That's what you get....

Jeremy returned.  I have weeks of thrashing to look forward to.  At the end of class Thursday night, Klint and Jeremy pickled me.  It's like baseball in the back yard when we were kids, where one kid runs between the bases and the other two try to tag him out.  Just back and forth, with the kid in the middle pickled.  That was me.

I honestly can't say whether I was doing anything well or not.  I know that I made some stupid mistakes, and that I hate making those mistakes in general---especially when either Klint or Jeremy are watching me train.  So the fact that each of them was working me over while the other watched was hard on my psyche. Very hard.  I was fighting and screaming at myself over it until I went to sleep.  After gaining a certain level of proficiency at anything, you always get pissed and irritated when you can't do anything, when none of your techniques work.  And that was all of training Thursday.

Friday I got a text from Klint telling me that class was cancelled on Saturday, so Saturday I spent the entire time at Edina, taking class from Gina and her girls early and working through the open mat afterwards.  And for a lot of Saturday, the roles were reversed.  There were a few rounds where I was fighting out of my class---some rounds with higher belts who I knew were going to handle me and they did.  I got to work on my defenses and survival, and the thrashing I took Thursday had me better prepared for those rounds than I otherwise would have been.  I stuck myself into turtle too often, and one of the areas I need the most work is keeping moving through those transitions, from stiff-arming the guard pass to my knees to either my guard or my own takedown reversal.  I left myself in a few terrible spots simply because I didn't keep moving.  So I have some drills to work on, and I'm sure Klint and Jeremy will be able to help me work that problem.  Against a few similar belts, though, I was the driver.  I rolled with two people who were being just as hard on themselves and getting just as frustrated as I was on Thursday.  So I caught myself telling them the same things I heard at the end of Thursday's training:  they're doing well, that they're going to get beat sometimes and that's part of the process.  A few of the other rounds were a bit closer, no one losing self-confidence or slapping the mat.

A bit of the time, I even surprised myself with the techniques my body went to.  I was working a baseball choke, a few bow-and-arrows, some guard passes, Jeremy's back defense....it was a really good morning of training.  I only wish I could remember that those nights that aren't so reassuring.