Too Anxious

by Jen

Marcelo is visiting family & training in Brazil so our purple belts, Lior and Boom will be teaching the classes for the next few weeks. Yesterday was Lior's class. We worked on open guard sweeps to full mount, triangles from full mount, and triangles to arm bars. He had me roll with one of the new white belts. This was the guy's first time rolling so I asked Lior what he wanted us to do. Knowing I need to work on submissions, he told me to try submissions from full mount, while the guy tried to escape. I thought this was going to be easier than it was, but he threw me off and escaped over and over and over again. This clued me in that I still need to work on leveraging my weight on the mount - something that I thought I had a handle on. Tom pointed out how this guy was relaxed and nimble in the way he fought, which worked to his advantage.

We also had a visiting brown belt from Montreal training with us. I was honored that he asked me to roll with him. I'm always glad to get a new perspective on my training. He told me that my technique is good, but I'm too anxious to go for the mounts and submissions. He suggested that I wait and make the opponent uncomfortable which will more than likely lead to them making a mistake - then I go for it. He's 100% correct.

When we got home, Tom asked me to watch a scene from Rocky 3 that he cued up on our dvr. It's when Adrianne gave Rocky the pep talk on the beach. It was one of his ways of motivating me after my few months of frustration. He wanted to show me that it's common to get frustrated now and then. Great scene - haven't watched the movie yet, but think I will now.

This, along with a good class and encouraging words from Marcelo before he left, have me ready to go in 2011. Looking forward to see what Boom has in store for us tonight.