A great day on the mat on Friday. There was one moment when I looked up and saw Alex, Casey and Lance coming up the stairs that really hit me. Although things have gotten better over the last several weeks as I focused on preparing for the tournament, I think a part of me was really missing the regular presence of some of the advanced guys, the guys who have been brown belts for awhile and would always be able to push me and expose the holes in my game during sparring and specific.
Most of that has to do with my switching to the early classes, I suspect. But it was great to see so many advanced guys on the mat today.
I got to roll with Alex and with Rodrigo, who was also doing some training. Alex was using some five-finger guillotine-type control against my half, which was a new counter to learn to re-counter. Rodrigo had an extremely efficient grip to block my #2 sweep (inside hook flipback) from deep half. I tried to go for the #1 deep half sweep (the Homer Simpson), but although I think it is the correct re-counter, I didn't manage to pull it off.
I was surprised at how readily I was able to get into deep half (and eastside deep half, at that!). I've spent the past few days looking at just a few clips of Jeff Glover, who has the best deep half in jiu jitsu as far as I'm concerned, and maybe that filmwork is starting to pay off a little bit.
My conditioning continues to be in really good shape. I'll get put to the test for sure at tomorrow's competition training. But I like what I've been able to do in training and Live Training for the past few weeks. This was the goal of the whole 8 Weeks Out program: to get to the point where I could train for longer and longer stretches, getting more and more opportunity to try and test technique.
Still relying a little too much on the smash side of the Jack Johnson smash/scoop pass from standing. But I'm having no consistent balance issues, at all - with or without standing posture. I'm also hurrying too much with the side control finish series, running through the "steps" instead of surveying the terrain carefully, seeing where the opportunities are and then coming up with the right deception that can turn opportunity into edge.
158.0 post-train. I'll see where I am again tomorrow post-train. But 158.0 is an excellent number to finish the week with under any circumstance.
