He's turning blue...

In more ways than one...tonight we practiced bow and arrow chokes, and I also received my blue belt! It's a moment I've looked forward to with some anticipation, but much like graduating from college, it was over in a flash and after the fact I realize that it's not the moment itself, but all of the moments leading up to it that matter. Mostly, I'm just amped I can go to the advanced classes since they fit my schedule much better :)

Sparring went so so. I've been on a short break, so I didn't have tremendous expectations, but I felt ok about the whole ordeal. My first roll was with Jonathan, who had only sparred once before but is super athletic. Since I recently picked up some important details to do with closed guard, I held him there and worked on implementing them without focusing too much on sweeping or submitting. Eventually, I did sweep to mount using a steering-wheel sweep. From mount I worked to set up the cross choke as Roger Gracie tends to do it, but since this is a completely new technique, I had limited success. I need to work on incrementally establishing the grips. When I would focus on controlling and maintaining position, I couldn't work on grips as intently, and when I worked on grips he would start making good his escape. One big problem was that he was stiff arming my hips, which is something I need to kill if I want to work the cross choke into my arsenal.

Second roll was with Hong, another blue. I was mostly working to pass his guard, focusing on the three step process: pin a knee, push knees together, hug legs and pass. Although I was met with less success than usual, I already feel that this will bring me far greater gain in the long term. He cross choked me once, but that was because I was not posturing properly, so my bad on that one. He did go for the same choke again later in the roll, but I was better about posturing and he did not succeed. At one point I had passed the guard and was working my sidemount game, but I was really passive, and rather than working hard for the mount I kind of sat there. bleh. I know that I have a well documented tendency to be somewhat passive, and my biggest fear is that the feeling of added pressure because of having been promoted will make my game super conservative and stifle progress. Can't let that happen.

Finally, I rolled with Charles, the French brown belt who had his way with me in a way that was that was wholly unprecedented. In previous rolls with Charles, he has usually kept a decently slow pace, but tonight he switched it on. I should have known I was in trouble when he said to me "Congratulations! You 'ave improved now, yes?" at the start of the roll :p To detail the roll would be very challenging at this point, but I will point out a few things that I noticed.
-I did not establish three points of contact at all times when I had open guard.
-I started countering guard passes too late, especially the single under pass. I need to be more proactive about hipping out as soon as they go for the under.
-I need to make a long term goal of improving my knee on belly escapes. Major weakness. Might have something to do with Charles being a brown too, but still.

All in all, not a bad first night back :)