The other night at training I was standing under the clock watching the minute hand and checking my RHR (resting heart rate). Angela joked to Clint that I was "contemplating my own death" which, given my focus on the cardio, wasn't all that far off the mark.
I'm doing some more death contemplating, specifically thinking about the cycle and birth, death and rebirth that is at the center of my way of seeing the world and, perhaps, at the center of my goal of developing a coherent guard passing game by the end of the year.
My wheel, my little bardo of guard passing, needs to look like this: base in guard, stand in guard, get swept, scramble to half guard, reverse, base in guard, stand in guard, get swept, scramble to half guard ... I need to go through this routine over and over and over again over the next few weeks to lose the mystification of getting swept (which, as I've said, is still a far better fate than getting submission) and get used to attacking the guard from standing.
I still like what I'm doing (or should be doing) when it comes to passing the half guard - though I need to focus more on sharpening up my watchdog passes. But when it comes to first approach, SRO has to be the rule from here on out.
