I had an interesting conversation with Lance the other day. We were talking about how minor injuries, the kind of injuries you try to "play through", often force you to make alterations or changes to your game. Sometimes the changes are in line with things you've thought about working on. My bad right shoulder actually means that it makes sense for me to try passing guard to my right, for example, something I've wanted to work on for a long time but never committed myself to.
Sure, some of this is just "sweet lemons". But whenever the injury is (or seems) relatively minor, the forced change can be productive - at least, that's what I'm sticking to until I start feeling a little more capable on my right.
Training today was a good hard session. I'm still working the two-on-one, but making the mistake of sticking with it (and the foot on hip control) even when guys stand to pass. Elliott did a great "Professor Carlos-like" job of walking through my two-on-one today - in part because I continued to fight for foot in hip control. Against a guy with Elliott's length, that is just not going to work.
The toreano passes have been my biggest problem from the sitting guard. Lindsey, Benny (Faixa roxa) and now Elliott have all managed to fly past my sitting guard with this approach. I need to do a better job of looking for the armdrag if they move to dramatically to my right. And go to the shin guard when they remain standing and try to run around or hop over my guard.
Still feeling a little sluggish overall. I know I'm feeling a little depressed at my first injury in two years, but the fact that I'm able to roll through it is good - even if it means often performing at 75% or less. I can't underhook at all on my right side, making certain passes, guard recoveries from turtle and a few other jiu jitsu delicacies out of the question for now.
One thing that was really nice about today's training was that I got one of the blue belts (John?) to do some drills with me. We just did about 3-4 sets of 10 alternating armbars from the guard. But that was more armbars from the guard than I've done in months - which was exactly the point.
I'm going to try and make it a goal to get in 100 armbars from the guard each week in drilling sessions after class. I don't ever think it will be a go-to move for me. But I'd like to have at least one, classic, closed guard submission in my arsenal. And since there's no chance in hell that that technique will be a triangle choke, why not an armbar?
159.2 or so on the scale post-train. I'll be seeing what I've got left for this week at tomorrow's competition training.
