Failing to post again

I've been busy and made it to the mat, but haven't been posting.

Spent a couple of hours on the mat yesterday. I didn't really learn any new techniques. Drilled a lot of the basic techniques I already new and just brushed up on some things I was doing wrong.

A couple of observations I made during that time are:

1. Very few people like to drill. Almost everyone wanted to start rolling immediately.

2. There are some who only want to roll with people they think they can beat 100% of the time.

I probably won't get on the mat again until Wednesday. Hopefully I can get there then. If not it will be whenever. Definitely going to do some striking Wed and Fri.

Size and Strength

So I rolled this evening with an individual who was bigger than I was. Not sure if he was stronger, but he had definitely been doing BJJ longer. He didn't really show me anything, but his technique was not what I am use to. Rolling with different people I had come to expect clean. Though he was able to sweep me and beat me fairly well, much of what he did was size and brute force. I wasn't impressed.

Filling Space

On Friday night (it's now Sunday morning) I rolled with a Purple belt that I normally don't roll with. I've had a couple of rolls, but he's pretty good. I was the only one ready with a Gi and like most everyone where I train he was happy to roll with me, explaining what I was doing wrong while he was kicking my ass.

My bridging/shrimping is terrible, period. I need to drill it until I'm exhausted. He could easily pass my guard. (Which is not shocking), but I was not making a decent amount of effort to regain guard. He would gain 'knee on belly' or 'side-control' easily. Once there I could see what he was doing, but I c0uldn't stop it. Then he was easily into full mount. That is where he said I was extremely weak. My bridging was terrible and then I didn't not bring my knee and elbow together to fill the space. I was pushing with my arms more than bridging and he easily armbarred me every time.

I'm not saying that if I could have bridged and filled the space I would have won, but it would have saved me a few submissions for maybe 30 more seconds.