I got to the academy a little later than I would have preferred, but I still managed to get in some very good mat time with Ro (whom I haven't seen a while), Pat and Clay. I think I trained for about an hour, all told, with Rodrigo running the specific/BJJ conditioning I trained with Ro and Pat.
Lindsey was there, as was Jeff B from Foster/Lotus and a couple of other guys. Casey stopped by also. I kind of felt like I had found the hidden academy where at least three or four of the guys I was used to seeing have been training all year. Great to see those folks.
Some notes on training today. Incrementally better at establishing inside control from the guard pass. This is really the gateway to the brown belt version of me. While my guard game is undergoing a lot of reworking, it is guard passing where the most improvements probably can be made in a relatively short period of time.
Rear mount escapes continue to be a big weakness. I'd far rather have to deal with someone's mount than back control. As always, the solution is technical and I need to break the escape into smaller and smaller pieces that are easy to understand and train. True enough, I haven't lost a lot of matches due to being unable to escape rear mount. But why wait for that to happen if I can start fixing it now?
I've been having a lot of success with my little BJ Penn Guard Skeedaddle. I think I can turn it into both a sweep as well as a front headlock/guillotine opportunity and I haven't seen anyone at the academy play this kind of trick game from the guard. It was working very, very well on Friday. I'll need to keep working on as Week Two begins.
