As a white belt, I offered up some counterintuitive advice about pressure in “Pressure: It’s A Static Thing” - don’t do it! Your primary focus was to learn how to move. As soon as you put on that crispy deep blue belt, the game changed. Now what? As a blue belt your focus in developing a high pressure game needs to revolve around connection. Once you have established the ability to connect, you can apply pressure down the road (hint: there may be a purple belt pressure article).
Let's talk about sensitivity
Your body is a massive sensory organ. It needs to be trained to read and feel movement and tension. Your body needs to learn to anticipate movement. It should feel your partner breathing, feel your partner slowing down or speeding up, and have a physical gauge for your partner's body depleting its energy. The capacity to do this is sensitivity. To develop this sense of sensitivity you can’t be preoccupied by trying to win, or thinking about technique. You must be able to create connections, and just feel your opponent. Focus on how your connection impacts your partner's movement, breathing, and decision making.
We aren’t focused on dropping the pressure hammer yet here. As a white belt, I told you to just move. Now as a blue belt, you need to just move with connection sensitivity. Can you connect your body and modulate the level of intensity? Can you close the gap in space, but barely scratch the body's surface? If you push in, what is the response? Can you feel your partner's chest expand, and then push in while it contracts? These are the elements of physical sensitivity. Ask yourself these questions and make them a part of your rolling experience.
Let’s get tactical
In mount, your hips and legs create a connection. As your opponent attempts to bridge or shrimp, your legs can slide deep into a grapevine. Your knees can widen and expand your base. The palms of your feet can plant on their hips. As you connect your chest and shift your weight, you expand your connections. You can push in your hip bones and lean into their elbows. Your job here isn’t to submit. Your job is to experience the effects of your changes. To feel the tension of your connections increase and decrease as your opponent moves beneath you. This process develops understanding. An instinctive sense of how your bodies fit together in a shifting space, varying intensity, and diminishing energy capacity.
Learn to move. Learn to connect. And you will be on the path to understanding pressure.