Sometimes You're the Hammer, Sometimes...

Hey man, get out of my head!

Sometimes You're the Hammer, Sometimes YOU'RE THE RANDOM PIECE OF FRUIT. Last night I was the random piece of fruit, but it was good (I learned some things).

As we started the evening's rolling, I was picking my partners to work specific things (primarily open guard against bigger guys) and things were going along pretty good - a decent amount of success and some "negative reinforcement" when I messed up (side control under someone who has almost 100 lbs on you is not fun :-o)

Needless to say I was already feeling pretty "hammered upon" as we wound down when Professor called out "...alright, against the wall. It's time for a Match of the Night!" The Match of the Night is something we do getting ready for tournaments - A full on, knock down, drag out, don't be "nice" tournament match with a referee scoring and the rest of the class split up to coach one contestant or the other (with tournament crowd noise blasting on the speakers). I was called out to match up against one of our guys who is fighting this weekend. I was tired after pretending to be a big guy in my earlier rolls but I thought I was up for it. How wrong I was!

In the moments before we got ready to square off, I realized I didn't really have an "A Game" to bring. The past few months I've been working on my C, D, and E Games trying to bring them up to a B level and I'm not sure what my "A Game" is morphing into at this particular moment in time. My opponent was someone that I have problems with most of the time unless I just really dominate on aggression and hustle. In other words, to win, I needed a full on aggressive A Game from the get go. So, I started trying to build a game plan on the fly.

When we shook hands and he started dancing around me with way more enthusiasm than my already squashed body was mustering, smashing him into submission was looking like wishful thinking. So, I decided to play defensively and pull guard. By strange coincidence, pulling guard happens to be my opponents A Game. Guess who pulled guard successfully? Yep, he did. I spent the next few minutes getting swept and defending submissions one after the other. I never mustered a sliver of offense the entire match.

And lest I sound like I'm making excuses, "I was tired, blah, etc., blah" - my opponent has been preparing well for his tournament this weekend and probably would have won handily anyway.  What I wanted to convey was my mindset and how it affected my attitude and choices:

1. I didn't have an A Game and so tried to create one on the fly
2. Because I wasn't committed to my game plan I abandoned it at the first whiff of difficulty
3. Once I adopted a defensive mindset, I was locked into defense - I might survive, but I would not win a tournament match
4. Even though I knew my opponent, he was one step ahead of me the whole time (because he was working his game plan from start to finish)

I haven't had a mental fail on this level in some time. It was good to have it exposed so I can make sure I can find my happy place and have confidence in it when it counts in the future.