What's interesting is that I'm spending a lot of time going back over my old notes from when I was a blue belt and purple belt, back when I was trying to cobble together a jiu-jitsu game that suited my more deliberate/less dynamic style. Somewhere along the way, if you're not careful, your jiu-jitsu can become little more than a reaction to what happened yesterday. In this trap, everything becomes tactical, progress ever more incremental, and instead of integrating parts into a whole, you find yourself one day on the mat with a jiu-jitsu that seems almost chaotic, a riot of misses and single-movements, the world as seen through the lens of a tumbling camera.
One of the tricks I used to think about was what would a book or DVD of my jiu-jitsu "game" look like? What would be the main sections? The chapter headings? The bonus material at the back? I think this is another way of integrating the disparate guards, sweeps, passes, escapes, transitions, and finishes that you know and use, but rarely with the fluidity, precision, and confidence that you demand.
This is where the "training beyond the training" comes in, what Lloyd Irvin means when he compares the work done before and after the scheduled training period to doing homework outside of a class in physics or history. I've been trying to designate a few moves every day that I'll always look to work on with a willing partner: always basic items and details, the connective tissue, again, to help turn the parts into a whole.
Weight has been pretty good over the past few days: 158 and a half on Friday, 160 and a half on Monday. Looking to get in another four-day training week after taking Tuesday off.
