Great competition training Saturday morning. One of the nice things about training on Saturday (other than the fact that it is Saturday) is that you get to train with a lot of folks you don't usually get to train with. A part of my determination to make ATT (Always Train Tuesdays) as much a maxim as ATM (Alwasy Train Mondays) is to get more and more exposure to different jiu jitsu from different teammates.
So today I get to train with Pedro for the first time, Doug for only the second or third and Professor Christiano for only the second time, as well as a few other folks like Wellington who I haven't trained with in months.
My jiu jitsu is still very reactive, however much it has improved over the choose-your-time- period. This is one of the reasons why I really struggle against unfamiliar jiu jitsu (as in tournament competition) and one of the reasons why Saturday training is such an asset. In addition to the quality of sparring partner being consistently high, I'm almost always in unfamiliar waters and having to either become all the more sharp in my reactions or, ideally, become better at imposing my game.
A lot of this has to do with developing a black belt calibre guard out of the bits and pieces of half guard and hooks guard I've peddling for the past five-odd years. Bringing some balance to my half guard and continuing to evolve the 2on1 will go a long way toward cobbling all this together, and there were a few good things out of today's training that are evidence of some progress (especially grip breaks using the knuckle peel strategy, and using the Guy LaFleur to insert hooks out of closed guard).
159.8 on the scale post-traing, everything but the coat.
