Good training tonight. It was the intro class, so we focused on the 20 GB Fundamentals for the instructional and then did some specific guard/pass guard work.
After Lindsey's warm-up, we started with takedown drills. We alternated between ippon seionage - what I have been mistakenly calling morote seionage for the past several weeks - and the double-leg. And my double leg has gotten immensely better since Cindy's review last Thursday.
I've chunked up the takedowns - the five big ones - into three or four step chunks. I've just started drilling them this morning informally, but they will definitely become a part of my skills conditioning work as the training camp plays out.
As Rodrigo tipped us off on Saturday, we worked on passing the spider guard. Actually, we worked on both establishing the spider guard for the guy on bottom and then passing with the shoulder toreano for the guy on top. Very good stuff here. Some key details worth remembering is that when popping the spider guard, use the foot/leg that is closest to the mat to push off the hip and create space to insert the spider guard block with the other leg. With the shoulder toreano, the chunking is (1) stand out of the spider guard, (2) swim your hands to get inside control, stepping forward as you do this to direct the legs up, (3) STEP BACK with inside control on the legs and keep moving straight back until the guy's feet are flat on the mat and he is sitting up, (4) pin the legs with all your weight and, from a pike or lunge position, lean in with your shoulder and apply pressure to flatten him out.
Tatame was some specific work (guard/pass guard). I always love specific sparring and am very glad that we are going to be doing more and more of it. I'm still having a terrible, terrible time working my assignments when the time comes. I didn't work butterfly guard. I didn't work left hip half guard. I didn't work the armdrag from butterfly or half guard. And from the top, I went for the Flat Pass three times (!). My attempts to stand and pass (Move of the Day, anyone?) were pretty few.
Easy to dwell on the negatives. I'm feeling a bit of dystopia - maybe brought on by reading an erroneous report that Pablo Papovitch had submitted Marcelo Garcia to take first in the 77 kilo division at this year's ADCC. I'd been trying to avoid seeing the results until I'd watched most of the feed. But the on demand feed from ADCC was a little slow in coming and I just couldn't take it any more. I will say that I did get to see the Marcelo Garcia v. Kron Gracie match, which was every bit as exciting as Clint said it was during training on Saturday.
Kron Gracie might be the most interesting guy in jiu jitsu right now - though Joel Tudor is close on his heels and the growing rivalry between Raphael Mendes and Rubens Charles is starting to look every bit as intense as Ali-Frazier. I don't know if his performance at ADCC was enough to pull Kron fully out from beneath the shadow of his legendary father. But I can't help but root for the kid to do well every time he's out there.
Six weeks out. I'm starting to get into the mental frame of competing, even as my conditioning routine is still coming online in many ways. The goal is for the next four weeks to burn at a pretty high temperature, and then taper off for the final two weeks before the Revolution. I think a little of the melancholia is the sobriety of preparing for the event starting to set in, which is fine - as long as over the next four weeks the grey clouds start yielding a little lightning, if not thunder.
