about relaxing into a roll.
So what I did well today, I didn’t rely very much on strength. I didn’t have too much of a game plan other than, “get grips, get to the ground, find a submission.” In No-Gi, that submission came in the form of a wrist lock in guard, the dirtiest nastiest technique that blue belts are allowed (seriously, not proud of that). My academy doesn’t actually teach wrist locks, but I used to train Tomiki Aikido and Japanese Jiu Jitsu where wrist locks are central to the art. Talking with my coach, he was happy with how I was setting up attacks, and working one arm into a position where I would get the wrist lock, or get set up for a triangle. I was just glad I stayed calm and more fluid/relaxed than I used to be.
In Gi….my takedown didn’t work. My opponent had a background in Judo and turned my Tomonage attempt into a guard pull. As my opponent tried to pass my guard, I managed an inversion from bottom position to top position, and landed in Kesa Gatame (scarf hold position). Now scarf hold isn’t really a hard position to get out of, but I fished for double under hooks and tried to set it up where I could step over his head with my lead leg to end in a Kimura lock. That didn’t happen, as I was trying to get his far side arm set up correctly, he relaxed his near side arm just enough that I could shove it between my legs, wrap my legs and flex my hips for an arm lock. This is also not a technique really taught at my gym, but one that came with me from Aikido/Japanese Jiu Jitsu previously.
One of my friends, a brown belt, saw the look on my face and asked me how my matches went, and I told him. He was surprised because he thought I’d lost instead of won, but I was really going over areas for improvement, cataloging my mistakes and inefficiencies. It is very rare that we get the opportunity to really go full resistance with another person to test our skills and strategies.
Good, or at least visible improvement: patience, staying fluid, energy management, and using technique instead of strength.
Needs Improvement: takedowns, grip fighting, mobility in guard (I tried for a long time in no-gi to get to a better position, but couldn’t), and timing.
So I walked away with a lot of information in my head, a veritable laundry list of areas to work, and gratitude that another human being had the strength of character to step on the mats to test his skills. Skills that are never tested cannot be trusted.
Wandering Through The Night 