ATM has taken a beating over the past several weeks, prompted in part by more training (and competing) on Saturday than usual. With the holiday season kicking in, there's likely to be more training schedule re-arrangements. But as long as I keep my average up, I'll be happy.
I've averaged almost three and a half classes a week this year, and my training pace has increased every quarter (3.17/wk in Q1, 3.33/wk i Q2, 3.67/wk in Q3). My goal for 2009 has been to "feel" like a purple belt by the time the year was up and, despite my epic fail at assorted jiu jitsu scoring contests, I think that goal has been more or less met.
I think the breakthrough night for the year was the night a few days ago when I was able to hit tripod sweeps out of the cross guard and Simone sweeps out of the "smother" guard. That circuitry "shouldn't" have been there, but it was.
This is probably part of the secret to Rodrigo's exhortation "You've got to TRY." For me, a lot of jiu jitsu at this point boils down to the Jump Program, as I've said before.
And even if I'm not leaping back and forth between the tallest skyscrapers in the city, there are times when I feel more than nimble enough to make it across the rooftops of the average urban architecture in one piece.
Tuesday training began with a solid warmup - jumping jacks between squats, pushups between chokes and obliques - and the current leg pick/sprawl takedown drill. The instructional was about taking the back from mount. It's more very good work for me because I almost 99% of the time abandon the back for the mount. This had me going the other way.
The setup was the pinned guy turning sideways and pushing on the knee to escape the mount. From the top you want to do a sort of S-mount style dismount, but one key detail Rodrigo included was an intermedate step of going flat and long with your back leg as you make the switch and put the heel in the stomach to block the hips with the other leg.
I missed this detail during the drill. But I think that going flat helps you stay low behind the guy's back. One thing I noticed was that I tended to get up a little too high on the back because I was going straight from mount to S-mount. The problem with doing it this way seems to be that you make it harder to get your leg free when you go to take the back. Often your knee is pinned.
I'm looking forward to working this one tomorrow or Friday. For me, I'm noticing that the most important thing to remember is the footwork. Going long and flat makes sense as I think about it, because if the guy on the bottom goes to his side, going long and flat behind him will allow you to stay chest to back. But I wouldn't mind seeing it done properly one more time to make sure I'm remembering correctly.
Good to see Bruce back on the mat. It felt as if I hadn't seen him in months. Fairly small class tonight, but at least two new guys. It seems like there are a lot of new guys stopping by these days. It's strange to think of being one of those folks myself, a little over four years ago. As much as I knew that I really wanted to study jiu jitsu, I don't think I ever really had a sense of myself two, three, four years down the line - though I know that I assumed that everyone who started with me - Mario, Big Mike, Jeff, Arnell, just to name a few - would always be training.
A little heavy on the scale post training at about 159.6 or so. If the limit is 154 or below, day-of for the tournament on December 13th, then there is a good likelihood that I'll be competing at the heavier level 155-170, anyway. Getting down to 154 for a night-before weigh-in is one thing. A day-of sub-154 number - on a Sunday no less - is something else entirely.
