Made it to Lindsey's class tonight. We started off with some light sparring to warm up, which was a very nice change of pace. I rolled with a white belt whose name I can't recall and got to play a lot of open guard. One mistake was that I should have taken the opportunity to work on my left hip half guard more. But it was a nice way to start training.
We followed that up with some stretching while Lindsey talked a little about competition and great tournaments past. I enjoyed hearing it. It was a perfect way to start the week leading up to the tournament. He talked about all the guys some of us have seen compete since they were blue belts. He even remembered that epic match Chris Cerna had as a purple belt, when he beat that huge guy in overtime with a sweep after pulling guard.
The instructional was a review of the guillotines from the seminar. Looking back on my side control blog notes, I see that there are some interesting variations on the arm-in guillotine that I've posted about before and am going to try and implement after the Revolution in preparation for the Subleague event in early May.
After that we did some round robin sparring. I got in about three or four sessions. It was exactly what I needed to start off this final week. Mostly, I focused on standing out of the closed guard - which is sort of the Alpha and Omega of my jiu jitsu life. If I have a minimum goal at the event this Saturday, then it is probably to attack and pass the guard. I've long had a strange, irrational fear that standing = falling when it comes to jiu jitsu. And while trying to stand out of Lindsey's guard didn't end up as well as I'd liked when we were sparring (he ended up in mount), with every one else I rolled with standing out of the guard gave me much, much more to work with.
Taking Tuesday night off and will be back at the academy on Wednesday and Thursday to finish off the pre-compete prep. Weight was good: 158.8 and I'd like to be well under that number come Thursday night. Friday will be the hungry/thirsty day and that night I'll drive down to Kent (wrapped up like a mummy!) to weigh-in.
