Another Womens' Open Mat!

Ok, so it was a sort of impromptu open mat, but still!

After the amazing turn out last weekend, one of the women from Let's Roll BJJ in Torrance contacted me on Facebook and asked if I would be at Robot's open mat today with any of our women. Are you kidding?!?! Tell me women are coming to an open mat and I will start wrangling up as many women as I can find! Sunday also happens to be the slower open mat at Robot, so we had the place mostly to ourselves. All total we had Kate, Jane, Erica, Sus, Alexis, Bri, and me today. Not too bad for only three days' notice!

I didn't do as well today as I would have liked, but I did spar for about 90 minutes with only a few breaks. That's more than I have done in a really long time, and so that's the victory I am focusing on today. I also worked my guard pull tripod sweep in early on in the day with Pat, and realize that I need to work it work it work it as I am coming up on the December tournaments. If I cannot get the stand-up down, I lose. Giva and Tim and Dave are right -- the first 30 seconds of a match are everything. You win and lose it right there. I have a solid guard pull that gets stronger and stronger the more I practice it, but for some reason when I get on the mat during a competition it falls to PIECES. I also have a pretty solid closed guard, but I chicken out with anything other than a hip bump sweep from it (i.e., anything that requires me to open my guard) because I am terrified of getting smash passed.

So, things to work on before my December tournaments:

(1) Don't be such a chicken with the closed guard sweeps.

(2) Practice starting from standing and pulling guard over and over and over and over.

(3) Keep my hips down during guard passing (Tim and I talked about this today; my hips are always too high. Always. It makes it almost impossible for me to get around and complete a pass).

I'll take it as a compliment!

I took Monday off from rolling because, to put it mildly, my entire body hurt. If I had to give one body part priority, it was my neck that was screaming the loudest. Turns out that 8 straight days of sparring after nearly two months off takes a toll, and so I sat it out.

Tuesday was great, we are working stand-up and take-downs in every class now, so I still have to sit out the first 15 minutes, but I get to do most of the stuff after. We are on the back-take and chokes from the back, which is stuff I really like. On Tuesday I was more confident and more aggressive and got more taps and more sweeps -- on boys no less! This has never happened before. Jackson was very gracious about being tapped by a girl and was even asking me how I managed to do it, and stunned that I had baited him into thinking he was getting a sweep that was actually a submission. In his defense, he is actually really new and didn't understand that reversing mount is actually not a sweep because it is going from an inferior position to another arguably inferior position. I was in mount, trying to get the cross collar, and let him reverse mount into my closed guard so I could finish the choke. Sneaky, eh? It only works on newbs, but I take what I can get.

Yesterday I was pretty woozy, but when to class anyway. We were working the rolling back take, rear naked choke, bow and arrow, and the clock choke. Kate was working with the new girl, and so I paired up with a guy named Mike for drilling. No big deal, he was a white belt about my size (in weight), but I don't really know him. He seemed nice enough, but was sort of being teacher-y about the moves as if he knew more than me. That's OK, I've been gone awhile and I get that. He doesn't know I've been training for over a year.

Once we got to sparring, Kate paired up with the new girl again, and it just so happened Mike was open and Tim matched us up. At first I think Mike was going easy on me, the way some guys do with a girl in general; not wanting to muscle, using technique, trying not to smash -- which I actually appreciate. I, on the other hand, do not hold back. I'm training for a tournament, and our academy in general spars at competition speed unless someone asks to go light. As we kept going he started to get more and more frustrated that he was not able to tap me and was going harder and harder and harder and just kept escaping and moving and pushing and getting out. I do not exaggerate when I say I think I got out of about 15 submission attempts by him, including 5 armbars and 3 triangles. I had actually gotten mount at one point, which he reversed (I really need to work on not getting bumped off), and when the timer rang I had just popped my knee up into knee-on-belly from side control after having stack passed his triangle submission attempt.

I shook hands, smiled, thanked him, and said "nice work" at which point he slapped the mat and said "for who? you?" and got up and stormed off. I sat there totally confused. Did I do something wrong? What just happened? Then I realized I may have actually frustrated him because he didn't beat me! I was just trying to survive and do my technique the best I could in preparation for the tournament I have coming up, and try to be aggressive instead of defensive -- maybe it worked!!! Maybe I am finally getting the hang of this after 18 months!!

