Monday, February 11, 2008

OWwww my neck...

Well, class tonight was an hour worth of me getting tooled completely.
We started out from halfguard, I started in Ralph's halfguard and couldn't keep him flattened out. He balled up as soon as I tried to pass and from there it was just a matter of time before he swept me. I then got swept or passed about 19 more times by everyone.
Halfguard = 0/~20.

Then we did the back. First up I started with the guys back, hell I started with the RNC halfway on. No good, I couldn't finish it and after a minute or so he pried my arm off and started to turn to escape, I rolled into him and switched to mount, and he pretty much just threw me off of him. After that I spent 15 minutes fighting off RNC attempts. I managed to win one round via opponent boredom when he just got tired of cranking my head around and went to do something more interesting.
The Back = 1/~15.


Next up was butterfly guard w/ 2 underhooks. Half the people either just picked me up with their feet and dropped me on my side, or picked me up and pushed me over before I could do anything. The other half were slightly more forgiving in that I could at least TRY to pass their guard. I think I passed one persons guard. I was getting beat so fast from this that I didn't even get tired. I just kept moving from spot to spot.
Butterfly = 1/~25.

This is the first class I've been to where I felt like I didn't belong in it. Ralph has passed me completely since he goes to 2 classes/day 4 days/week and frequently makes it to friday and saturday classes. So everyone in the class is stronger than I am AND better. It makes for some very very frustrating times. I felt like I didn't learn anything in this class except that bigger people who are more experienced than I am can kick my ass. I didn't need to get my neck fucked up to learn that.

I'm hoping I will feel less frustrated after the 6:30 class tomorrow, but right now the whole endeavor feels pointless. I just don't see how a technique is going to work when a pre-requisite is always "control an arm" or "Control their head" or "Control their hips" and I can't control someone who can just fling me away one handed. More than once I've gotten into a position to armbar someone from my guard and they lock their arms up and stack me until I have to give it up and do something else, or even if I do get the sweep I have only a split second to finish the armbar or the just rip away from me and escape. I feel like everyone is powering out of every submission attempt I make. The only thing I ever seem to get to work is triangle from guard and that's usually a godawful battle to avoid being picked up, or having them step over my head. I have people standing up while I'm hooking their leg and pulling down with everything I can manage.
At this point I'm having a hard time seeing how I'm ever going to overcome the gap between me and any of these people. It's going to take me years just to overcome the size/strength gap with skill. The amount of skill I'm going to have to acquire in order to actually hold my own against any of them, much less beat any of them is pretty depressing.
I really hope I feel better after tomorrows class.

Knee is betta! YAY!

My knee is finally feeling 100% again, so I'm going back tonight to the 7:30 class. Whoot! While I was out of commission here I started up a new technology blog at http://www.techemperor.com that I'm using as a tech support blog. Development on that has been going pretty well.

I was happy see Frank Mir is back to his old self after a quick tooling of Brock Lesnar. Lesnar looked good for only having a year of training but his submission defense looked non-existent.

I'll have a real post up tonight after class.