The training camp for Revolution 11 08 08 began yesterday, with a moderate LSD3 session on the treadmill (385/120). Tonight, was the first mat training of the camp.
A good night. Very Monday-like insofar as the warm-up was pretty much some hipscapes across the mat. We drilled for awhile: spider guard triangles, left and right, and one of Rodrigo's patented moth guard sweeps.
Here's how the sweep works from one side. From tight moth guard, slide your right leg across to the left so that your foot hooks back against his ribs.
Extend your left shin out to the side. You've got a grip on his sleeve with your left hand, and you're controling his right arm with that sleeve and knee/shin pressure.
As you swing your hips out to the left to extend the shin, dive and underhook his near leg with your right arm.
Extend the shin, lift up with the right leg "backwards" hook, and lift with the underhook to finish the sweep.
As with most sweeps, you want the guy to be coming in toward you. So wait to feel his pressure coming forward before going for the sweep.
We did some specific guard/pass guard work that is always nice. I wasn't as persistent in working my standing passes. But I did do a fairly good job of turning full guard passes into half guard passes. And I feel pretty confident in attacking the half guard. I've got a basic gameplan - nothing special. But I follow it like religion. And more often that not - and certainly against comparable opponents - it works.
Free sparring was a blast. 10 minute rounds. I rolled with Clint, Rodrigo, Stephen, Casey (who I haven't seen since the tournament in July) and then a good sized white belt whose name (Ben?) escapes me right now.
A black belt. Two advanced purple belts. One intermediate purple belt. And a white belt who had a couple of pounds on me to say the least. That's the kind of mix that's going to work wonders if I can keep at it for another 10 weeks.
I was thinking about that while I was in the shower after training. How many of my opponents in November train with - actually get on the mat and roll with - guys with Rodrigo's skill? Our purple belts regularly place at the local events - when they don't sweep the division. Do my opponents train against purple belts as tough as Casey, Stephen and Clint?
My bet is that they don't. Not regularly, not three times a week, they don't.
This is what I need to leverage. Not just the teaching - and certainly not just the endless hours plotting and planning my jiu jitsu. I train with some of the best guys (and gals) in the Northwest. I need to remember that when I'm thinking ahead, starting to get nervous about my imagined future opponents with their Aoki-like flexibility and Lesnar-like power.
There's nothing I'm going to see in November that I haven't seen done better right down the road in SoDo. Remembering that will go a long way toward keeping things in perspective as competition time nears.
