I had a friend of mine who is a sports trainer look at my knee Monday afternoon. He poked, prodded, crowbarred around in there, kept asking "How does this feel?" I can get around, but it takes me twenty minutes longer to do anything, including and especially get out of bed in the morning. Peg-legging seems to be the way to go, at least for now. It's weird, though, because when I'm sitting, I seem to have most of my flexibility still. And without pain. It's the straightening that sucks.
"MCL, which is probably the best news I can give you," he says to me. "It heals on its own, and there's almost no change in treatment from second to third degree injury on it. So don't be an idiot with your knee for the next few days, we'll see how it heals itself."
That being said, I'm going to class tonight. I'm not doing takedowns or guard work--hell, I'll be amazed if I can do half of the stuff Klint works in class. But this weekend he's having a few of my teammates test for promotion, and I refuse to miss that. I want to be able to help them as much as I can, even if it's chirping from the sidelines tonight.
So I haven't gotten an MRI, but I've gotten the best advice that my cash-strapped self can right now. Besides, I really should be studying.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Dammit
I want to say this up front: I love frisbee. Ultimate is one of the best sports I've played, with just as much focus on fun and spirit and sportsmanship as on athleticism and skill. I wish only that it didn't pose such devastating threat to life and limb.
Plaid Pick-up, a great group of people who get together every Saturday morning in the summer to play some disc. On the Saturday closest to the solstice, Plaid holds a game to 100. They draw stones (white and black) to pick teams (light and dark), and people show up throughout the day to provide fresh substitutes until one team reaches 100. It's a day-long affair, sprinkled with wit and grilling, beer and gatorade. If you play ultimate and live in the cities, it's worth the trip to St. Paul.
I'll get back to this game, but first--jiu jitsu. I've really been training a lot. Four or five times a week, I'm on the mat sweating more than I probably should and loving it. I've been placed on a submissions-from-guard ban for the next month to ensure that I use the time in my guard to work on my sweeps. It's a good tool, and last week I worked my sweeps a lot. Even against the purple belts, I'm not letting myself shoot for submissions even if I want to use them to set up sweeps. I need to get more fluid with my sweeps on their own, so I'm making myself work on them. A few of my teammates are getting promoted next Saturday, so we've picked up the training pace a little bit, and we've started incorporating flow rolling into class and post-class open mat. I think the only reason Klint hadn't had us working it before was that not enough of us had the necessary base knowledge to get a tangible benefit from it. I'm starting to get more comfortable in transition, finding more success in scrambles, and realizing how much of my game is based around letting my opponent get to his knees and spinning around him to pull him into back control. It's been a fantastically educational month for my jiu jitsu.
Yesterday was the game to 100. Early on, though, I went to Gina's class in Edina. I knew that I wouldn't be able to make Klint's class in the afternoon because I had an old roommate's wedding that promised to be a memorable affair. So at Gina's class, I worked with some of her girls and incorporated more flow-rolling after class, working only position rather than digging for submissions and trying to keep my opponent pinned. It was fantastic, it was fun and tiring and one of the best hangover cures I an remember. So I rolled for about an hour and a half. After rolling, I figured I would use about an hour of the Game to 100 to get some more cardio work in. And I hadn't played ultimate for almost 2 years--law school and (more importantly) jiu jitsu stemmed my attendance and refocused my attention.
The welcome to the field was warm despite the sixty-degree semi-drizzle. I strapped on my cleats, pulled my plaid jersey on and claimed my spot on the line. I played probably ten points. I wasn't the force that I remember myself being on the field, but I wasn't embarrassing myself either. I was running, throwing, defending--I was playing about as well as someone who hasn't played in two years is expected to play. One play I'm defending Mike, the guy who organizes the game, and this teammate sends it long for him. So I turn on the jets and work to make sure that I'm not scored on. The disc gets to the end zone and Mike is a step or two behind me. He's old and wily, though, and in ultimate (much like in jiu jitsu), age and experience can be just as big an asset as youth and athleticism. So I know not to take chances with him and dive to get the defensive bid. I get it, slapping the disc away. Our momentum, though, intersected, and Mike tripped over me.
