THE WHITE BELT CHRONICLES VOLUME 1 - # 2

Today was my first tournament in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It was a school tourney held by my club, Lotus Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. To be honest, in the days leading up to the event, I had a mixture of nerves and excitement at the fact that I would be pitting my skill against others in a true competitive environment. I had no idea what to expect and how I would do so I decided that I was just going to get in there and do my best as well as what I knew from training.

FIRST ROUND
For those of you who know me, I'm not what you would consider a small guy. At 6'1", 235lbs. I got placed in the heaviest weight class which is Ultra Heavyweight. There were a total of 6 guys in my division including myself, and all I was really hoping to do was make a good showing. In the first round, I faced off against a fellow student named Jerry who had about 20 pounds on me. The rules stated that we had to start from the standing position, which meant that I needed to try to take my opponent to the ground..... yikes. I never really worked on take downs using the Gi, but I got a good tip from a fellow student prior to my match, which was to stay low.

The 5 minute match, started pretty quickly. I grabbed the lapels on Jerry's Gi and tried to pull him into my guard. This did not work as I hoped, since he dropped down into side control on me. I tried to escape, and managed to get a reversal on him which allowed me to get in his guard. Not wasting any time, I immediately passed his guard and got into side control. At first I was gonna go for an arm bar, since I managed to get full mount on my opponent, but he started bucking quite a bit to keep me unsteady. I decided to go back to side control since that was all he was giving me. Now here is something really important that any of you future BJJ players need to remember, look at the expression on your opponent's face while your in control of him or her. I learned this on the fly, and realized that Jerry was tired out from trying to control me. In addition, I was putting all my weight on him from side control so it was getting even harder than him to breathe. I decided to go for a choke I had learned earlier this week, which is basically a baseball choke. For those who don't know, a baseball choke refers to the hand positions you have on your opponents Gi. You basically grip the top of their collar with one hand ( thumb inside) and slide your other hand inside their Gi on the other part of their neck. The goal is to close the space around their carotid artery which causes immense pressure and can be pretty painful. See the diagram below:

After a few seconds in this hold, I felt Jerry tap and the match was over. I was victorious. and on my way to the finals.

FINALS
In the finals of my weight class I was facing the defending champ from the previous school tournament - Chris. He is a 3 stripe white belt who has great closing capabilities. For those who are not aware, each color in BJJ has stripes to indicate your progress within the color. Usually 4 stripes is a requirement before you get promoted to the next color.

The start of the match we circled each other, and I tried to use the same takedown technique as in my previous match with Jerry.  Due to his experience, I wasn't able to get him down and he mounted me immediately. I managed to get a reversal near the out of bounds line and the ref stood us up. This was my crucial mistake. I stupidly shot in on him for a single leg take down and got caught in a Guillotine choke which for those who dont know looks like this:

Lets just say that this is pretty uncomfortable and Chris had it locked in pretty deep. I didn't wanna tap but at some point I had to. I was really disappointed at the loss but learned a lot from it.

 THE MEDAL
Once the tournament matches came to a close, the judges added up all the scores from the matches and announced the winners. In my weight class I am proud to say that I took second to the defending champ. My instructors said that they were pretty impressed with my performance considering it was my first tournament. I learned alot about myself today. Considering that I haven't competed for something athletic since high school, I'm pretty pround that I went out there, remained calm, and showed what I know.  This gives me even more motivation to learn more and do even better next time.