Parade day

Yesterday was NAGA Albany and we had a bunch of people compete from our gym along with our sister gyms, Black Hole Jiu-Jitsu and Worcester MMA .  From kids to adults to old men, there was no shortage of representation in the different divisions NAGA bills itself as having.  

If any of you have ever done a NAGA tournament, you know its a long, poorly organized day. Yesterday was no different.  First off, they continually schedule the tournament on the same day as the Albany St Patrick's day parade, which is always held on the Saturday prior to St Patrick's day and has been for the last 35 years.  This means, parking is a nightmare, and you have a ton of drunks pissing all over outside and being rowdy.  Inside the tournament you have the usual unexplained delays which set the matches back.  A couple of my teammates had to leave before their divisions were called so they could make it to work.  In the past I've been given a start time of 2 pm and fought anywhere from 1:30 until 3 pm.  Yesterday it was a 4:30 start which translated to a 6:15 fight time.  

I went in to yesterday looking at it like it was gonna be a warm up for NY in April.  The night before I thought out my strategy and the only thing I hadn't decided on was how I'd start.   My plan was to go in and play my game, dictate the pace and not do anything stupid.  And that's exactly what I did, picking up the win in the process.  I did some good things and some bad things but i'll address these in training Tuesday.  Unfortunately I had one guy in my division so I did't get to much run.

As I've said in a previous post, its satisfying to use your technique against someone who has no idea what you are going to do. Everyone in my gym knows my game and stuffs all my tricks, but I still try to make them work. I've been told and read the thing that separates a blue belt from a higher belt is the execution of the technique.  Being able to execute a technique against someone who knows that it is coming is something not quite in my grasp yet...but I will get there and i'll keep working toward it.  

Overall I'm pretty sure the team did well.  We have some tough fucking guys.  NAGA hasn't posted the results yet, but when they do I will add a link to them.  I added my match to my YouTube page and will add some pics to the Images tab here on my page.