Sun 1/31/10

"Blood is just red sweat." - Enson Inoue

Today I grappled no gi (I wanted to do Gi) with my friend Seth, who I have known almost as long as I have lived in GA. He is a fellow Blue Belt and we trained together at Triple Boxing. Neither of us train there any more, but Seth followed Stevie Broughman to TUF.

When we met, I was already a blue, but he was a white belt. He is a tough guy, but I was able to dominate him easily for probably the first year we knew each other, but he caught up to me soon enough.

Besides the fact that he is a really nice guy, I like rolling with him because he helps me to get better.

I used to catch him in the same stuff, but eventually he defended, so I had to try something else. It has been going on like that for a while and while he has gotten better and I submit him less, I have had to change my game time after time. I still have a couple of years of training on him, but he has gotten much better than when we first met.

If I gauged my improvement on how many times I submit him, I would be pretty sad, as some times I can't. But when I look at the fact that he has gotten much better, then just the one time I submitted him today was a victory. Still there is more to victory than just that, there is control, dominant positions, passing guard, not letting them pass (he passed my guard twice which I view as a lose on my part), being submitted, and being able to pull off a certain move. In this case, I had some victories, so not bad for the second time rolling after hurting my ribs.

I was hoping to swim tomorrow, but I think I am going to have to stay home with Jordan because he has a fever and my wife can't miss Monday class again. Still, I will be lifting tomorrow night.

Have a safe journey.