Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Newbreed Writeup and Videos

It's been a few weeks since the event which has helped me get some perspective. This was definitely a blow to my confidence after being so successful at the last newbreed. This was pretty much the exact opposite. Instead of feeling strong, aggressive, and like I knew what I was doing I felt overpowered, slow, and clumsy.

For the videos just head over to the reddit thread I posted them on (Which resulted in about equal parts douchebaggery and excellent advice, which is my favorite kind of thread) and you can check them out there.

My first match I felt outmatched as soon as the guy gripped up with me. His grip was like a vice and I couldn't shake it to regrip before he pulled guard. From there I tried to pass over his leg and it just... didn't move. At all. At that point my brain shut down and I flailed around pointlessly before getting swept and playing defense for the rest of the round. One near sweep got stuffed when I couldn't get him to let go of my head, so he just stood up and ended up on top again. Total suck.


Second match was literally 5 seconds after the first one and was against an old training partner who has been wrestling forever. He's also STUPID strong. A quick single leg from him and then I just couldn't get a hold of him long enough to do anything, so back to playing defense the entire time.


The third match was like 3 hours later and I was tired. I was determined not to let my opponent pull guard, so I rushed my tomoe nage, resulting in a super shitty guard pull, which led to halfguard, then to getting bow and arrow choked.

I felt super shitty about my whole performance.



Post tournament I took some time off, both to let my neck recover from being yanked on, and because my wife got sick, then I got sick, so I didn't want to spread that evil at the gym. Getting back today I was very much focused on working harder, being more assertive again, and forcing my opponent to make mistakes. And it was working. I bullied all of the blue belts around pretty good, I was hitting my collar drags and my loop chokes, and generally doing a good job. Going to try to keep that moving until my next comp.

Also continuing to lift weights to see if I can get a little extra muscle added on.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

NewBreed results

I went 0-3 at New Breed and found that I am still just really bad at dealing with people who have really heavy pressure on top. I need to revisit that and my halfguard game under pressure and just work harder and be willing to use some muscle in class to help get used to that idea.

I'll post a full writeup and videos at some point this week, just wanted to get something written down to remind me.