Tumbling into one another on the frisbee field is not uncommon. I've been in several crashes myself and walked away unscathed. (Ironically, my only serious injuries in frisbee came from (i) fooling around in warm-ups (sprained ankle) and (ii) pivoting surprisingly quickly for my back to keep pace (threw out my back for 2-3 weeks)). So I'm down, and Mike basically surfs over me. Unfortunately, he lands on my leg between my knee and ankle. And the knee pops.
I take a few minutes on the field, just kneeling to see how it feels immediately afterwards. It isn't that bad--a bit throbby, but this is the same knee that pops all the time in jiu jitsu so I might have dodged a bullet. And it's the inside of the knee, the same place that always makes my training partners stop in their tracks and ask if I'm ok when it barks. Mike's worried and asking about me, but I think I'm ok. Besides, it wasn't an intentional crash, it was just one of those plays where the game results in a tangle of arms and legs. We stand, and my leg feels a little wobbly, but not bad enough to worry. Then I step, and know better. I call injury and hobble off the field in search of an icepack and a fistful of ibuprofen.
So here I sit, valu-pak of ibuprofen (aka Vitamin I), and a limp that would make Verbal Kint pity me. I'll go to class Tuesday, just to watch and not participate, and talk with Klint afterwards about what I can do. Really, I will probably go mad if I have to stop all activity for more than a week, especially with studying and the inherent stress that causes.
So. If anyone has suggestions about how to care for a soft knee, let me know.
Plaid Pick-up, a great group of people who get together every Saturday morning in the summer to play some disc. On the Saturday closest to the solstice, Plaid holds a game to 100. They draw stones (white and black) to pick teams (light and dark), and people show up throughout the day to provide fresh substitutes until one team reaches 100. It's a day-long affair, sprinkled with wit and grilling, beer and gatorade. If you play ultimate and live in the cities, it's worth the trip to St. Paul.
I'll get back to this game, but first--jiu jitsu. I've really been training a lot. Four or five times a week, I'm on the mat sweating more than I probably should and loving it. I've been placed on a submissions-from-guard ban for the next month to ensure that I use the time in my guard to work on my sweeps. It's a good tool, and last week I worked my sweeps a lot. Even against the purple belts, I'm not letting myself shoot for submissions even if I want to use them to set up sweeps. I need to get more fluid with my sweeps on their own, so I'm making myself work on them. A few of my teammates are getting promoted next Saturday, so we've picked up the training pace a little bit, and we've started incorporating flow rolling into class and post-class open mat. I think the only reason Klint hadn't had us working it before was that not enough of us had the necessary base knowledge to get a tangible benefit from it. I'm starting to get more comfortable in transition, finding more success in scrambles, and realizing how much of my game is based around letting my opponent get to his knees and spinning around him to pull him into back control. It's been a fantastically educational month for my jiu jitsu.
Yesterday was the game to 100. Early on, though, I went to Gina's class in Edina. I knew that I wouldn't be able to make Klint's class in the afternoon because I had an old roommate's wedding that promised to be a memorable affair. So at Gina's class, I worked with some of her girls and incorporated more flow-rolling after class, working only position rather than digging for submissions and trying to keep my opponent pinned. It was fantastic, it was fun and tiring and one of the best hangover cures I an remember. So I rolled for about an hour and a half. After rolling, I figured I would use about an hour of the Game to 100 to get some more cardio work in. And I hadn't played ultimate for almost 2 years--law school and (more importantly) jiu jitsu stemmed my attendance and refocused my attention.
