Saturday, September 13, 2008

Acid = Truth

Today's LSD treadmill workout was pretty typical in most respects. But I really spent a lot of time working on visualizations.

A lot of the time when I'm doing my LSD work, I open up a page in one of my jiu jitsu books and use a certain technique that I'm working on as a hypnotic.

But what I found out today was that I can really take this up to another level by working on my visualization without a visual aid. I started by visualizing the ankle pick, just as a drill. Then the uchi mata as a drill. Then I started imagining using both in competition: fighting for the grips, attacking with the drag and countering the reaction with either the ankle pick or the uchi mata.

When the workout started to get tough about a mile and a half in or so, I started visualizing escaping from mount or rear mount or side control or knee on belly. Focusing just on the 1-2-3, the pure technical steps for each escape, the critical parts that mean escape or continued struggling. I thought that when I was in need of those escapes, I'd probably feel about as tired as I did right now on lap 5 or 6, and that all I needed to do was remain clear-headed and have the will to do what was necessary to escape.

I don't think I'm going to add more than the one LSD session each week. But there's something about that monotony of 35 minutes on the treadmill that really lends itself to being able to do some other important work like visualization. It's really interesting how deep you can get.