I took Wednesday off to let my ankle heal up a little. I tweaked it at some point during Tuesday training and given that it wasn't in the best shape to begin with, I thought a break made sense.
It certainly helped cardio-wise. I felt like I could roll all night on Thursday. I was a little muscle fatigued during the first part of class when we were doing pummeling with calisthenics (pushups, choke crunches, sit outs, squats, sprawls) mixed in.
My MEP program is definitely making pushups easier. I can hit about 20 sitouts at a good clip before faltering. And sprawls are sprawls ... they are just killers. One of these years, I'm going to do that 100 burpee challenge and get my sprawls set up right ...
Nice work. I worked with Michael the blue belt during the pummeling circuits and the instructional, which was the same X-guard sweep we worked on Tuesday night. This time, Rodrigo emphasized more of an X-guard posture than a "double X" like on Tuesday. He also emphasized the sweep where you do that sit-to-stand dropstep move (also a pretty good solo drill, BTW) and drive into the guy and take him down.
Good tatame, as well. Still focusing on the Flat Pass and had some pretty decent success. I also got a nice reaffirmation that my tackle sweep from low half is solid - especially against guys who aren't used to fighting it all the time. I also think I'm doing a better job of anticipating the knee cross pass attempt - though I've still got a bad habit of giving up the crossface and having to work out of a flat posture.
A couple of very quick americanas, submission-wise. There really isn't a whole lot I feel comfortable with when attacking no gi - at least, outside of chokes. There was a rear naked Ezekiel that wasn't too bad. And I liked the way I looked for ways to let the guy turn when mounted in order to try and take the back.
Casey was in tonight which was nice to see, having not seen him for awhile. And I got to give him a warm-up roll. Big Mike the blue belt was there - another guy I don't see as much as I used to - as was Stephen W., who ended up missing Subleague with a last minute cold.
A good night on the mat, the kind of training that makes you want to do little more than eat, sleep and train. Speaking of "eat", I was 160.2 on the scale after training, which is pretty heavy for Thursday. I decided against doing my LSD cardio earlier today because I was concerned about my ankle and wanted to make sure that nothing got in the way of my training on Thursday. With any luck, I'll get back on the mat Friday, have a nice LSD session on Saturday and be ready to roll on Monday.