The welcome to the field was warm despite the sixty-degree semi-drizzle. I strapped on my cleats, pulled my plaid jersey on and claimed my spot on the line. I played probably ten points. I wasn't the force that I remember myself being on the field, but I wasn't embarrassing myself either. I was running, throwing, defending--I was playing about as well as someone who hasn't played in two years is expected to play. One play I'm defending Mike, the guy who organizes the game, and this teammate sends it long for him. So I turn on the jets and work to make sure that I'm not scored on. The disc gets to the end zone and Mike is a step or two behind me. He's old and wily, though, and in ultimate (much like in jiu jitsu), age and experience can be just as big an asset as youth and athleticism. So I know not to take chances with him and dive to get the defensive bid. I get it, slapping the disc away. Our momentum, though, intersected, and Mike tripped over me.
Tumbling into one another on the frisbee field is not uncommon. I've been in several crashes myself and walked away unscathed. (Ironically, my only serious injuries in frisbee came from (i) fooling around in warm-ups (sprained ankle) and (ii) pivoting surprisingly quickly for my back to keep pace (threw out my back for 2-3 weeks)). So I'm down, and Mike basically surfs over me. Unfortunately, he lands on my leg between my knee and ankle. And the knee pops.
I take a few minutes on the field, just kneeling to see how it feels immediately afterwards. It isn't that bad--a bit throbby, but this is the same knee that pops all the time in jiu jitsu so I might have dodged a bullet. And it's the inside of the knee, the same place that always makes my training partners stop in their tracks and ask if I'm ok when it barks. Mike's worried and asking about me, but I think I'm ok. Besides, it wasn't an intentional crash, it was just one of those plays where the game results in a tangle of arms and legs. We stand, and my leg feels a little wobbly, but not bad enough to worry. Then I step, and know better. I call injury and hobble off the field in search of an icepack and a fistful of ibuprofen.
So here I sit, valu-pak of ibuprofen (aka Vitamin I), and a limp that would make Verbal Kint pity me. I'll go to class Tuesday, just to watch and not participate, and talk with Klint afterwards about what I can do. Really, I will probably go mad if I have to stop all activity for more than a week, especially with studying and the inherent stress that causes.
So. If anyone has suggestions about how to care for a soft knee, let me know.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Not Dead Yet
Still alive, still training on a very regular basis. Training to the point where my wife tonight asked me when I would be able to give up a night or two a week of training. Because she thinks I'm there a bit much. I'm not saying that she's wrong, I'm just saying that I like it.
Klint gave me a few jiu jitsu guys to find videos on and watch over my spare time. You know, those fifteen minutes between sleep, bar class, bar studying, bartending, and jiu jitsu-ing. That's right, I'm taking bar prep classes (to take the bar to become a lawyer) and working at a bar (a mainly alcohol-serving establishment with multiple tap lines of fantastic beer) this summer. So keeping bar class and bar prep separate from bar fun is a linguistic nightmare.
My jiu jitsu is moving forward. I think. It's not stagnant, so that's good. But, as always, it isn't progressing as quickly as I think it should, and definitely not a fast as I would like. My blue belt is getting some hours put on it, but we just finally started incorporating some flow-drilling into our class time and post-class training, so the last two training sessions have felt fantastic. It finally felt like I was doing something right, like the time I was spending on the mat was for more than just repping the techniques that I'd learned that day and seeing how it fit into my game as it now existed. Instead, it was seeing where my body wanted to go and what opportunities that opened up. I found out that I like taking the back more than I knew, and that knee-on-belly is going to be a position that I love. I found out that my triangles are good, but not where I thought they were, and that I need to work my sweeps.
So I'll be watching Abmar Barbosa, Romulo Barral, and Kayron Gracie for the next few days. Probably with a little Rafael Lovato Jr. thrown in for good measure. Need to hammer down this guard work. I'm on a hiatus from guard submissions for the next month. It's all about working my sweeps and controlling the top position once I get it. I think. I'm not quite sure, we were talking it out over text message. Hopefully tomorrow night will shed a little more light on my training goals for the next month.
