I do not understand...

Really I don't understand a lot of things. But the one I don't understand the most is how I seem to end up bleeding at some stage during every class. This time I was fine right until the end and at some stage during my last roll I apparently ended up with a split lip. I have no idea how this occurred. I really think I should notice how I end up bleeding. Oh well!

Fun Wednesday night. I think we drilled just about every technique I know roughly 2 times each. I'm not entirely sure how useful that is, but at least I managed to capture John to walk me through the second set of guard techniques, so I now actually know how to do an armbar from guard, how to sneakily get to the back from guard and some weird hookey sweep thing that I will maybe learn correctly sometime in the next 3 years. It's progress I say!

At the end of drilling, John stands everyone up and says "I've got 2 things to show you but you can only have one today. One escape and one submission. Vote on which one you want today."

I want the escape. Naturally everyone else wants the submission. John is amused about how the little guy always wants the escape and says that he also wanted the escape when he was learning. John is a little guy too. So we learn the submission. It turns out to be a triangle choke which is interesting and I'm perfectly happy to learn it. Unfortunately, learning it in this case amounts to being shown it twice, practicing it 3 times each and then getting ready for rolling. My goal for triangles is to correctly apply one to a resisting opponent sometime in the next 3 years. Aiming high!

Rolling was 3 rounds of 3 minutes. My stated goal was to not wave my arms around as much so I don't get armbarred / triangled / arm triangled so easily. And tonight, I sucked. Granted I'm supposed to suck, but I was rather unamused with 2 of the 3 rounds, and completely amused (bemused?) by the other one. First was Lee. (Lee is really Leyden, but Ley looks dumb, so he's getting Lee for all eternity I say).

Started well, landing on top in half guard of some kind. Note to self, learn good ways to get to ground from knees. Stupid! Second note should be 'learn to pass half guard' because that wasn't working again. As I attempted to do so he rolled me over. Underneath is rather less fun. Some weird scramble ensued and somehow I ended up under mount. No idea how, but it happened. This is where the frustrating bit came in, because he couldn't submit me and I couldn't escape. Note to self, practice escaping mount. blah. Boring!

Round 2 was a blue belt guy called Tim. Naturally Tim is easily capable of pulling my arms off and / or choking me whenever he wants to, but he was nice enough to not do either of those things. This was great fun though. He apparently wanted to play some butterfly guard (how is that fair? I don't know what to do with that?!) and pretty much swept me whenever he felt like. Spent some time under side control, bottom half guard and eventually ended up in his guard.

I won a victory against my instincts at this point as he was hunting a triangle and my brain apparently really REALLY wanted to get us triangled, but I managed to not extract the arm it wanted me to pull out. Yay me. Got some coaching at this point as John said "Watch your arm, he's looking for an armbar.." and funnily enough I actually already knew that. Somehow I even managed to keep my arm and very briefly ended up on top in side control. Hooray! Naturally that didn't last long, but still entertaining. Another fun moment later as he tried some kind of roll to an armbar that he whiffed on completely because I pulled my arm back and it just totally slipped through his grip. Tim said "Damn slippery little..." and everyone laughed. Fun times, thanks Tim.

Last up was a fairly newish guy (I think, I've never seen him before) called Luke. Luke is about 8 inches taller than me I reckon. Anyway, this one started very badly as I somehow gave up my back while trying to get to the mat and practically invited him to choke me, which he did after 40 seconds or so of struggle. Good job. Restart and I end up under side control, promptly escape and end up with him in my guard (hooray!) and then another pair lands on top of me. Ow. Possibly this is the bit where I ended up bleeding? No idea. One more restart and he pulls guard and spends the next minute and a half hanging on for dear life. That's kind of annoying, but I have to admit I was kinda tired too. Threatened to pass a couple of times but he just dragged me back down on top. Oh well.

In reflection, maybe I didn't suck quite that much, but I didn't actually successfully achieve much either. Mission for next week is to find some time in good positions instead of spending the whole time in bad ones.

Apparently grading night is Wednesday night next week. From what I gather, the purpose of this is for people to just randomly roll with each other for a couple of hours, then they tell us we're allowed to go train with the big kids. Should be fun, especially seeing as the big kids in question will also be there, so I should be able to find lots of rolling partners who can rip my arms off but hopefully won't.