The Friday before, and Nationals!

Friday the 13th, oh that just sounds bad. Ok so Friday we were able to go to morning practice one more time. I only went through techniques though, no sparring. I just rested and watched BTT train, joke, and have an overall good time. I asked questions, watched people spar, and just tried to soak everything in.  

So after a good morning class, we ran back to the house to make sure we had everything we need for the trip to Nationals. After a few false starts, we finally got on the road to Vegas!! The drive was interesting, I got to experience rush hour traffic. I’m not going to lie, the traffic was horrible. Once we got a little further away though, the traffic seemed to melt away. and we drove through the desert! Sorry I’ve never gotten to see a desert and being able to drive through it was pretty cool. We finally got to Vegas later at night, I was refusing to eat just because I wasn’t sure where my weight was and didn’t want to have to worry. We stayed in the Rio casino, it was amazing! Go figure the Rio hotel for a Brazilian jiu jitsu tournament…

Saturday was the tournament. Normally I would talk about the matches I won highlighting the details of everything I did well, and kind of glaze over the one I lost, just kind of acknowledging it but not going into detail. This time I will be different though… I’m going to talk about the match I lost, because for me no gi is my weakest point. I don’t train it near enough. Now that I’m a purple belt I really do need to make sure my game is stronger, force myself to train the  positions, and techniques I don’t like as much.  So the match I lost. Well it went the full time, I lost 2 advantages to 1. And my main mistake? I didn’t hold side control. I thought I did, thought I got the 3 points for passing guard, but I was too low, I didn’t establish complete side control and the girl got me back in her guard. I kept my head too low, so she could control it. So nothing but my fault. Actually Marcelo Perdomo, the black belt who had let me train with his team at BTT Long Beach,  had told me to keep my head up a few days before. After the match, he looked at me and asked me if I knew what I did wrong. I told him kept my head down and he told me right. So yep I know what I did. The girl had really hard legs to control, I wont lie, and she was strong. So after that Marcelo told me to compete gi, that my gi game is better. I kind of knew that I just really wanted to make the tournament hard on myself. So hopefully Gi Nationals in September will be on my list and I will be able to show some technique there!

After I competed, I ate some really fattening pizza, had a Pepsi, and watched the rest of the tournament. I did get third place, which is nice, I just wish I hadn’t missed my chance for finals. So next time I will work harder!