Maia
I wanted him hitting me, but not to get hurt. This was because I needed to make him open gaps for my submission or for his mistakes. But this was a risk. I want to fight 10 more years, and punishment affects the future. On a few occasions, you need to jeopardize yourself to see how you react. I reacted well, in my analysis, but at the same time I saw that I don't need to take punishment.
--More changes at work look to threaten the nice training pace I've been able to put up over the past month or so. It seems like every time I start to figure out how to most efficiently arrange my time, I get less time to work with. We'll see. I'm grateful for the gains I think I've made over the past month, the biggest leap in skill in months if not years. But I'd be even more grateful if I were able to keep it going for the balance of the year.
--I'll probably spend some time on this later. But in the same way that the underhook and the sticky paw grip are key for the upper body when defending your half guard, I think getting small and switching your legs are the most important parts of the lower body when it comes to being on the bottom in half guard.
I used to rant about the importance of the outside leg in the half guard. I didn't know the half of it. As my half guard sweeps have improved exponentially over the past four or five weeks of focused training, I've realized just how important the outside leg is--both as a hook as well as a trap.
This is still my focus from the guard for 2008. I hope to have a clearer sense of specifically what sweeps I'm doing when by the end of June, so that I can spend the rest of the year learning how to set the sweeps up and how to recounter.
You know that the jiu jitsu is getting good to you when you think to yourself, "Wow, it's been awhile since I was on the mat" when it was only yesterday when you last trained. Good times, these days, on the tatame.
