A good session tonight. While I had a few lapses, like getting flattened in half guard, there were a few bright guard passing moments and other assorted top game success that makes the evening's training a Gentleman's C at least.
Rodrigo had us working on spider and DLR guard passes tonight after about 8 minutes of stand up conditioning work. It's a really nice addition to our training, helping warm us up for the rest of class as well as making sure that we are always getting some live or semi-live work from the feet. It's the kind of thing that will pay off big time come tournament time.
The spider guard pass had you circle your arms, fanning them out wide then bringing your elbows in, in order to cup the guy's calves and drive him backward head over heels. Rodrigo focused on getting tight body-to-body contact in order to control him as he rolls. Giving too much space can result in him rolling to a kneebar, as well as recomposing his guard.
The other technique we drilled had the guy switch from spider guard to DLR with sleeve control on the other side. Here, the pass called for stepping forward with your free leg to go to a parallel stance (remember that this is the default combat base against the DLR, to be square up) and, while putting pressure on his legs with your hips, spin in the direction of the trapped leg while reaching across with the arm on the trapped side and hooking your hand behind the leg on the other side that still has a spider guard bicep control in place.
As you press forward with your hips and twist, you should be able to fold the guys legs forward, so that they are lying perpendicular to his body like a big L. Pass to the back.
Like I said, some good things in the tatame and some not-so-good things. More than anything else, it seems like Tuesday was my Monday and I'm getting back into the groove of things just a little bit.
I think for me that I will achieve the fastest growth if I can make sure that no more than one day passes between training. In a perfect world, I'd train MTRSa. An only slightly less perfect world would grant me MTRF, which would still leave two days in a row off the mat, but I think a regular 4-day a week clip would make up for it. Two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off is a pretty reasonable split when you think about it.
This is worth considering when I start worrying about plateauing and other assorted maladies of the mat. The corollary to my belief that trouble in jiu jitsu is always and everywhere a technical phenomenon (to steal and mangle Milton Friedman's famous quote about inflation and monetary policy) is a conviction that mat time solves all ills. And after looking at my training calendar, it is clear where my fix lies.
I trained 17 times in April, but only 10 in May. Over the past four weeks, I've averaged only 2 classes a week(!). During the four-week period before that, my weekly average was 3.25. And the four-week period before that? 4.0.
The source of my frustration is simple: my training pace has plunged by 50% since late March. No wonder it feels as if I'm not progressing the way I should be. Not only has my training frequency not kept pace, it has declined dramatically as spring gave way to summer.
So my plan right now is pretty simple and straightforward: get my training frequency back to at least 3.25 per week. Arguably, a lot should start to fall into place if I can just get that done.
In other news, my post-train weigh-in remains absolutely perfect at 154.8. My right knee is still aching from that leg-to-leg collision with Chris and that Brazilian black belt whose been training with us lately and I'll probably buy a compression brace for it this weekend.
The best feature of the invitational this weekend increasingly looks like the open mat from 12-3 p.m., though I'm slated to have a match as one of the Revolution competitors. At any rate, I'm a lot less likely to arrive at quarter of ten, unless Rodrigo encourages otherwise.
