Monday 13 May 2013

On the Mat Day 371: Sunday Morning Training

It was a very hot day yesterday and I sweated a hell of a lot. It's a sign of what is to come as we enter the humid Summer for real here. I was feeling a little groggy when i woke up, sort of as though I had a cold but didn't. I still feel this way today and put it down to my increase in training this week, late nights and inadequate food types to help me recover properly. I considered not going to class and instead doing some DIY or something around the house but thought it would be cool to say I did 4 sessions in that week so ended up going. I also watched the Mark Kerr documentary the previous night so felt a bit inspired by how hard he pushed himself with Bas Ruten during the Pride days.

Both K and F sensei were at the dojo when I arrived a little later than normal. He got me to run through guard passing drills which were:

1. knee slicer pass with emphasis on putting the head first on the opponent's chest to pin him followed by the underhook on the far side. Recently, I've seen this principle a lot because also during butterfly guard we had to first push with our forehead on the opponent's chest and then underhook - or bad things can happen like armbars. I guess this is a universal principle in technique.

2. Closed guard break by bringing one knee in, hand pushes his knee down, one leg steps over then head on his chest and knee cutter type pass as in 1.

3. was when you are caught in his butterfly guard and he elevates you ready for transition to x-guard. Put hands on the mat above his head and get into a sky diver position with feet curled up and soles of feet facing the ceiling. Bring knees together and rotate hips to force his legs down. You can then pass to his back from here. F-sensei gets me with this pass all the time when I try to enter x-guard. Me and K-sensei did these drills quite a few times while other guys starting to slowly dribble into class.

I sparred a couple of times and then left at 12.30pm to take my family to lunch. I sparred with Yoshida for the first time since he got back from Brazil. He didn't use any different techniques on me as he used to but he seemed heavier, which he is. He played spider guard and got me in a triangle. I asked him to show me the setup which involves breaking down a standing opponent in spider guard. Then either sweeping or triangle. I also had partial success with twister to back control from half-guard after running through my repertoire of half-guard passes versus Kawai-san. I also sparred with F-sensei and actually got him breathing heavily which is a good sign I'm giving him a hard time. I think it's a combination of me feeling good on Sundays in regards to stamina and rested versus his bad day where perhaps he has had a few beers or something the night before because on any other day he toys with me easily.

I think from hereon training is going to get hot and nasty, and I will probably end up losing lots of weight during the summer as always. I just hope I can get enough sleep tonight because I want to get up early for Kettlebells tomorrow. I had the worst sleep ever last night because of weird shitty dreams and the fact that I kept kicking off the covers then pulling them back over me every 5 minutes.

Sparring time: 4 x 6 mins = 24 mins

No comments:

Post a Comment