First day back on the mat since Monday. The idea has been to let my shoulder recover a little bit and maybe the healing and the Cissus will be able to catch up. I'm pretty much determined to not stop training unless something gets dramatically worse, so today was a halfway decent test.
Between the Ibuprofen, the generic Mineral Ice and the adrenalin of rolling with guys like Shawn, Brian and Benny, my shoulder held up well. There were a few moments when I was a little hesitant to post on it. But by the time I was rolling with Benny (for the second time), it wasn't even much of a distraction.
I'm starting to feel it a little bit now. But as long as I don't feel any worse, I'm going to go ahead and keep training for now. There are so many things I need to work on that the idea of taking any significant time off right now is just not an idea I'm interested in entertaining.
What's working? Nothing special out of today's session, which was pretty much a Live Training session. I spent some time working out of Rap Star, feeling ways to free the off hand when the top guy seeks to control it. My guess is that when someone starts to crowd your Rap Star, that is the time to rotate over and attack with the kimura. I also think that lowering my off hand instead of raising it could not only make it easier to free that arm, but may also do a better job of setting up triangle attacks from Rap Star.
Found myself battling the knee cross pass also. Very, very tough battle. I tried to counter with the Rodeo. But the guard passer did a good job of controlling my inside arm. I'd been looking at a counter over at MG in Action just last night, and forgot a few of the details to use when the passer does a good job of attacking the inside arm.
I still need to keep working on my attack and counter-attack from the Cobra/Marcelo guard. It's been years - literally - since I paid serious attention to this whole area of my game (other than just using it as a platform for pulling half guard). This means the whole Marcelinho shebang of hand fighting, deep half guards (X and otherwise) and the holy trinity of straight armlocks, omoplatas and guillotines.
Some of that will come easier than others. But part of what will be most interesting will be in seeing what it is that makes it difficult for me to get into position to launch these attacks, and then to fix those deficiencies.
For example, Marcelo's guillotine attack requires a pretty explosive launch from "falling to your back" to "sitting up pitched forward." And there are exercises for that. His single-leg guard and straight armlocks both require some hip mobility and accuracy that I don't yet have.
But I'm working on it. The trick is to work as constructively as possible, especially if you are on the impatient side, as I am. The easy way is to do as I see a lot of advanced guys like Lance and Henrique do, which is to aggressively play the exact same position at every single opportunity. This is the most common approach to developing and stoking evolution in your game, and I've certainly done my share of this, especially where the half guard is concerned.
Still there are more optimal approaches, and these are the approaches I need to embrace over the next 60 days, up to and through the October 2nd Gracie Barra Seattle tournament to the final Revolution event of the year a little over a month afterwards. They include aggressively finding partners to drill technique with after class - even if that means not getting in much if any full-on sparring on a given night. At the end of the day, 50 armbars from the guard and 50 "bullet time to slingshot" sweeps after every class will do me far more good than just about anything else I can do on the mat. At least right now.
159.8 on the scale post-train. Not bad, all things considered. Back on the mat Monday morning.
