Good training tonight, focusing on more transition work as we have over the past several weeks. In contrast to the "flow training" the idea of transition work is to move through a fairly specific set of moves with greater and greater accuracy and speed. Tonight, for example, we did sweep to mount, transition to S-mount, then the Rodrigo series (armbars, chokes) from there with the trapped arm. We also did a new version, where you pass the guard, move to side control, take the mount (with an optional stop at knee on belly), then the transition to S-mount and so on.
As I've said before, working the same moves, the same basic situations over and over has really been tremendous - at least for me. It's all about getting that muscle memory, the "circuitry" as the guy who wrote The Talent Code called it, to be as fluid, as agile, as automatic as possible. And the only way to get there and stay there is by repetition and extreme familiarity (which comes only through repetition).
So with the flow training on the one end, and the transition training on the other, this has been some of the best, most rewarding training in awhile.
I'm slowly feeling closer to what I feel like I should have felt like this spring, when everything seemed like it was going to hell most swiftly. There was a lot of physical rust that accumulated through those weeks when I'd only train once or twice, and I ended up falling short of my Training Year goal.
In fact, the fourth quarter of 2011 (May, June, July since my training year runs from Aug through July) was my worst training quarter in three years. The last time my training volume by quarter was this low was in the first quarter (Aug, Sept, Oct) of 2009. This quarter also included my worst month in three years (May, only trained four times).
This explains a lot - and it one of the reasons I started trying to quantify at least some of the basic mechanics of good training. If I've felt disjointed and out of sorts about my jiu jitsu over the past few months (the lowest back-to-back quarters were Q3 and Q4 of this year), then a lack of consistent training frequency is among the suspects.
Thinking about Saturday. There are temptations in every direction and it is difficult to figure out exactly what I want amidst all of the whirling dervishes of thought and emotion. In many ways I'm as prepared or moreso than I've ever been (although I could always use better conditioning). But between a general lack of fire and a fairly persistent sense of futility, it remains more likely than not that I'll be sending Leap LLC my five bucks as a spectator as opposed to my $55 as a competitor.
156.5 on the scale post-train. One meal a day for the second day in a row.