At first I was a little irked that he wasn't as gracious as Jackson had been the night before when he asked me questions about how I had submitted him or gotten past certain things. Then I decided that I would take his attitude as a compliment. I frustrated an opponent!! Usually they try to make me feel better for being so easy to beat. This time I felt like I needed to make him feel better for not being so easy to beat. Looks like maybe tides are changing...

All Women Open Mat. Otherwise known as my very own BJJ heaven.

Today I finished up my first full week back on the mat with an all women's open mat in Torrance at Let's Roll BJJ. It's organized by the Facebook group, SoCal Women BJJ, organized by the M3 academy in Montrose, CA and has been gaining momentum for months. It was so great to have so many women on the mat at once for something other than a tournament! There were at least three black belts, a brown belt, several blue belts, and a whole mess of white belts to roll with. The photo to the right isn't even a full picture of all of us; I think that about 5 girls had left by the time it was taken.

I've come up with three great things about the whole experience:

First, I didn't have to think twice about who to roll with. If someone asked, I automatically said yes. Or, if I saw someone sitting out, I just asked them if they were down to roll. I wasn't sizing anyone up, because everyone was about the same size. That never happens to me! I'm so terrified of being smashed on by big guys that I get all lock-jawed when it comes to rolling with them. No fear today!

Second, the whole vibe was really laid back and supportive. Everyone was really into learning from each other and even though, of course, someone is going to win at some point and get a submission (or declare the roll over due to exhaustion) the entire event was more about learning and growing together and trying things out than smashing on each other.

Third, I actually got some sweeps, mounts and taps! I did! Me! I still have some blank spots and there were a few times that I knew I had something and could not for the life of me remember how to finish it, but that's OK. I have never ever in my entire BJJ experience tried for a sweep and gotten it. Ever. Until today. Really. And it was from HALF GUARD, which for me may as well be called "it-is-only-a-matter-of-time-until-this-is-over-guard."

Even though I know I have a long way to go, I'm really happy with how I did today. More than that, I am so happy to be back and feeling healthy. I didn't feel a single moment of vertigo today, and only about two or three moments yesterday that weren't to intense. I'm feeling so good that I'm not even regretting registering for the Grappling X tournament, and if I'm not careful I may start to feel like I have a shot at a medal.

No gi? No problem...not so much.

Training this week has been going really well. I've been feeling better and stronger every day. I took yesterday and today off work, and spent most of today sleeping -- totally necessary.

I usually skip Thursday nights at the academy or do Thai boxing instead of BJJ because it is no gi night. I have two basic objections to no gi. First, there is nothing to grab and that makes no sense to me. Second, it supremely grosses me out to have to grab onto someone else's sweaty limb. However, given that I seem to have temporarily lost my sanity and registered for a tournament that is just over a month away, I decided I need all the training I can get. On top of it, the worst part of my game is my stand up -- I often feel like I lose my matches in the first 30 seconds because the stand up game goes so terribly wrong. I need to get past that in order to be competitive at all. I've known it for a long time and have decided to deal with it head on.

It wasn't so bad. I managed take downs during drilling, and starting from standing for sparring for the first time since the vertigo took over my life...so not so bad. The whole thing still just makes no sense to me. It's so weird. My closed guard game has no impact because most if it is chokes with grips and so...what exactly do I do from closed guard now? Ugh. I'll figure it out eventually. Train train train. A black belt is just a white belt who never gave up, right?

Reunited and it feels so goooOOOooood!!

It has been way to long since my last post. Quick recap:

(1) I had an MRI on October 27 and a whole bunch more blood work to try and diagnose the vertigo; all tests came back negative.

(2) I got all frustrated that I was still so wobbly that I could not roll, so I dyed my old grungy Fuij gi dark purple!! It looks amazing. I intend to do an entire post on how I did it, with photos. I highly recommend dying your white gi if it gets that yucky overly used gross look.

(3) No Gi Worlds!!! My professor got ROBBED of gold in his black belt final, and my teammate took home silver his blue belt final. WOOT!!

(4) The vertigo seems to be reacting to medication, I'm cutting out all sorts of migraine/vertigo inducing foods and doing everything the doctors tell me, including taking most of this week off from work and 5 days off for Thanksgiving.

Each of those things probably deserves more attention, but the most important part was that tonight I actually sparred more than one roll!! WOOT! And I got a tap!! I did!! Cross choke from mount!! I almost got an arm bar, but the time ran out. Shoot!

It felt AMAZING to be back. Tim is still on takedowns, which I'm still not cleared to do. I can only imagine the mayhem my lack of balance would cause the poor person forced to drill with me. The humanity!