Klint gave me a few jiu jitsu guys to find videos on and watch over my spare time. You know, those fifteen minutes between sleep, bar class, bar studying, bartending, and jiu jitsu-ing. That's right, I'm taking bar prep classes (to take the bar to become a lawyer) and working at a bar (a mainly alcohol-serving establishment with multiple tap lines of fantastic beer) this summer. So keeping bar class and bar prep separate from bar fun is a linguistic nightmare.
My jiu jitsu is moving forward. I think. It's not stagnant, so that's good. But, as always, it isn't progressing as quickly as I think it should, and definitely not a fast as I would like. My blue belt is getting some hours put on it, but we just finally started incorporating some flow-drilling into our class time and post-class training, so the last two training sessions have felt fantastic. It finally felt like I was doing something right, like the time I was spending on the mat was for more than just repping the techniques that I'd learned that day and seeing how it fit into my game as it now existed. Instead, it was seeing where my body wanted to go and what opportunities that opened up. I found out that I like taking the back more than I knew, and that knee-on-belly is going to be a position that I love. I found out that my triangles are good, but not where I thought they were, and that I need to work my sweeps.
So I'll be watching Abmar Barbosa, Romulo Barral, and Kayron Gracie for the next few days. Probably with a little Rafael Lovato Jr. thrown in for good measure. Need to hammer down this guard work. I'm on a hiatus from guard submissions for the next month. It's all about working my sweeps and controlling the top position once I get it. I think. I'm not quite sure, we were talking it out over text message. Hopefully tomorrow night will shed a little more light on my training goals for the next month.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Weighing In
This post has nothing to do with actually weighing in, but rather (at least, as I start it) what you do with your weight. More specifically, what I do with my weight.
I am a bit over 6'1" tall, and walk around at about 180 pounds. Back in 2006, before making my diet environmentally conscious and training jiu jitsu, I was a bit north of 200. Never overweight or anything, but now I'm just skinny. In the last two weeks, I've told a few people I train with what my weight is and they're all surprised it's so high. They were convinced that I actually weighed more like 160 or 165. Klint, my instructor, is one of those people. Now to be fair, some days I get home from training and I'm more like 175 on the scale at home, but I've never been much lower than that. At least, not since high school or college. So this evening, these observations and shocked reactions got me thinking about how I use my weight when I'm on the mats.
To start with, I'm not really that strong. I never really added any athletic muscle onto my frame. Ever. I have always been lanky and lean, and m legs are strong and flexible. I'm a dude, so I have a little meathead strength hidden in my DNA, but really, I try to keep my jiu jitsu game about movement and baiting-and-switching rather than pinning and crushing. At the same time, I know that a lot of my game would probably improve if I were to start putting some thought into how I was using my weight. In my guard passes, for sure.
This hasn't gone anywhere, really. I guess I want to sort out why it seems to me like I'm not using my weight effectively. If several of my training partners think that I am not as heavy as I in fact am, I take it to mean that I'm not efficiently using my weight to its full potential. 6'1", 180 lbs isn't small by any means. Now I just need to sort how to use it without losing the sensitivity I've been building.
I am a bit over 6'1" tall, and walk around at about 180 pounds. Back in 2006, before making my diet environmentally conscious and training jiu jitsu, I was a bit north of 200. Never overweight or anything, but now I'm just skinny. In the last two weeks, I've told a few people I train with what my weight is and they're all surprised it's so high. They were convinced that I actually weighed more like 160 or 165. Klint, my instructor, is one of those people. Now to be fair, some days I get home from training and I'm more like 175 on the scale at home, but I've never been much lower than that. At least, not since high school or college. So this evening, these observations and shocked reactions got me thinking about how I use my weight when I'm on the mats.
To start with, I'm not really that strong. I never really added any athletic muscle onto my frame. Ever. I have always been lanky and lean, and m legs are strong and flexible. I'm a dude, so I have a little meathead strength hidden in my DNA, but really, I try to keep my jiu jitsu game about movement and baiting-and-switching rather than pinning and crushing. At the same time, I know that a lot of my game would probably improve if I were to start putting some thought into how I was using my weight. In my guard passes, for sure.
