What a day! Both Jeff and Sean got promoted to brown belt (!) and a bunch of other guys, including JM, got stripes. With all these new brown belts (four?), I can't help but wonder if some new black belts (I'm talking 'bout you Lance and Casey) are right around the corner. I'd bet that the opening of the new Gracie Barra Seattle HQ in September would be a great time for those faixa pretas to be awarded, if I were a speculatin' man, which I am.
Good training today, though I felt a little sluggish and anxious due to my shoulder still aching a bit. We worked on armbars and keylocks from the mount. My armbar from the mount is far too loose, and I'm looking into figuring out where the main problem is. I can rig up JOLE with a stiff arm and practice a few mount armbars, though it is nothing like having a real partner to drill with.
Still having a hard time working in my special areas of emphasis. This week I want to focus on The Stomp as a strategy for countering the underhook against against my half guard - and as a way to start getting my hook involved in the half guard. At the same time, I'm trying to work as much deep half as possible.
It looks like the next tournament will be on October 2. It will be a Gracie Barra Seattle invitational - but the invitations will be broader than before. Rodrigo said that he is looking to do three a year, which will put the total number of local jiu jitsu tournaments at six - which is an ideal number (one every other month). The white and blue belts are the ones who will really, really benefit from this much competition - but all of us will certainly profit from the training.
162.4 on the scale post-train. I've missed two tempo training workouts with this shoulder issue. I may go back to the first half of the training because it is the explosive-oriented second half that I'm most concerned about. In any event, tomorrow is explosive-repeat training, 12 count, which will be more than enough of a test for my delts.
