Had something odd happen recently.
I've been traveling, working a lot and can only be in my home gym on the weekends, so I did a drop in at a gym in Corpus. One of the Gracie gyms, not the same lineage of the one I attend. (I'm Gracie Humaita, this was a different one)
I wore the gym's Gi, at their insistence of wearing theirs (they said to make sure that staph wasn't brought in), and took my place at the end of the line, below the white belts. Shook hands, did the bump fist thing with everyone and kept my head down.
The instructor (two stripe black belt) explained the move/technique of the day, went into detail etc, then demonstrated on a brown belt....all normal so far.
Then he called me out on the mat, and did the same thing. Sort of a modified half guard with pressure, nothing that was super out of the ordinary. There was some pressure, but I could breathe and it wasn't that bad.
This is where it got weird...he said, "at this point you should be feeling clausterphobic".
The thing was, I wasn't . I've had WAY more pressure put on me by others before & I read Rickson Gracie's book, Breathe and it resonated with me. While it wasn't comforatable, I wasn't by any means in a panic either.
He finally let me up and asked me how much pressure it had been & I was really trying to be respectfull and mindful of my "place" being the drop in guy etc. I told him it was good pressure and I was legit trapped (which is true).
So, he talked to the class about it, then called me back out on the mat and did the same thing, again. The grip was tighter, the pressure increased but still, I could breathe. More out of annoyance, I tapped because this had gone on a while and he let me up. He seemed to be trying to make a point, but whatever the "point" was, it was lost on me.
We got up, did the move of the day with training partners, then did some live rolling, all of the students were respectful and asked me to come back etc.........but the instructor, was weird. Showed everyone his abs and all of that.....weird. I paid for my drop in, shook everyones hand and left. Maybe he didn't like that I came from Humaita, I don't know, but it was odd.
I've rolled with everything from first day white belts to Royler Gracie, dropped into multiple gyms, and I've never seen anyone act like he did. Your thoughts?