Squirrely

8/22 - Valley

Thank goodness the valley school doesn't have a scale. My body is adamantly refusing to eat less, but I have almost two weeks to decide if I need to jump weight classes. I've reduced my breakfast by 1/3 and cut out chocolate and cookies. I'm more or less ok with that, but when I'm doing multiple BJJ sessions a day or BJJ and lifting, I must feed. I think I'm willing to pay that price to ensure I have a high level of performance leading up to the comp. If I go against someone that outweighs me by 50lb, then so be it.

Anyway... We did more side-control submissions today, as well as a guard pass to foot lock. Was feeling ok with most of these. While Scott was drilling the guard pass on me, my pants ripped wide open about mid-thigh. Awesome. My Koral pants developed another tear too, so I'm going to take them both in tomorrow to see if they can be repaired. Both gis have been in heavy use for 3yrs, but I'd like to get more mileage out of them if I can.

Rolled twice with Damon and once with Scott. I legitimately got back mount on Mr. Tong. I think. Pretty sure he didn't intend for me to take his back while he was passing my guard. I held on for awhile, trying for a bow and arrow to no avail. He tried to foot lock me several times with his legs but the position wasn't quite right. He eventually escaped and I think it was a fair amount of scrambling after that. He said that I was very squirrely, which is a big compliment from him. Rolled with Scott, who has an additional 30+lb of muscle. I got the DLR sweep we were working on at the downtown school yesterday, but didn't keep his elbow off the ground so wasn't quite able to complete the sweep. Tried the a spiderguard sweep (to no avail), and ended up in bottom side at some point. Another roll with Damon. Tried the DLR sweep on him a couple of times but he was doing knee slide passes through my guard like butter. Had me in a couple of bad spots but I was able to work my way out. By far the most competitive rolls I've had with him in quite some time. Very gratifying. He and Scott mentioned that my rolling is looking good.

Damon said the reason why he was able to pass my guard so easy is that I had my legs fully (or almost fully) extended when they were on his hips. That was excellent feedback, as I realized I was doing the same thing wrong but couldn't identify what it was. Will have to focus on either having better push/pull tension when in spiderguard or not leaving my leg so extended in other open guards.