Flow

Wrestling Sucks. [Brenna tells me I should end my post here. I'm going to charge on in spite of her.]

Camarillo's system has started incorporating a shit-ton more wrestling into the curriculum because, as Dave says, "if you don't know wrestling, your jiu jitsu sucks." I'm not arguing his basic point, nor am I saying that knowing wrestling will do nothing to enhance my jiu jitsu and my overall fitness. I'm just saying that it sucks as a warm-up. Jeremy teaches our wrestling curriculum rather than Klint because Jeremy is a national champion wrestler and Klint isn't. It gives us a much more technical look at wrestling, something more than "DRIVE!!!" which is basically what wrestling seems like from the outside. And my eighth grade experience in wrestling, while probably helping me take to these techniques, is utterly worthless right now. Other than understanding how and why to sprawl, not much has stayed with me.

Five minutes of drilling take-downs will test your lungs, that's for damn sure.

We worked getting out of side control from different positions tonight. It was really, really good and really, really helpful. I know that being able to stifle someone and stopping them from advancing it great, but being able to escape and reverse the position is beautiful, and something that I've been unable to execute when rolling. So now I have new toys to try.

Rolled with Vance after class. He was still dragging ass after a sweaty class across town yesterday, so we only got two rolls in, but I felt really good about them. Vance has a serious size advantage on me, so I don't feel bad pulling guard and playing that for a while. I found a great way to use my whizzer grip that I hadn't thought of before, and it led to finishes both times I went for it. So that was nice---one by shoulder lock, one by armbar. And truly, I finished the second roll with exactly the same sequence that we use to finish two of the three threads that I have to know for my next test. That made me happy for two reasons: a) I know how to finish the threads, and 2) the threads they teach us are useful for more than just learning the techniques. It really builds muscle memory, and that's my bread and butter. So if anyone has any doubt that flow drills help your jiu jitsu, you're wrong. I'm feeling good about my game again. Give it two weeks, and I'll get another tooling from Klint or Jeremy that'll remind me the abyss into which I have yet to tread.

School starts in 3 or 4 weeks. I'm going to miss the mat-time. But I should still have 3-4 training sessions a week, and so long as it doesn't drag too much focus from the work I need to be doing at school and my internships, then I should be ok. It's like a drug, and it feels so good after a training session that I wish I could do it every day. In the meantime, I'll suffer through my friends telling me that I'm losing too much weight and my wife wondering whether I'm eating at all. Just let me go practice choking someone until they have to tap. Everything else will work itself out.