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...