TL;DR: I won 4 matches against my only opponent. I respect the hell out of anyone who comes and competes in a sportsmanlike way, and my opponent was a great example of that.

Going into this competition, it was a weird feeling. It was a round-robin tournament format, so if you had enough people in your division, you could face a variety of opponents and gain a lot of good experience.

But not in the Adult Blue Belt 230lbs division. What I had to prepare for was a bit different than what was advertised. After the sign up deadline passed, and there were for certain no more competitors listed in my division, there was a potential for a total of 6 hard-fought matches with the same dude over the course of the day. My training partners called this scenario “an actual war, with multiple battles”.

Thinking over the “actual war” scenario, the prospect of facing the same guy potentially that many times seemed to be more nerve-wracking than having to face 3 different people twice, or 6 people once!

Maybe because I let the thought of “what if I lose badly to this guy? Multiple times?? In front of all of my friends and teammates?!?” marinade in my head a bit too long. I let this worse-case scenario play out and take a foothold in my head.

The opposite scenario also played out in my head, but to a much smaller degree. Even with the most optimal scenario (winning by submission for every match), I discounted it as being “not a big deal”, since I’m only beating one guy. After having that scenario basically play out (3 subs, 1 win by points, a still very decisive positive outcome), I’m still sitting in the camp of, “eh, it’s a local tournament, not a big deal. It’s not Worlds”, which I think is healthy given that I plan on competing many more times this year. But let me contrast the absolute best case scenario with the worse case scenario for a second.

I thought it was going to be a fairly negative, demotivating thing if I got beat bad in front of my friends and teammates… but a “meh” on the most positive, best case upside? Isn’t that weird? The explanation I’ve heard about this phenomenon is that, evolutionarily, we are hard wired to focus on the potential negative outcomes of any set of actions more than the potential positive ones. This tendency has allowed us, as a species, to survive this long under the thumb of scarcity; carefully planning our every move to maximize the odds of us living a long(er) life, thereby increasing our changes of procreation. But this isn’t the optimal mindset for a world where there’s now too many readily-available calories (in the United States, at least, where those who are reading are most likely from and where my perspective has formed). Life has gotten very comfortable survival-wise for most people in the US and many can sit through life without having to endure any hard physical challenges if they so choose to. I digress.

Actual technical tournament recap time!

I need to improve my takedown game.

There, I said it. Most jiu-jitsu guys are happy to pull guard to their heart’s content, but not me. The wrestler in me is too proud. I want to fight for the advantage that is being top.

I feel like I’ve come full circle. I started out in jiu-jitsu only knowing wrestling, then learning how to apply my wrestling to the jiu-jitsu top game, then only developing my guard game until well after earning my blue belt. I have finally gotten to the point where I am fairly confident in my ability to at least retain guard and get to my main sweeps, at which point I can then leverage my much stronger top game.

I now need to circle back to, (you guessed it, you wrestler reading this) circling. Inducing movement to set up takedowns. Kuzushi. Whatever you want to call it. I need more of it. The first part of all of the matches I had at Grappling Industries could be, in fact, mistaken for two rhinos butting heads. Granted, my opponent made me move a bit more after he started using my own favorite upper body clinches against me (Russian two on one, armdrags), but not by much. I did have a bit of “ring rust” to knock off before I felt comfortable with just being in the moment and letting my training take over.

My most successful takedowns were off of snap downs, which wasn’t super surprising to me, since I have a deep appreciation for how safe they are to execute (and fail at) compared to how effective they can be when they do work.

Other major hole in my game: taking the back from the turtle position.

Granted, I finished my opponent with 3 rear strangles (1 lapel, two RNCs), but I did “fall off” of the back a couple of times in the process. This was because he wasn’t properly broken down before I attacked the back, which was my fault. I was able to snake one leg in while he was still very based up. After reviewing the film, shot by the thoughtful Doug Mccaslin (I didn’t ask him to film, but I’m glad he did!), I could have totally used “the truck” as an alternative method to breaking my opponent down to attack submissions like the calf slicer or to just take the back.

Alright, one thing I was proud of: the effectiveness of my deep half guard sweep.

I had to throw it twice when I fell off of my opponent’s back, and it worked exactly as intended both times. The first time I did the typical “Homer Simpson” sweep. He tried to kimura my far arm, but I had my hand tucked underneath his leg. I came up on top, stapled the bottom leg and proceeded to mount and submit him.

The second time I threw the deep half, since he had seen it before in the previous match, he stepped around my head for a kneebar. This is another common reaction I have trained for as well. As soon as he stepped around, I grabbed his far leg at the hip and swept him back to the mat and came on top in a similar fashion to the first time.

Overall, I felt good and I didn’t get too banged up. That’s really all I can ask for after competing.

I’m looking forward to posting future breakdowns of my matches. Stay tuned, and thank you for reading!

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