Looks like I'll be on the clock at least a time or two tomorrow for the Gracie Barra Washington Surprise Intramural Tournament. My guess is that Rodrigo is trying to fit in a "friendly" before the new Gracie Barra Washington tournament series begins on October 2. With the move to the new facility, September is probably going to be too difficult a month to stage a friendly. So this Saturday it is.
Very much in a transition sort of mode right now - particularly as it relates to my guard game. Because I have such a hard time implementing "things to work on" during Live Training, I've simplified things to just goals like "hook sweep" or "defend toreanos" which actually seems to be doing better. Hopefully, this is just a baby step to being able to better pre-program myself for the sparring opportunities when they arise.
Above all, my goal as a brown belt is to follow the dictum of the Two Generals. To this end, I'm trying to plot out my attacking strategy from initial contact to submission. One of the things about watching so much Marcelo Garcia this week is how seamless his game seems. I remember reading Helio talk about "timing" as what made Rickson Gracie exceptional. Watching Marcelo have a counter for every attack and an attack for every counter shows me that if you can create your own environment, your own "space", then "timing" per se, becomes "space."
Felt a little more fatigue than I would have liked during sparring today. It was hot, but still, I was just starting to get used to feeling like I had the gas to go all day. I was able to train without a break for the whole session (again, besides the team water break). But I still would have liked to have felt like I had another roll or two in me - I certainly had the time.
169.2 in the gi pre-train, which wasn't half bad considering I'm so far out from the next competition in early October. I'm still trying to figure out what to do conditioning-wise, taking the improvement in my shoulder into account. I still think that a somewhat unorthodox combination of cardiac output and explosive-repeat training might help deal with my two biggest conditioning issues - although the two are not typically grouped together (cardiac output and tempo training for 3-4 weeks followed by explosive-repeat and threshold training for 2-3 weeks is more normal).
