ATM Twenty-Ten, baby!
A very nice first day back in several days - and a good start to 2010 as well.
For the next couple of weeks, I'm looking to train three days a week, then kick it up to four and, in the last few weeks before the first Revolution tournament of the year, five. I'm trying to focus on qualitative training, making sure that I am taking advantage of every moment I'm on the mat to learn and get better.
Part of this is pratical, remembering what happened, taking notes and reviewing them. But a large part of it is psychological or Right Mind-based, which is of course good and bad news. But there's no time like the first few days of a new year to set out your resolutions and goals, to start to forge those habits that months from now will result in better performance, deeper feeling, seamless circuitry.
The first class started off with a warmup, then stand up/conditioning focusing on inside reaps off the collar grip. It's all great stuff to have in the arsenal, and I like how it is all built off the one fundamental grip on the collar. Even though the Jacare remains my go-to option off the collar grip, it's only that much more helpful to have options and alternatives.
The instructional was two of the Five Step Intro Class: a mount escape and passing the guard from the knees. The mount escape was the foot drag escape to half guard, which I CBDP'd as: TURN / STEP / LIFT / SLIDE / HOOK / HALF.
The guard pass from knees used the knee-in-the-middle wedge to open the guard, then the double underhook pass. Rodrigo emphasized keeping the elbows wide to avoid having the guy insert his hooks under your legs . Drilling this with Steve, I also could see how key elevating the hips off the mat was to immobilizing the guy on bottom.
In the advanced class, Rodrigo had a nice pace of drills (armlocks and triangles from the guard), conditioning (chokes, pushups), and specific (side control, rear mount, guard/pass guard). I would love it if we did more of this format for the advanced classes. It's really nice to get a mix of everything. There might be a week go by when you are never fighting against someone whose taken your back, or against knee on belly. This way, you are always covering the bases. If it were up to me, I'd probably never attack with a triangle from the guard. But with classes structured this way, I'm a lot more likely to give it a try.
One other thing I liked was the fact that I was focusing on the critical areas: cross guard, weak side half guard and, most importantly, standing to pass the guard. In fact, I don't think I tried to pass once on the ground.
That's the kind of thing that will pay off over the next few months. And it was great to feel as if I am off to a good start with it.
172.6 in the gi pre-train / 160.8 no gi post-train.
