My First Jiu Jitsu Tournament

I started training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu 10 months ago. I had some friends who raved about it and thought I'd give it shot. It said by some to be like chess, a game I love, and to an extent those people are correct. Its a tactical game where the ability to transition your body from a lesser tactical position to a higher one is key. 

About 6 months ago I started planning to compete in tournaments where I could test myself against men my age, weight, skill level. I started escalating my training, participating in competition classes to get more familiar with the fighting style I would need to succeed. My goal was to be ready for a tournament ran by the North American Grappling Association (aka NAGA) scheduled on March 3rd, 2018. 

I woke that day with the jitters and they lasted all day. I found myself very nervous about the upcoming matches. My first match was no-gi, which means you don't wear a traditional karate style uniform. The opponent was in great shape and strong as hell. Here's the footage.

It started out badly. As you can see I was backfooting most of the time. My opponent eased up and gave me a bit of space to work with, so I shot an effective single leg takedown to establish and ultimately maintain control for the entire match. I won on points, 8-0. There were only two of us in my division, so I won the gold here.

The second tournament had more entrants, initially 6, but two bowed out from exhaustion. My first match was a 4 striped white belt and about my size. Going into this I was more afraid than usual. Here's that match.

Again the match started off dicey with my opponent engaging me with strong grips and power. Usually I'd use that power to takedown my opponent but my own grips felt wrong. This is something I need to drill with my instructors going forward. After we fight for control we separate and go back to sizing each other up.

My opponent led with his right leg. I tried to fake for the grips and hit a single and got a good shot to the right leg. We didn't land how I would have liked. I ended up barely past his legs and he was working to get back to a stable position. Luckily I kept my distance and switched from attacking left to attack right swatting is left leg down to engage in side control. From there it was mostly me trying to maintain and stabilize.

My opponent was smart and wouldn't let me get to a point where I could mount him. He tried to turn away and successfully followed by establishing (a sloppy) s-mount. Once there I attempted to take the kimura grip. I don't know why, but he chose to go to his stomach where my s-mount could easily become a back mount. I was able slip in my right foot hook and develop a (somewhat) good rear naked choke that led to a tap. This guy was surely the highest skilled of the bunch. If I could only walk away with one win it would be this one

I was supposed to face another opponent, but he got disqualified for a no show. So I went on to the finals.

I ended up facing a lower striped white belt in the final round. like all other contenders he was unusually strong and his grips had me a bit scared. He had the first real attack. He shot my legs. He might have been able to sink it with more technique, possibly driving through my hips, but I sprawled ,swept to his side, and let gravity do the rest. I got him quickly into side control, then mount. I used a grapevine technique to keep his legs up in the air and put more pressure on his lungs. He began to groan and wheeze signaling that he was running out of air. By squeezing harder on his neck and shoulder he lost all ability to pull air into his lungs. Soon after he tapped. 

I had 4 big takeaways from this awesome experience.

1. The intensity of real competition is much higher than expected. Even though some classes are geared for competition, they can't capture the intensity of real competition.
2. Grips in Gi matches were much different than I was used to. I wonder if this is because different schools teach different techniques. 
3. When fighting at competition speed, you get tired much quicker. I found myself making big mistakes mostly due to exhaustion and anxiety. Its much harder to think in competition than it is in class.
4. The competitors I faced were some of the nicest coolest guys you could ever meet. You might think that men who choke people outare mean or nasty, but that was not the case with these guys.  I hope to meet them all again. Even if they end up besting me, I hope them all the best.

At the end of the day the tourney was a success, but there's tons of work to be done. I saw alot of sloppy work and missed opportunities in these videos. I hope to do a deep dive with my team's higher belts going forward.