On The Mat Day 779: Jiu-jitsu is a Lifeline

I work as a freelance translator at home and things have been so busy recently that I find myself working a lot. I can feel the stress building inside like a kettle on the ready to boil over. This week has been crazy, with work coming in leaving me no time to rest. It's at times like this that I appreciate BJJ. I went to class this morning feeling lethargic and over-worked but left feeling refreshed with a buzzing high. I just couldn't live without it. It's my lifeline.

I sparred a few times. My neck is getting better every day. After about 3 rounds I stepped out and hit the squat rack. I'm up to 82.5kg now. Which is probably the most I've ever squatted in my life. I'm impressed by how well the 5x5 stronglift program works. I wish I could apply this to BJJ but I think it's not that simple.

On Saturday I went jogging in the park and felt my calf give out a bit while starting the run. I think I didn't warm up enough because half-way through I had to stop since my calf muscle just felt like it would rip out of my leg if I continued. It's getting cold, which means I really must focus on being warmed up before the run. I plan to give it a week to recover then continue my runs.

On The Mat Day 772: Low on Stamina

I sparred today, quite hard in fact. Some days it's nice to let the engine go as fast as it can. I can't do this all the time though or that would ruin my body. James's guard is getting harder to pass because he has been working on a counter for each position. I see it like a spider web in my mind of what he does for each pass attempt. I just have to find a counter for each. Today, I simply worked on denying collar grips and putting pressure down. I also tried countering the straight arm framing by stepping around and grabbing the neck collar and coming over to armbar. It would have worked but I lost my balance.

I completely gassed against Kawazoe. He's a young athletic MMA guy. I just wanted to stand up and see if I could take him down. Too hard for me to do right now. I should probably go back to judo soon. He caught me with uchimata from which I quickly did a technical stand up. With a couple of minutes on the clock I was low on stamina and he passed and caught me in an armbar. Without stamina it is hard to think of technique. Stamina is king followed by technique. If you have the technique but a body that can't do as it's told then you will fail. I probably need to run a while to build stamina which was originally my plan. It's getting so cold right now though.

Squatting today was 77.5kg. Very heavy for me but my legs feel very strong. I'm still worried about my knee getting caught at an odd angle when I spar. Neck feels better than I thought consider how hard I sparred today.

Just need to start filling that tank up with gas.

On the Mat Day 766: Stonglifts 5x5 Effect

So as you know, I've had a bad time with a meniscus tear which meant my knee was quite unstable in the coronal plane. To fix this, I started doing squats based on the stronglifts 5x5 platform. Well what would you know, it went and helped big time! I can now fully squat deep down so my hamstrings touch the back of my knees and calves (the Asian squat as typical performed by women when waiting for trains in Japan). Prior to squatting my knee would pop out of alignment and move into the tear which felt like a dislocation. However, the squats seem to have strengthen my leg muscles in only 3 weeks of training enough to hold the knee firmly in place. I still have a weird feeling when I sit in Seiza though. Another result of squatting has been that I just speed up hills on my bicycle, my legs moving like little pistons. I've come to realize that weight training is something that any grappler should be doing to build armour and prevent injury.

Today at class we had a new guy come in who is a blue belt from a different club but has moved to ours. Quite a strong 25 year old with experience in Shooto and MMA. Good balance, strong physique, nice control with no quick crazy movements. We had a good little spar but I think he was holding back on me since it was the 1st time at our club plus he knew I was recovering from injury. A nice addition to our training during the morning sessions.

I forwent Stronglifts today. My back muscle was tight as hell today when I woke up. I think the tightness of my hamstring is causing me to fold forward too much when squatting and I'm using my back muscles to stabilize, resulting in this pain. I need to stretch and foam roll over it tonight then get back on Stronglifts come Friday.

On the Mat Day 760: Back to Wednesday Morning Training

I woke up really early this morning, felt really run down, then went back to sleep for about an hour to wake around 9 am. I told myself last night that I would go to class this morning and I did. K-sensei was teaching butterfly guard sweeps. This is something I feel I need to move on to. Butterfly guard is used a lot in MMA to restand or sweep but it's also a good guard for older guys who train straight BJJ because there is little force on the neck and the opponent cannot drive their weight down onto you so easily. I should start working on this guard soon.

In an effort to allow my neck to heal I did not spar and instead went to work on squatting. I started doing Stronglifts 5x5 a week ago to improve my overall strength and strengthen my leg muscles to give more stabilization to my knee. My left meniscus has a tear but there is no pain right now. It is quite weak if I hindu squat deep or sit in seiza and move side to side. However, I can slowly feel that squatting is improving my knee stability.

Currently I am only lifting 57.5 kg on squats. For some reason I messed up how much an olympic bar weights and believing it to be only 10 kg, I though that I was squating 47.5 kg. I'm such an idiot. It's been something like 10 years since I squatted so I am taking it slowly and increasing 2.5 kg each time. My goals are to get strong and injury free/resistant.