Competition Season and Some Thoughts on Being a New Blue

I don't know about the rest of you out there in #steemitbjj land, but there are some great tournaments coming to Ohio to close out the year. We've got Fuji next month, IBJJF in November, and Grappling Industries in December. I'm hoping to compete in at least one but I have a lot of work to do, so I dialed it up a notch starting with tonight.

I rarely train no-gi but I know it can help improve your gi game too. My school has been switching it up every other Friday night for competition class so I decided to give it a go. We started with a good 6-minute roll but no submissions, just positional changes. This was great for me since I paired up with the killer in the red shorts. I typically tap out to him at a rate of once-per-minute but this drill helped me get some good flow going. It's a lot easier when there's no gi grips to work with either.

After that, Uncle Ron (the scary looking tattooed guy holding the cute puppy), took us through some 3 minute drills. First up was 3 minutes of take downs back and forth.

Full disclosure: I am an unabashed guard puller. Don't judge me!

It's harder to get away with that in no-gi so I had to step out of my comfort zone, in spite of the fear of my knees exploding. It wasn't so bad but at my height I really need to work on my level changes. It's very unlikely I'll come across anyone as tall as me in competition. I barely tip the scales at 155lbs with a wet gi on and I'm 6'1". So far I've been able to survive on sprawls when someone shoots in on me but I really need to get low to grab a leg on the shorter guys.

We followed up with a side control drill for 3 minutes each. From top side mount, we'd place our forehead on the same side as our own body on the mat, roll our leading shoulder over our partners stomach and jump over their legs to land in side control on the other side. It works your core from both positions and gives you good positional awareness.

The last 3 minute drill was a back and forth "sit out" drill where your partner has you turtled up on your knees in a north-south orientation. The drill involves driving forward, swimming out with your opposite side arm, sitting your butt outside the frame your opponent has created and circling to their back until you wind up the position they just had you in. It works really well going back and forth and definitely wears you out.

Then we lined up for a "king of the mat" style take down line drill. Three very experienced wrestlers just started at our academy recently and two of them were here tonight. The first one was a few spots ahead of me and he was taking down blue belts with impunity. In front of me was a larger purple belt and he even gave him a hard time. I was taken down three times in two minutes by another wrestler but had a good sprawl or two.

We finished up with 3 sets of up-down-and-out line drills. Five upper belts started down and the rest of us filed in to start in side control. When a submission or positional change occurs, the downed opponent goes to the back of the line and the next steps in. We did ten minutes of that, ten minutes from mount, and ten minutes from back control.

Gnarly wrestlers aside, I felt I had a pretty good night. Am I ready for my first competition as a blue belt? Not even close. Since my promotion, I think I've tapped out more in the last month than my first 3 months as a white belt. But that's why I train. These guys have been my brothers for the past two years and they're always helping me improve my game. It's just that their game is always improving too so it just feels like I'm never getting any better.

Who else is thinking about competing soon? @zekepickleman, got any good training tips for me?

Love, happiness, and rolls.

Oss!