Thursday PM training w/ Professor Junior- Adaptation

When everything starts to go wrong in your life what should you do? Should you push a bad position and hope that by pushing hard enough you will overwhelm your troubles? Should you just freeze up and let the bad things happen? Should you look for an alternate way out of the problem? Change direction, and focus? Should you draw in your goals to focus on short term success instead of planning out the long run?
So it is with Jiu Jitsu. It's always good to have a plan A, and a plan B- but when it all starts going sideways, you need to adapt to what is happening, and react to it with smaller goals- like "I need to get my elbow out of there" or "how can I get him to transfer some weight off of my chest so I can get to my side" once you accomplish those small goals and regain a bit of control you can start planning your steps. This is why so many people compare BJJ to Chess. It's planning, adapting, reacting, attacking.
Last night we worked on some sweeps, and a sweet (but complicated) triangle from inverted guard.

I did some training with John, who is larger than me- he is quite good at using his size, and technique together and he pulled of some great subs- caught me in an armbar, and a choke- he nearly had a kimora, but gave up on it a little too soon. I wish I could say I was letting that happen, but really he was getting around me just fine. I think in his case I need to focus on making him reach so that I can get to the top. He storms my guard, and is one of few people I have rolled with that just seems to break right through. So I learned I need to develop some new engagements.

I finished the evening with a smaller guy and triangled him twice.  The first was almost identicle to the drill: triangle, armbar, then back to triangle and finish. The second was just straight triangle- he defended so I wrist locked him and sunk it in for the tap.