Daily Submission

Signed up for me first BJJ tournament today. It is part of the "Submission series" which are a group of tournaments which do not give points for position like a regular BJJ competition. I am a little leary of this format. The idea is to win by submission but we all know that not every fight can end in a sub so there has to be a manner of deciding a winner in the even it goes the distance. In this event they will award "Advantages" for submission attempts. I am not a guy who throws out a lot of sub attempts. I am a position before submission type of guy. I secure position and work from there. I am worried that I will dominate position and lose to a bunch of subs that were never any real danger.

The other thing is that I will be fighting at my heaviest weight ever. I will fight at 194 in gi and 200 no gi. I am sitting about 190-193 and the next lowest weight classes are 181/gi and 184 no-gi. There are two reason's I am not cutting. The first is that they are weighing in just prior to your first match. That means standard dehydration methods are out and I am still nursing a knee injury that hasn't allowed me to do much cardio so cutting that way over the last few weeks was out as well.

There was another aspect to this tourney that was an issue for me. I am going to fight in the white belt division for gi because I am a bjj white belt but the no-gi is a little different. The beginner division states no previous grappling experience. I have wrestled, done judo and fought MMA so I have previous grappling experience but I have trained in about 4 years and never in a BJJ type event. I was thinking of fighting in that division but I think it would have been unfair of me. The only reason I would have entered would have been to make it easier on myself and to stroke my ego if I won. So I entered the immediate division. The point is to get better not to win a medal. If I win, great but I don't need to win to be successful. I will get to see how my BJJ hold up in competition. I am not even going to change my game to suit the rules of the event. If I dominate positionally and lose on bullshit advantages, so be it. I will pissed at the time because I am a competitive person but over the long run I will be better for it.