Week One of camp was a pretty decent start. Week Two has been a little trickier.
I managed to train on Monday, during the Memorial Day Open Mat session. I got in a pair of good rolls with Chaim and Steve - bigger and stronger on the one hand, and smaller and quicker on the other. There were a couple of folks there: Glenn, Andrew from Everett, Pat, Elliott, Freddy and the one smallish woman blue belt who trains during the day and whose name I can't recall ...
Unfortunately, some of the other folks I'd hoped would make it didn't get there by the time I left. All that said, it was good to get a little time on the mat in on the holiday.
Especially since I've spent the next few days with a sore throat and other assorted cold symptoms. With any luck, I'll be back on the mat on Friday. I figure that it is probably better to miss a pair of trainings in Week Two than in Week Six or Seven, so I'm giving myself a break on the relatively modest mat time this week. If I can make it to train on Friday - and again on Saturday - that will give me a three-train week (including credit for 2 GB Fundamentals classes for the week). And, again, in Week Two, that's fine.
I've also missed out on one conditioning session. I did my tempo training Tuesday morning, but held off on the threshold work scheduled for today. Not great, but the goal is to be 100% in mid-July, not in early June. So I'm not going to fret about missing time now as long as I make up for it over the next few weeks.
My weight has remained at or just below 160, fortunately. I've been doing a lot of thinkng and rethinking about my jiu jitsu over the past few days: my match with Sauleh, my difficulties with the overhook half guard, passing both the full and half guard ... I want to think about trying to use the last few training days of Week Two to fix what I wasn't able to really put in place during Week One: specifically, the transition to knee block from half guard to set up the slingshot series.
The bow-out from the overhook half guard (see Saulo's Jiu Jitsu University, pages 179-180, to see one instance of what I'm talking about) needs to be much, much tighter. I've had a bad habit of trying to transition directly into Rap Star, which may or may not be viable. But the bigger issue is in creating more space to give me more room to work, more options (slingshot, regular half, deep half, Rap Star). That's the focus for the balance of the week.
