One of my goals for Jiu-Jitsu class yesterday was to take Kitsune's advice and try to alleviate my over-thinking by singing to myself while I rolled, but I largely failed. I totally forgot about it at first. Since I was rolling with a white belt I figured I had no excuse for playing my same tired game, so at the beginning of our first roll I was constantly thinking "don't pull guard!". Then after I tried to take top position and failed, we scrambled and he ended up in my guard anyway. At that point I remembered about the singing, and it actually worked pretty well as he spent some time trying to pass. I had told myself before we rolled that I wasn't going to try to submit him, so I just wanted to flow into a reversal or sweep, but he defended well, and the second he started to pass my guard, I panicked and the music stopped. He proceeded to side control, then mount, and he subbed me with a kimura.
I started our next roll by letting him get me in his guard, which it turns out was a mistake, because it wasn't long before he tapped me with a straight armbar. I told you that if you give a white belt six months of training, they will be submitting me, and Jordan's been around at least that long! On our third and final roll, I just resorted to pulling him into spider guard, and I remembered to start singing to myself again. It was working beautifully until he distracted me by saying "Man, I hate spider guard!", and I started trying to help him figure out how to break my sleeve grips, then we ran out of time.
Well, when I actually remembered to sing to myself, it worked pretty well, but I only seemed to be able to do that for short periods of time when I was in a dominate position. Whenever I felt threatened, my brain was not able to focus on anything else, and not even in a productive way, but more like "oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!". Something to work on.
So, what song was I singing inside my head? This one...
"Be kind to me, or treat me mean, I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine."