Rodrigo held a small interschool tournament this weekend at his academy in Bellevue. I was the only one from my school to even show up, which in itself is another post...that I will not write. Errr. I found myself going there to work on one thing and one thing only, staying calm under pressure. Sure a few Gracie Barra students and instructors is nothing like the 300+ people that watch you at real legit tournaments, but I found myself feeling the same amount of nervousness...which let me know something, I can get over this. In my only match that I had in my weight class I managed to pull guard (sorta), the guy got two points for the take down, but I still kept my guard. From that point on I controlled him from start to finish. Since it was just a practice tourney, we just restarted after submissions. I got him with a really tight triangle that took him a few seconds to tap to, but I just stayed calm and squeezed. The second submission was a nice spider guard sweep to mount to armbar. I was really proud of myself for finishing the fight without being gassed and without using any strength (muscle moves). After that match a nice lady came up to me and said she was impressed by how calm and composed I seemed during the match. IT WORKED!!!
My second match is the whole reason for this post. Lately, I have been a injury magnet. At first most of my injuries were due to my own negligence and sloppy technique, but in the last two months it has been the exact opposite. So back to my second match. The black belt that was reffing thought it would be an awesome idea to put me up against a 205er in a practice tourney. It didn't click to me this was a bad idea until the ref said go, but by that time there was no turning back. I was so stoked about my first win that I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Immediately when we started I knew he was a roughneck, so I decided to pull guard and play "armadillo" jiu jitsu. Once I saw him literally try to rapist choke me from guard, I started to panic in my head. Throughout the course of this match i managed to get hit in the mouth and kneed in the head. The hit to the mouth ended with me getting 6 stitches that afternoon...the knee to the head was a match ender. He did choke me from the back in that match which reminded me I need to be working on that in class, and of course my side control escapes. I know respect the weight classes in jiu jitsu a whole lot more than I did, lol.
Overall, it was a great experience. Although I am out for 2 weeks, I will use this time to rest and relax. I have the Texas and US Open tournaments to start training for, and I need to be 100%.
