The Scent (and slight bullying)

Last week, I trained 5 days, and it felt good. This week, I have the flu.

One day last week, a couple of things happened. The first, I got complimented on how well I was controlling the back. I actually put a purple belt to sleep with a bow and arrow when we were doing back drills. The second was that I participated in some light bullying.

There is a guy in our gym who comes to train once or twice a month. He started roughly the same time as me, but I'm much more consistent. Last week, he came in. We were doing positional sparring, specifically from the back. I started in his back, and he immediately started to defend by grabbing my thumb.

I calmly told him that he should rely on small joint manipulation to defend that position. He immediately used his overly long fingernails on my hand. No serious damage was done, but he did draw blood. At the sight of my blood, I got pissed off and moved into a very painful bow and arrow. I consciously got the lapel onto his chin just to make it a little more painful. This dude has been warned about his fingernails before, and I got really pissed off that he wanted to use them as a weapon.

I know that these defenses are acts of desperation and a lack of skill, but I still got really pissed.

During open rolling, he again used his fingernails against me. This time he was trying to open my guard, and dug his fingernails into my abdomen. I've never armbarred somebody that hard before. By then, I was just pissed off. I tapped the guy like 6 times in five minutes.

Afterwards, I talked to our main instructor, a purple belt, about the incident. He said he noticed the fingernails and talked to him about it too. I apologized for being rough on the guy, saying that I hope that my actions didn't cost us a student. The purple belt told me he didn't care if that guy left, because he's a huge douche.

Then we started talking about how easy it was for me to dominate this guy. I told him its easy for me to lose sight of my own progress, because I don't train with other white belts a lot. He told me that he actually considers me a blue belt, we're just waiting on the next rank evaluation in February. He said he wished he could promote me sooner, but that's not how our association works.

He then told me that he can tell I've "caught the scent" of being a blue belt, and that its shown in my motivation and skill level. I've definitely gotten better, and I'm definitely more excited than I have been in a while. He told me he wanted me to compete before I got promoted, so I registered for a local tournament later this month. It looks like they're going to combine the white and blue belt divisions, so I'm a little nervous. Still, I'm excited to put it out there.

My wife and I are also expecting our second child this year! So big changes in 2015