I've been spending most of the weekend restarting my jiu jitsu notebooks, the little red composition notebook I started back in 2007 before moving moving to a daily planner and more frequent blog posts.
The little red book is nice because I can draw pictures, make diagrams and do the sort of doodling that's more conducive to creativity than trying to complete thoughts in sentences and paragraphs is.
That may mean fewer posts overall. But the quality of them, so to speak, should improve.
For now, I'm focused on flowcharts to and from my main guard matrix, Rap Star. I'm putting together different sets of situations so as to make my decision-making as binary as possible. In a way, it is related to the Circuit Building Deep Practice work I was doing a few months ago, only using slightly different (arguably "older" technology) to help complete the network.
For example, one of the situations (or "constructs" to stick with the Matrix analogy) is "choke handfight." In choke handfight, within Rap Star, there are three general scenarios/environments that are advantageous and two that require me to make either of two general adjustments.
Really, there are only two environments: things are going my way (in which I have a choke, armlock and sweep options) or things are not going my way (for which I have two general options given the likely problems I'm encountering).
I believe in Dan Inosanto's line that fatigue, ultimately, makes you stupid. I'd love to see some good research on the relationship between physical fatigue (both cardiovascular/aerobic and more lactic conditions) and memory and cognition. That said, a part of dealing with any inability to think when under pressure and stress is to reduce the amount of thinking required. A set of yes/no, if/then, type of scenarios/environments is probably a lot easier to navigate than a gaggle of largely abstract instructions and directions when the BPM is up around 150-160.
Managed to make it on the mat for a chunk of the early session on Friday. One thing I'm very much looking forward to this week is getting back to a more normal training schedule and kicking it back up to 4 days a week on average. Congratulations, before I forget, to both Shawn and Kevin for earning their black belts this past week. We've really cut out the fanfare when it comes to promotions with the Gracie Barra 2.0 approach of this year, which is an interesting decision I'll have to ask Rodrigo about.
Nevertheless, the accomplishments speak for themselves. Parabens Shawn e Kevin!
