Moving Day

The gym is moving this weekend, so most of my time will be spent doing that. No classes Sat - Tue. 

I briefly toyed with the idea of signing up for Worlds when I saw the registration was still open this morning, but my rolling has not been anywhere near where it needs to be for that. I almost did anyway, b/c the black belt divisions look absolutely stacked and it would probably be a blast to watch in person.

Related, I really need to get my shit together for Master Worlds. I don't know what that means, other than I need to do better. I got wrecked by pretty much everyone at the Saturday open mat. It was almost ridiculous and was one of those days where I thought to myself, "welp, I've clearly reached my highest skill level in this sport, so I might as well find something new to try". I did surprisingly well when rolling with Russ, who must have been having an off day too.

I've been doing morning classes almost exclusively and lots of rolling with Sarah. We've been having fun, interesting rolls. She's completely shut down both my berimbolo and single leg X. She's been doing a great job of maintaining distance in her guard and separating my elbows from my torso. I kneed her in the face when drilling before class of all things. Cut her tongue in multiple places. :( 

Sunrise Squad

The Spartan Race was pretty interesting and draining, to put it mildly. My friend needed to stop a fair amount, so we ended up doing very little running. We got through the majority of the obstacles. I failed on the rope climb, monkey bars, spear throw and rings at the end. My friend made the monkey bars but failed the upside down lateral ladder thing. Took us 4hrs and 5mins to complete 5 1/2 miles. Oof.

I'm getting back into the groove of jiu jitsu, training every day except Tuesday. Also training for Murph on Memorial Day. Feeling pretty good about both, and suspecting that hormones are largely responsible for my lapses of energy and focus. I guess that's good in that it's a cyclical thing instead of an all-the-time thing, but also frustrating b/c it's inevitably going to occur again.

Nader started 7am classes on Thursday morning that consist of takedowns for a solid half hour and then some jiu jitsu stuff. It's been a small class but a good one, and a great way to start the day. Don't know if people will be as motivated in the winter when it's dark and cold at 7am, but we'll see.

In class I've been working on DLR to X entries. Drilled it almost exclusively on Sunday and was just starting to get the hang of it. I'm going to work RDLR to X entries next week. I think my goal for Master's is to have a solid standing pass sequence, a DLR/X sequence and a decent takedown. I'll let the rest take care of itself.

More or Less

I had some issues last week that kept me off the mat. Taught on Saturday and apparently my quads were not pleased about the many demonstrations of opening the guard. Incapacitated by the quads on Sunday so no advanced class. Monday morning they were still quite sore but did class anyway. Didn't feel better until the end of rolling. 

I'm doing a Spartan race this weekend, so having the entire week off last week of no activity was not ideal timing. I haven't been training as much as normal, averaging closer to 3 classes a week instead of 6. Planning on getting back into the swing of things next week.

Rolling has been ok, but I honestly feel like I know less the more classes that I attend. Not in drilling, as most techniques James shows I've seen numerous times and can execute them fairly well when drilling. But rolling I seem to be getting more clueless. I'm not pressuring myself (that I know of). Perhaps it's a lack of having a particular plan and being very reactionary. I'm having decent rolls with my peers, but am almost always on the defensive. That's not terribly new, but I feel like my offense is almost nonexistent. Some day... some day I will decide to really focus on one game plan and try to get good at a specific guard.