Day 6: A new guy's life isn't worth as much

The earth rushed up at me this evening, and struck me surely and squarely in the mouth. I wasn't expecting to come back down so suddenly, but here I am, crumpled in a heap.

Hyperbole aside, today was a tough session that illuminated the problems I am going to face for the next few weeks at the least. As the low man on the totem pole, there is not a lot of incentive for people to work with me. Like Naps wrote, it's like 'Nam, and nobody cares about the new guy. I was unable to get to class at 6 due to an untimely accident from one of the canines of the house, so I missed the lesson and the drilling. While the early arrivals rolled, I was in a sort of limbo, trying to get warmed up, but with no real direction.

Damon dislocated his finger Friday, so my favorite partner was out of action. Ralil told me to go through some of the warmup movements, like the snake move and rolling from the knees to the bridge position and back. While I understand the importance of these movements, there was very little room to be shrimping across the mat so I did as well as I could.

Shortly, LV showed up, and I was glad to see him. He's an older guy, and he seems to have taken an interest in my education. We worked through the scissor sweep, which I still screw up when I try to do it quickly. LV made me concentrate on being fluid, not jerky, and I even closed my eyes for few repetitions. It helped. I then got some additional help on the armbar from the guard, again concentrating on being fluid and not tensing up so much. I think I made some progress, but I can't really be sure at this point. I was able to show LV the sweep we had learned from the butterfly guard a few days ago, giving him a little tip on leg positioning that he found intriguing. It appears that I am retaining something.

LV had to go to work, so I was again left to float. Ernie, a brown belt, was not happy with my languor and admonished me to find someone to work with and gave me a simple guard pass (that I hadn't learned) to work on. Gus grudgingly agreed to allow me to practice with him, but his mind was somewhere else. He was in no mood for developing a white belt's guard passing skills.

I ended my session rolling with Jack, who made sure to let me know just how far I had to go. Armbar, armbar, armbar, choke, choke, armbar...Damn. He's so fricking tall, and he uses the butterfly guard so well that I couldn't do anything. I did manage to snatch his extended arm, palm down on the mat, but I couldn't get my legs onto it and he was soon choking me instead. I was not really happy with my performance other than that I paced myself better and didn't burn up my energy right from the start. Pretty discouraging, all told. I better brace myself, though, because apparently there is a pretty big wall at about two months in that I'll have to face. Presumably knowing that it's coming will help. I hope.