Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Mean Mother Matwork Advice to Marina (You know we love you)


I watched Marina Shafir's second MMA fight on youtube and posted a comment on it. It was a nice arm bar at the end but the fight should have ended in the first minute.

Marina was on top and her opponent had Marina's leg hooked between her own. There are two different arm bars I can think of from there right off the top of my head. These aren't those demonstration type arm bars either, you know the ones that some idiot does in a demonstration that you could only get if the person was half your size or had the IQ of a slow-developing giraffe. Nope, these are actual arm bars I have done to resisting opponents many times.

Why am I such a mean person? Why can't I just say that it was a good fight, she won in the first round and I am happy for her?

Because there are only two times you can learn. You can learn when you win and you can learn when you lose. If you learn when you win, you'll lose a lot less often.

I can't stand those people who counter any suggestion with,

"I must be doing something right. I won."

You know what the definition of "perfect" is? It's NOT, "doing something right", it's "doing nothing wrong".

Winning means that you did one fewer things wrong, or one more thing right than the other person. That's good. Now, if you can learn at the same time one or two things you did wrong and correct them, you'll not only have won, but you'll have improved. At the same time, you want to focus on what you did right, too, and practice it so that you can repeat that.

Watching this match, I immediately see a couple of things Marina did wrong. Since not only is she Ronda's friend but I also genuinely like her a lot, I'm certainly not going to point them out here, but I definitely will mention them the next time I see her.

In case you are wondering, my niece Samantha got a 3.0 her first semester in college. Both Dennis and I told her that was good but she is smart and we knew she could do better. Turns out that was the best GPA Sam had gotten in years. Frustrated she demanded,

"Isn't anything good enough for you people? Is there ever a point when you WON'T expect someone to do better?"

From the living room, Ronda called out,

"Hey, I know the answer to that question. No."

P.S. Samantha made the Dean's List many times after that semester so I just wanted to end this post by pointing out that I was right.

6 comments:

Al B Here said...

If I read that correctly, you're saying you know of two arm bars that Marina could have used when her opponent had her in half-guard (BJJ terminology for having Marina's leg wrapped between her own)... that's something I'd absolutely love to see! I've never come across that before.

Dr. AnnMaria said...

Yes. I could have demonstrated them with Ronda yesterday but she was in too much of a food coma after Thanksgiving dinner.

Al B Here said...

That's a shame. One of these days I'd love to see them. I'll have to scour that Juji Gatame Encyclopedia to see if there's any reference to them, though I imagine they'd likely be in the Arm Lock Encyclopedia instead.

Unknown said...

Sounds as though you're doing "something right" i.e. "winning" at being a mom, although none of us is doing "nothing wrong," i.e. achieving perfection. Thanks for pointing out the learnings from losing as well as winning!

Sylver said...

I am with AI B here, I would love to see these half guard armbars in a video.

I know of only one armbar from that position and I managed to pull it off on beginners on a couple occasions, but always looked at it as a lucky shot, not something I could do reliably.

It feels like it would be so easy for my opponent to escape it that it's hardly worth trying, so I am probably doing that one wrong, and I don't even know what the other one is.

Get Business Results Manchester said...

Very inspirational Doc, I'm glad someone can point out that there is more than one way to see a victory. Being better than the other person and not making any mistakes.