This hasn't gone anywhere, really. I guess I want to sort out why it seems to me like I'm not using my weight effectively. If several of my training partners think that I am not as heavy as I in fact am, I take it to mean that I'm not efficiently using my weight to its full potential. 6'1", 180 lbs isn't small by any means. Now I just need to sort how to use it without losing the sensitivity I've been building.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Memorial Day
What did I do after writing out a post this morning, you might ask? I went to open mat. Like an addict.
I got to roll with Dan (4-stripe blue), Timmy (purple, 2-stripe I think), and Casey (4-stripe purple). I'm a decent amount bigger than Dan, but roughly the same weight as Tim and Casey---I just carry it taller. I spent the afternoon working my good game. At least, when I could consciously implement a game, I opted for my good one. Which is my guard. And it worked pretty well. Dan was having serious problems with it. Talking afterwards, he said that most of the big guys he rolls with are my height, but at least 220, and that extra weight makes them move drastically differently than I do. I, with my spindly legs and flexible knees, give him problems that he doesn't normally see. But I was bad with my gas tank, and sapped it much quicker than I wanted to.
Tim just wrecked me. I think my success Saturday against him was either him working a few specific things or him not being fully warm and ready for a spastic man with long legs. But today, he took none of it and gave me a serious lesson. A few collar chokes and armbars later, he even let me work simply takedowns and stand-up for a few minutes. Here, I had mixed success and failure. But, it was probably the second time I worked only takedowns, and I didn't embarrass myself or my academy, so I was alright with it. Tim is one of the big personalities of that academy. For a while, that school and ours were under the same flag. Since January, Edina has come under a different affiliation. The politics of jiu jitsu don't really attract me, but as I understand them, those politics can cause serious clashes between schools. we thankfully don't have any of those. There is a palpable disconnect, though, between Damian's students and Klint's, though, and it's not just the kind of game that their students pick up from their respective instructors. Damian has had students longer, and he has many, many more of them. Klint's been running his school for maybe two years now. They have a swagger that they've earned with blood, time, and tears spent on the mats. Klint's students are always welcome at Damian's academy to train or take classes, open-door policy. In that respect, the instructors are world class. I think I'm the student from across town who goes to Damian's most often, and occasionally I get that high-school, "not quite in this clique" vibe. It's a strange thing, and today it was wonderfully absent.
Casey worked me pretty well, and complimented my defense afterwards. As the defender, it never feels great to hear "Your defense is great" because it means that he was attacking the entire time and you couldn't get back to even a neutral position. The good part, though, is that it means that your defense is improving, so eventually, you'll have time to spend on attacking. Double-edged sword and whatnot.
I got to roll with Dan (4-stripe blue), Timmy (purple, 2-stripe I think), and Casey (4-stripe purple). I'm a decent amount bigger than Dan, but roughly the same weight as Tim and Casey---I just carry it taller. I spent the afternoon working my good game. At least, when I could consciously implement a game, I opted for my good one. Which is my guard. And it worked pretty well. Dan was having serious problems with it. Talking afterwards, he said that most of the big guys he rolls with are my height, but at least 220, and that extra weight makes them move drastically differently than I do. I, with my spindly legs and flexible knees, give him problems that he doesn't normally see. But I was bad with my gas tank, and sapped it much quicker than I wanted to.
