To steal a line from Jesse: some days you are the hammer, some days you are the nail, and some days you are just the pure effort of swinging away.
That pretty much sums up my week of training. Today, starting off with a little judo, Harai Goshi, I think, an outside thigh sweep, that we were able to turn into a trip by changing the angle of your knee. Again, a lot of combination attacks in the judo these days, which is a good way to learn the throws (even if the names are slow in coming).
We also worked some transitions in and around the turtle position. Starting from turtle with front headlock threat, we did sit-outs to the back, then the top guy reversed to take the back by pinching the attacker's far arm under the armpit and then doing a sit out and turn back into the guy to take the back.
There were some other follow-through moves, all geared toward increasing the transition. Good hard conditioning type training.
We also did some more flow work: guard submissions, guard passing, mount escape and mount submissions. Then a little Live Training to finish things up.
A good session made all the more rigorous with an ending training session with Dan, who is becoming one of my more regular training partners. Like Elliott and a couple of other guys, Dan keeps up a pace that is hard to keep up with, and often when I think I'm only a moment away from an opportunity, that moment is extinguished almost immediately.
More than anything it makes me wish there were a 9 am jiu jitsu open mat around here somewhere tomorrow. There's actually a chance of something developing on Sundays that would fit the bill. But right now, there's little I'd rather do than roll.
159.0 on the scale, post-train. Actually my heaviest weight of the week - in part due to skipping all my off-mat conditioning this week (after Monday, at least). A part of me feels as if I'm still in recovery mode from last Saturday's Train Until You Drop session. A little conditioning this weekend, and maximum time outside in yonder lawn and garden, are probably just what the Professor ordered, so to speak.
My four-week training average is finally back up to a respectable 3.0/week as of today's session. Keeping it there - or higher - over the balance of 2011 may be the most important thing I do this year on the mat.
