Thursday 3 October 2013

On the Mat Day 415: A Short Break

It's been 4 years now since I first started BJJ and I often still feel like I don't know a damn thing. Then there are times I surprise myself with the knowledge I have. Here's to another 4 more!

I was a bit under the weather over the weekend thanks to my daughter's cold so could not train on Monday night. Whenever I miss a training session, it means that I can only do 2 a week and for some reason, this makes my brain work hard at thinking over jiu-jitsu when I try to sleep at night. It seems to try to make up for that lost night of training by thinking about it. This results in me sleeping only a few hours as I did last night because I slept at 1 am then got up around 4.30 am, thought what the hell, and did some freelance work. I then went back to sleep at 7 am until 10 am. I still feel wasted and will need to make it up tonight if I am to be fresh as a daisy for training tomorrow morning. Getting sick and losing sleep is a downward spiral because not getting enough winks can easily make me get ill again.

Despite this I had a good training session last night. We did Berimbolo, which I am familiar with and have only ever pulled it off a couple of times without really finishing it properly. I would like to train it more because it is a very cool move and I often see instance where I can use it but fail to capitalize. I trained with Matt and also Christiano, both of whom I have not seen in a while. Both of them seem to have improved. Matt bulls his way past my guard and all I can do is turtle. This is something I need to remedy by having a different plan versus an opponent who is stronger and weighs more than me.

I think, this year, I have started to evolve into a BJJer who uses combinations more than before, and I am more aware I need to use different techniques (or gameplan) for different opponents. For example, I use uchi-mata to sumi-gaeshi a lot whereas before I would just go straight for sumi-gaeshi. I also try tai-otoshi to kouchigari. I also need to add seio-nage to ouchigari to this as well. I am looking forward to viewing the Takedown Blueprint. In terms of ground techniques, I probably still don't think enough of combining moves but am good at chaining triangle to omoplata and sometimes an armbar. For small opponents I tend to smash pass a lot with over-under passes and bullfighter passes and work lasso spider guard against them. Against larger/stronger opponents this does not go so well. Since there are not many heavyweights who are regular at my gym I have yet to find a good plan other than armdrags and x-guard against them. I think I should use sitting guard more against this type of opponent to stop them from flattening me.

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