My last post was almost a month ago… and I did not get promoted! :D

At the end it was more a relief I guess. This isn’t what threw the writting off anyway, I’m just as inconsitent at writting as I am at many other things. During that time I competed at another tournament and lost in the first round. It was my first time against someone with a similar frame than mine, so it was kinda interesting.

I jumped guard, he kept standing and broke my closed guard so I transitionned to De La Riva… and then I waited. he went into my half guard and proceeded to kimura me. The rest is mostly a blur. I passed guard several times and he took several dominant positions. The ref got the score all wrong, it should have been about 8-6 for him, but the official score was like 12-2. At the end I chased a submission but didn’t get it.

The funny thing is, whenever I stepped it up during the match, things went well. I almost landed a berimbolo and my passes were clean. But whenever I was in a good spot I stopped taking initiatives, allowing him to stay ahead.

I had another fight in the absolute division and lost that as well, for similar reasons. My opponent pulled guard, I decided to do the same but apparenlty too late because I lost 2 points on that move, and failed to notice it. My opponent spent 5 minutes in my guard, I was in control but didn’t want to rush it… until 30 seconds before the bell, when I finally noticed I was down on points. I started chasing the submission again, locked a triangle with 10 seconds to go but it was not tight enough for the tap.

So from this competition, I saw no glaring flaws in my technique but a mental hurdle. Coming back from it I tried to ramp up my game during training and chase submissions, but after some time I was again just feeling genually happy to be on the mat with my friends and didn’t feel like choking everyone out.