It's been a busy week. I trained Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday night, and Saturday morning. I worked Wednesday night, and Bar prep classes were going on all week. I feel like something else happened, but I can't quite piece it together yet this morning.
As for training, though, we worked on escaping north-south all week. Lots of useful stuff I hadn't seen before, and plenty of opportunity to drill it, which was nice. Again, breaking down movements so that you look for indicators is a useful concept that Klint has brought to his classes, and he uses it with every technique and from every position. Your opponent's movement triggers your attack; everything he does falls into a newly-set trap. All week, Klint also left the last fifteen minutes or so of class and answered any questions that any of the students had about techniques or things that were giving us trouble during training. We reviewed tech-mount escapes, high mount escapes, back-door escapes, counters to the standard triangle defense---basically everything that I have in my bag of regular tricks. So this will not only help develop everyone's game on a general level, but on a specific level it reminds them that they already know counters to just about everything that I do and forces my game to evolve. So I'm all good with that.
Friday night I got to do a few rolls with Stan, and then rolled for about a half-hour with JD before we just went over techniques. Stan has been teaching at his karate school in Hugo for the last few months, so hasn't had a chance to train that much or that hard. It's great for me, because it means that he and I are closer in abilities than we were when he was training all the time. JD is still just a monster who can bridge for an hour at a time, but knows how to use his body so well that it's disconcerting for most of the rest of us. He's a fantastic training partner, and we both get a lot out of rolling with one another. His guard passing is getting pretty solid, and my recovery and sweeps seem to be getting more threatening.
Saturday, I trained with the women in the morning, then got to roll with Timmy and Bob at open mat before I had to leave at catch class with Klint across town. That's right. Three chances to train before 2pm, it just takes some planning and a car. And four training sessions between 8pm Friday and 2pm Saturday. It was awesome. I got to roll with Swicker at Gina's class, and she's coming a long way. Gina is giving those ladies some great technique and fundamental knowledge of the game. A handful of them are competing at Mundials this coming weekend, so they are all in a head-down, move-forward mindset. She did a good job pressuring me the whole time, and it let me work out of compromising positions. At open mat an hour later, I finally got a chance to work with Tim. It was the first roll of the session, but I was still kind of warm from the ladies an hour earlier, and I didn't have that much time before I had to go to Woodbury, so I just dove in. He beat me pretty soundly---two or three taps in fifteen minutes. But I performed much better against Tim than I ever had before. I was not just floating between bad and worse positions, I was active in regaining guard and working to attack from there. I know that I shouldn't rely so heavily on my guard, but that's the strongest (or at least most developed) part of my game and Tim is a higher belt against whom I want to do well, so I'm going to rely on the parts of my game that I've tested and somewhat proven.
At Klint's class, we trained with everyone at the end of class---it was Tony, Mel, me, Andy, John, and Klint. Again, pretty OK with how I did. Tony wanted to start under north-south to work on the techniques that Klint taught us all week, and I was able to stay on top and keep attacking. He got to his knees at one point and I dove on a clock choke, but I was barely not deep enough and he defended well. Rolling with Klint was much more enjoyable than the last time. Though really, that's a low bar to pass. But still, I did a few good things I think. Rolling with John and Mel was good--I don't think I got to Andy. But by the end, I was sapped. I went to a bar-b-que that night, but by 10:15 I was sleeping on the couch, so I dragged myself to bed and didn't move until the dog started whining at 7am. That might be the first time I've slept nine-ish hours straight in a few years that wasn't beer-induced.
EDIT:
I just watched Miguel Torres's fight from UFC 130. If you like guard work, that's necessary viewing. He didn't get the judges' decision, but his technique is simply outstanding.
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