Aside from the seminar this week-end, I got to roll with a couple of new people which is always interresting. I was mostly looking forward to rolling with the buddies from my old academy but that unfortunately didn’t happen. The only one I could roll with is my friend David (not Pierre-Louis this time), in nogi. David is the one who introduced me to bjj; he trains about four 4 times a week in two or three academies, one of them being an hour drive away. He used to be a notch ahead of me, and rightfully so — he has a lot more martial arts background than i do (almost anyone has), he had trained for 6 month before I started and was basically feeding himself on jiu jitsu videos. He litterally has 3 ipad screens full of bjj apps.
So I was quite happy with my progression when I was abble to play around with him without feeling any danger. He explained afterwards that the guy before me had tried to neckcrank him, so he was all tensed up and got into rollercoaster mode (keep your legs and arms inside during the ride). I’m pretty sure he would have given me a harder time under better conditions, but it was cool anyway.
I rolled nogi with a black belt — my first ever roll with a black belt! During the first roll he let me work and submitted me only when I did a stupid mistake (so once in 5 minutes, I’ve done worse). I almost caught him in a reverse triangle which he laughed of :). We rolled again at the end of the class and this time he chain submitted me. It wasn’t a new feeling though, I already met people that I was just helpless against — this was just the same.
Sadly, other rolls weren’t that nice. I went against mostly white belts — fresh white belts at that — and the same scenario happened over and over again. I play very nicely: let them work, sweep them here and then, maybe submit them if there’s an easy opportunity — but absolutely not going for the kill. Well, every SINGLE one of them attacked my ankles! One blue belt went for a knee bar and a toe hold, and a female white belt for a fucking heel hook.
I taped to the blue belt but none of the other submission attemps were even remotely close. But come on, going for ankle locks after 3 months of traning? Who do you think you are, Dean Lister? And i’m not even talking about guillotine attempts from beneath my mount. Fuck you. Luckily I was in a very good mood so I just sat smilling at their lousy attemps for a while before passing. But seriously, going for leg submissions during sparring against someone who’s better than you is just begging to get tooled.