Day 4 - Armbars and a scolding

The intensity is picking up. Three hours of training in one day is fun, but it's too much. I definitely need to space it out a bit.

Yesterday I went to see a podiatrist for pain I have been experiencing in my right foot. Later that day, I went to Krav Maga and worked on 360 knife defence as well as chokes from standing and on the ground. That class lasted one hour.

I have an hour between Krav and Jiu-Jitsu, so I usually just drive over to Jiu-Jitsu and watch or read stuff on my phone until about 20 minutes before class. Then I go inside to change and prepare myself mentally. Since I an new, there is always someone I have not met yet so we exchange pleasantries. This time it was a young 22 year old woman that got her blue belt in under a year. She said she was aiming to get her purple belt by this Christmas. I did not want to dismiss her goals as there are known people like BJ Penn that raise up the ranks very quickly.

Today was armbars and a sweep our professor says will work on white belts to black belts. The move consisted of a lot of parts, but maybe it's because he is going so slow to break it down for us to remember. It definitely works on a compliant training partner, but I do not know if it will work on someone resisting.

Flowing was interesting. Since there was not a lot of color belts, our Professor decided to flow instead of roll. I didn't have any issues that I knew of flowing with most of the other students in class. The last person I flowed with was another white belt that had been training for the last two months. He is very tall and slim. I could tell right from the beginning that he had less control. He was going for a submission. Everytime I felt I could have submitted him, I back away, but it caused him to go harder. This was the first time I felt very exhausted after just a few minutes. When I was able to break away, I told him I had to stop.

I would love to use the excuse that I was tired after training for almost three hours. That the last meal I had was at 1pm that day and we were approaching 9:30 pm. In reality, I was out rolled and for that moment, I felt like being 45 years old is not a good time to be in a full roll with twenty somethings.

At the end of class, our professor looked at me and spoke about tapping when we get caught with a good submission. The was a moment when I was flowing with the tall white belt that he held me in an Americana. I did not think about it at the time because I did not feel he had it in tight. I had my knee on his biceps to block him from completing the move. I was calm and just waiting for him to give up and move to a new submission attempt. I eventually got o out of it, but that was not what our professor saw. I apologized to him as I was leaving. I told him I was too ignorant to know that he caught me in a good lock. I didn't mean it though. In my mind, I was not in any danger. But I didn't want to fight it.

Tap early, tap often, train longer.