Trixxies

I find it hard to keep my head on straight between Gi and No-Gi sometimes.  Both classes are a different group all together, so the energy, skill and experience level is different.  BJJ is hard. Its hard on my head, trixxies...

I decided to actively follow, to my best, the advice given to me by my BF and the black belt I rolled with a few weeks ago--> Because I am small, weaker and very new to this, I need to simply focus on maintaining and controlling positions.  I shouldn't be scrambling to work for submissions(which is tempting) when all  I need to learn right now, is to be strong in dominant spots. Once I can hold the spots, comfortably with confidence, then the next step is to start thinking about submission(with less fear of the other person escaping, you can really start thinking about it)
Seems very logical.

 No-gi was really getting me down.  My BF told me he was purposely not teaching me subs in this class, (95% of the kids in this class also do the MMA class in which I am sure they are learning a lot of subs)  That being said,  when I go to the no-gi class, it seems all I end up doing is tap, tap, and tap.  Now if I started to focus on getting to and holding the dominant spots, the tapping would happen less frequently, no?

What is also discouraging but with a silver lining: Few weeks ago, one of the guys in No-Gi said to me after our roll 'hmmm, stepping up your game. Eh?'
I laughed, but he brought it up again later this week- said something to the effect of - Before he thought I wasn't really a challenging roll, that it was easy, and he could just sub me.  *That made me sad.*  But, he felt that I had recently reached the next level, that he has to try and really scramble now and that it has become quite frustrating for him.
YES! That is good.  I want that.