Tim just wrecked me. I think my success Saturday against him was either him working a few specific things or him not being fully warm and ready for a spastic man with long legs. But today, he took none of it and gave me a serious lesson. A few collar chokes and armbars later, he even let me work simply takedowns and stand-up for a few minutes. Here, I had mixed success and failure. But, it was probably the second time I worked only takedowns, and I didn't embarrass myself or my academy, so I was alright with it. Tim is one of the big personalities of that academy. For a while, that school and ours were under the same flag. Since January, Edina has come under a different affiliation. The politics of jiu jitsu don't really attract me, but as I understand them, those politics can cause serious clashes between schools. we thankfully don't have any of those. There is a palpable disconnect, though, between Damian's students and Klint's, though, and it's not just the kind of game that their students pick up from their respective instructors. Damian has had students longer, and he has many, many more of them. Klint's been running his school for maybe two years now. They have a swagger that they've earned with blood, time, and tears spent on the mats. Klint's students are always welcome at Damian's academy to train or take classes, open-door policy. In that respect, the instructors are world class. I think I'm the student from across town who goes to Damian's most often, and occasionally I get that high-school, "not quite in this clique" vibe. It's a strange thing, and today it was wonderfully absent.
Casey worked me pretty well, and complimented my defense afterwards. As the defender, it never feels great to hear "Your defense is great" because it means that he was attacking the entire time and you couldn't get back to even a neutral position. The good part, though, is that it means that your defense is improving, so eventually, you'll have time to spend on attacking. Double-edged sword and whatnot.
Mat Rat
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.
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.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
And All Shall Be Well....
And when I returned to the mat, something else entirely happened.
We worked through the week's techniques in class on Thursday, and added a few that they must have done on Tuesday and Wednesday (because I don't remember them). Again, working out of side control and trying to recognize indicators that your opponent gives you, each of which tells you to move on to a different technique. Then you string them together so that no matter what your opponent does to keep you in side control, you have an answer, something that either gets you back to guard or reverses the position.
Thankfully, this class did not start with "real life self-defense" practice.
After class, I got to train with Colin. And I did very, very well against him. We're fairly evenly matched--got our blue belts within a few weeks of one another, roughly the same size (even though he has ten to twenty pounds on me), and we're both pretty athletic and competitive people. So we got to train at a pretty decent pace without going break-neck. I felt confident, in control, never behind, and aggressive.
After class, Klint was walking out and asked if I was alright after the other night, that I seemed pretty broken up at the time. Yeah, I'm all good, I said, sometimes the five-year-old in me decides he needs to break out. I told him I was just reacting to the drubbing he'd given me, and he said he was being aggressive on purpose. "Oh I know," I told him, "and it isn't like I didn't know at the time, that was just the reaction my psyche decided to have that night." Having an instructor so invested in my progression, as I'm sure I've said before, is very comforting. And I know that I'll benefit from getting wrecked like that--it won't even be in the long-run, the benefits will start showing in short order. And I think Colin was their first display.
We worked through the week's techniques in class on Thursday, and added a few that they must have done on Tuesday and Wednesday (because I don't remember them). Again, working out of side control and trying to recognize indicators that your opponent gives you, each of which tells you to move on to a different technique. Then you string them together so that no matter what your opponent does to keep you in side control, you have an answer, something that either gets you back to guard or reverses the position.
Thankfully, this class did not start with "real life self-defense" practice.
After class, I got to train with Colin. And I did very, very well against him. We're fairly evenly matched--got our blue belts within a few weeks of one another, roughly the same size (even though he has ten to twenty pounds on me), and we're both pretty athletic and competitive people. So we got to train at a pretty decent pace without going break-neck. I felt confident, in control, never behind, and aggressive.
After class, Klint was walking out and asked if I was alright after the other night, that I seemed pretty broken up at the time. Yeah, I'm all good, I said, sometimes the five-year-old in me decides he needs to break out. I told him I was just reacting to the drubbing he'd given me, and he said he was being aggressive on purpose. "Oh I know," I told him, "and it isn't like I didn't know at the time, that was just the reaction my psyche decided to have that night." Having an instructor so invested in my progression, as I'm sure I've said before, is very comforting. And I know that I'll benefit from getting wrecked like that--it won't even be in the long-run, the benefits will start showing in short order. And I think Colin was their first display.
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