More Wednesday

Martial arts are one among the many means to come in contact with our perceptive potential. During the practice of martial arts, we go back to a primordial simplicity. No need of drugs, objects, or external substances to help us. We are left alone with our bodies. We don’t have to wait for things to happen, we make them happen. It is like Zen archery or like climbing mountains: we use the body as a takeoff runway for inner skies.
-Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Wednesday evening gi at Sleeper.
Just spars, one after another. Cindy had an evil throw that she was practicing; one of those ones where you're forced to throw YOURSELF if you don't want your arm wrenched off at the shoulder like a Safeway roasted rotisserie chicken. She did it to me about 7 times.

Also worked with Dalton (the wrestler kid) quite a bit. Got another triangle on him, although I had to keep readjusting it for about a year till he finally tapped.

Lamont is frustrated with my attitude.

Me: "You totally muscled me into that armbar."

Lamont: "If you're just going to freeze up and hunch there without doing anything, I'm going to muscle you into a sub."

Me: "If I'm frozen there, it's because there's nothing I can *do*."

Lamont: "You have to let go of something."

Me: "So I'm pinned and totally helpless, and I have this one tiny thing (indicating a barely-there half guard clinging to his instep for dear life), I'm better off letting go of it (flopping limply) so that now I'm pinned and helpless without even **THAT**??!?"

Lamont: "You have to let go of it SO THAT YOU CAN MOVE."

Me: "If I let go of that, I'm going to end up someplace even worse."

Lamont: "You don't know that. You have nothing to lose. You *KNOW* that if you stay there you're just going to get muscled into a sub."

Me: "I'm going to get subbed either way, so why waste the energy?!?"

Lamont: "Oh my GOD!"

I know, I know.

Psychology has proven that intermittant reinforcement is the way to condition us into behavior patterns. I'm getting intermittant reinforcement from people who have been taught that muscling subs is poor sportsmanship- so when I freeze up in an (arguably) defensible position and they can't finish the sub without bulling it, they move and try something else- which gives me an opportunity to escape or at least shift to a marginally better situation. Sometimes they just sort of back off and restart. If it was a tournament, against a girl my own size who couldn't muscle me, I could wait out the clock as opposed to getting subbed.  Lamont wants me to get off my self-pitying ass and try some different things and MOVE more... I get it.... the very fact that I'm getting so defensive is proof that he's prodding the raw, tender core of my most self-defeating and stubborn bad BJJ habit.... but it's not that simple. Every time I try to venture into that territory, I just put *myself* into another sub and get subbed even faster.  I don't think he fully appreciates just how demoralizing it is to get subbed left and right every single day by everyone for years and never get a turn to see the other side of the coin- he has not experienced that. I get defensive when people who have never experienced that give me advice and pep talks. I know they are trying to help, but they do not understand and can never understand how that feels. I am just not sure I can emotionally handle ***MORE*** subbing than I am already getting now. I fear that upping the sub total even more is going to push me into the crying place and possibly into the quitting place, long before any (dubious) progression comes out of it.

It's ironic to consider that I have an ego problem and need to resign myself to tapping more. I look at it from that perspective and want to laugh till I cry: I tap dozens of times a week and get a sub maybe two or three times a month, and that only from people who are going easy on me. And in order to progress I need to tap even more than that? Really?