Some very good training this week. The side control choke/armlock series that I stumbled on the day before the Revolution tournament has been working very well in sparring, as has my adjustment when it comes to attacking with knee on belly. From that perspective alone, it has been an incredible week of typically "quantum" growth in my jiu jitsu game.
Couldn't be happening at a better time, either, with Rodrigo deciding that the time had come for me to move from purple belt to brown belt. I remember the training session I had immediately before and after getting my purple belt, a nonstop submission-a-rama at the hands of one visiting blue belt after another (or at least that what it seemed like). It was quite a premonition of what many days and nights on the mat as a purple belt would be like: taking more than my share of lumps trying to get in sync with an ever more diverse set of training partners, struggling to be more competitive with some of the best people at my level, to stay fit, to stay healthy, to stay happy.
So it's great to be finding myself in the midst of more than a few technical breakthroughs - especially insofar as they are apart from my areas of focus for the next several weeks. Hopefully, this means that in six weeks time I'll have not only a nice new submission series from side control, but some major and badly-needed improvements in my guard game as planned, as well.
A few quick notes on conditioning. I'm doing the six-week tempo training program for pushups from 8 Weeks Out (twice a week). That's specifically for the kids, who aren't getting any younger or weaker. I'm also doing the explosive-repeat and threshold training once a week each for cardio. If I'm feeling especially wild at heart, I'll do aerobic capacity/LSD on Saturday, particularly if I'm not going to train.
So far so good. There are a few physical changes I want to make over the next couple of months, but they are relatively minor. The main focus will be on technical fixes, getting better at moving in both directions (or at least better in transitioning to my preferred direction if I get stuck on the "wrong" side), and adding another dominant position suite of submissions and attacks (likely the back).
