Back at it, with a PanAm 2011 recap

Ok, it has been a while since I wrote about life at FargoBJJ, and it is time to start up again. First, what I have been up to: the last weekend in March Jacob and I flew to LA to compete in the PanAms. Well I am getting a little ahead of myself. First the two of us trained for the PanAms, we train year round but a few months out we focused our training specifically for the PanAmerican tournament. Jake and I worked our conditioning at 701 Crossfit in Fargo and MaxTrain in Moorhead respectively. For competition training we got together with some of FargoBJJ's best who are interested in the hard training and competing and trained as hard as we could, and put ourselves in all the situations we thought we might experience during the tournament. We were still maintaining our typical class regimen too, and to top it off we had to cut back on our diets so that we could make weight! The IBJJF tournaments require you to weigh in with your gi on, immediately before you compete, so we wanted to come in walking around at weight instead of cutting before hand. I competed first, and I did great controlling the stand up, passing easily and dominating top position working for submissions... for a while :( Part way through the match the referee stopped it to adjust my opponents pants and I lost concentration. I started thinking of all sorts of things other than the task at hand and when the match restarted, although I was in dominate position, it slowly slid downhill from there. I was choked out and learned a valuable lesson. That no matter the situation it is necessary to constantly stay vigilant, focused on the task at hand. Now, Jacob was competing soon I had to recompose myself and be a good teammate and coach. This was the most difficult thing I have accomplished yet in my BJJ career. I was mad at myself, and down, really really down! For a period of time that seemed like an eternity I had to keep telling myself that it wasn't my time anymore and I needed to do everything I could to help my teammate win. It was hard but shortly thereafter I put the loss out of my mind and was helping Jake. This was his first tournament, and one so big for a first is amazing. We spent some time talking about adrenaline and how it affects the body and what to be prepared for. Then talked game plan and what ifs. When it came time for the match I could tell that Jake had a serious adrenaline dump, he was slow and lethargic, definitely not his typical explosive style. He got in a really bad spot right away but managed to survive, and started to recover! Now he was on point and making good decisions, he started improving his positions, he swept and got on top and started passing with control, but alas this was only a five min. match. Time was up and the competition ended with Jake on top of half guard and a gassed opponent stalling out in desperate exhaustion. Way to go, Jake, stepping it up big for your first tournament, and way to go overcoming huge adversity, and way to go ending it well! It was a great preformance!!!