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.