Got caught by the bridge and ended up getting to class a little late. Rodrigo was explaining the transition when I got there and spent the better half of the class going through just about every change that's going to take place. It was pretty thorough - though I wonder how much of it will be remembered and how much of it will just have to be "experienced" before people get it.
But I think new folks won't know any difference and those of us who've been around will probably be able to adjust pretty readily. There are a couple of interesting changes that Rodrigo hadn't mentioned before - like having everyone put their name on their gi to help people get to know each other better - which is just short of brilliant, even if simple. I'm still not sure how I want to do it - a part of me would love to have my name stitched into my gis somehow, but I think some guys have just used permanent black marker.
Rodrigo had to leave early, so Kevin Smith, who runs South Sound Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, led us through warmups and drills (arm stuff triangle), while Cindy finished by leading us into some guard/pass guard specific. I worked with Bryan, who showed me how Rodrigo was opening up his hip more - almost like you would in a flower sweep - made it easier to get a good attacking angle with the triangle choke.
I'll have to work on it, but that problem I have with the muscles and tendons connecting my hip and groin on my right side flared up big time as those triangle drills went on. And since I've never been a big fan of the triangle as a part of my own game, I'm not going to be in a huge hurry to train it at the expense of other things. Then again, maybe the hip adjustment will help keep that part of my leg/hip out of the equation.
W/re2 tatame, I'm still working the cross choke from the guard every day, trying to make sure I get at least one submission with it every time I train. I'm thinking that it will help me develop my cross choke from mount, which I'd really love to make my finish from the top (Roger style!). They are getting cleaner and cleaner, and also will hopefully open up other opportunities for sweeps especially down the line.
Ugh ... 163.2 post-train. Admittedly this class was more talk than train, so I shouldn't be surprised that I'm where I am. But this does need to be the last week of this kind of thing.
Halfway to the Revolution event, I don't feel too bad technically. More than anything, I feel as if I'm still fighting off the rust from the December/January holiday/post-holiday stretch. That's definitely the case weight-wise, and I will probably add another conditioning session a week for the next three weeks to keep things in check, along with adding another training night each week for 4x instead of 3x.
