Arrived in time to catch the last half of the regular class and all of the specific and Live Training. The focus was on setting up the cross choke - Roger Gracie-style - from mount. Prof Carlos emphasized a couple of things in particular: dropping the forearm against the chest to prevent the swim-under defense, putting your forehead on the mat fully to the opposite side to put all of your weight on the guy's upper body ... It was a good refresher and reminded me very much of Sauleh's choke attack from mount last weekend.
King of the Hill mount specific had a twist: you had to recover full guard from the bottom. No stopping at half guard and no reversing. You had to recover to a stable full guard: closed, open, spider, butterfly, inverted, whatever.
It's the kind of thing that training is all about, forcing yourself into peculiar situation that require an adaptive response. More than once I was able to get to the sweep, only to have to start all over again and try and get to a stable guard position, specifically. No doubt this kind of thing expands your fundamental jiu-jitsu awareness - as well as your guard recovery.
Given the days off, I was very happy with that session. I had more than a few sizable training partners during the specific drill and it was great to really feel myself being tested to stay patient, stay technical and not waste energy against significantly stronger aspirants to "the Hill."
A lot of conditioning. I still owe Prof 40 pushups from the final round of the intervals when I had to go iso. But I'm feeling pretty good about the specific muscle endurance, courtesy of the HICT/box step workout. I've started adding some cardiac power workouts and will be doing more of that over the next couple of weeks. But what is most important is (1) overall aerobic base and (2) specific muscle endurance. And the HICT/box steps have been working well on both scores.
Good training with Hakim afterwards. I don't think I've trained with him in more than a year. Very good half guard, very smooth game overall. And given some good anticipations on his part, it also turned out to be a good opportunity to work my triangle defense. More survival than escape - or, even better, the Gordo - but it was nice to see that the basic approach of feeding the shoulder and working for the exact opposite angle that the person doing the triangle wants is at least keeping hope alive.
156.6 post train. Heading into three weeks out, everything is on target on that score.
