T is for Tuesday and Tuesdays are for Takedowns
At least that was the order of the day on Tuesday as Rodrigo had us working on takedown drills and takedowns for the majority of the class.
Interestingly, I had been doing some solo drills, just my basic entries for the Jacare ankle pick, the double leg, the reverse pivot. Stephen W. asked if I wanted to do a little grip fighting, which was a very, very fun exercise and the first time I'd ever really done grip fighting as a drill. Stephen is one of the higher belts (he's a brown with a couple of stripes) who has a pretty positive attitude toward independent drilling, something I've come to believe is critical to making the small improvements that amount to big improvements over the course of a year.
I trained with a blue belt whose name I can't remember, but who is pretty skilled and a regular trainer. We worked a lot of drills where you had to keep the collar grip, but could attack the legs, the sleeve or the hip with your other hand or body. We also did some grip fighting like Stephen and I drilled before class.
After a pretty vigorous set of takedown drills, we spent the second half of the class doing takedown sparring. I struggled initially, and got caught a couple of times by uchi mata type throws, a major weakness of mine when it comes to the stand up. In part, I was a little hesitant to engage with anything other than a pick for the most part. I still have an aversion to live sparring with takedowns, fearing that sooner or later, someone's knee is going to go pop and fearing that there's a pretty good chance that it would be mine.
That said, I think I've figured out a nice combo to go with the Jacare ankle pick, particularly if the guy postures forward, without having to go to the uchi mata, which is a throw I've never really felt all that comfortable with.
161.8 on the scale post-train. Under 162, which is good. But still much heavier than I'd like to be after training. Hopefully, I'll be well under 160 on Friday post-train (end of Week 2). I don't need to worry about making weight, per se, given the lightweight limit will be 162 instead of 154 this year. But I can feel the difference these extra pounds are making in terms of my conditioning, at least at this point. I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling better when I'm hitting 156 and 157 on the scale next week.
