Plenty to like about tonight's training. Prof Kyle, who runs the judo class at the beginning of training on Monday nights, complimented me on my ko uchi gari, encouraging me to work on it more (and to check out a guy named Keiji Suzuki, who is a two-time Olympic medalist in judo and master of the footsweeps).
I've always thought that you needed long legs to effectively footsweep. The truth of the matter is, like everything else in the judo/jiu jitsu complex, that movement and angles are the real one-two that makes all the footsweeps (and all the throws for that matter) possible.
That, and more "flow" training were the highlights of the class tonight. Prof Rodrigo had us focusing on two sets of transitions. The first was a guard pass from standing with double inside control at the knee. The details were the initial grips and controls, and then using the elbow to help open up and lift the leg as you come around to the side. Keep tight, dropping your pass side knee against your opponent's back - especially as he tries to roll away into a turtle (i.e., running escape).
The second transition set was armbar from the guard, transitioning into an omoplata as he defends and then transitioning into a triangle as he postures up to avoid the omoplata shoulder pressure.
Good stuff, and it was good to work with Zee, who I don't think I've got to drill with before. I especially appreciated the guard pass work, the emphasis on securing the right grips, keeping the elbows tight and maintaining the control all the way through.
So that's The Good. The Bad and the Ugly were to be found, unsurprisingly, in the Live Training session.
I'm starting to make an unfortunate habit of being caught in bad situations, very bad situations that, without getting into specifics, I don't feel I should be getting caught in. So far, none of these crack-ups has resulted in a tap out, and there is a part of me that suspect that Friday's reverse triangle and tonights Barataplata (1) would have gotten the tap a year ago. So perhaps I should be happy for that. But the fact of the matter is that I can't keep finding myself in situations like this and feel as if I am accomplishing what I want to accomplish at a decent rate.
I know that there is nothing linear about progress - especially in jiu jitsu. But I'm starting to feel as if having finally got things back on track after a pretty scattered spring, I'm still making up for half a year of lost time.
In and of itself, that's no big deal. There is no destination toward which I am hurrying. But to train and feel as if my guard game, for example, has the same holes in it that it has had for months if not years, to still feel incapable of pulling off submissions consistently after all this time ...
I'll confess that there have been a few instances over the past week or two when I've entertained the idea of "coming out of retirement" and competing at the Revolution in a couple of weeks. Then you have a few training sessions that, to be blunt, remind you that you were likely correct in your initial assessment, that you have no business whatsoever on a competition mat against anyone, let alone the sort of competitors you have encountered and lost to at this level in Revolution's past.
Got in some conditioning work this morning. 10 count threshhold training. 5 sets with long 5 minute breaks, which is a good routine to do every other day or so leading up to a tournament. I think I was overtraining a little a few weeks ago and that last week's decision to largely skip conditioning work and focus on training was probably a good idea. It's still a matter of tuning and fine-tuning, figuring out what works.
160.5 on the scale, post-train. Not a bad Monday number all things considered (i.e., the SeaFair dinner party on Saturday).
