Back from the Dead…

…and making the most of it.

It’s kind of ironic that a blog I originally started to write about how to make MMA/BJJ training compatible with a busy life ends up getting sidetracked for a month or so, I suppose. The lady is here, which means that my entire daily routine is being rewritten to fit the needs of another person. Which, really, is a situation that we’ll probably all end up in – a partner, children, a family, etc. – so I’m sure it’ll add some more interesting material for the blog.

Essentially, I’ve gone from a schedule with 45 minutes working out in the morning and 3 hours of skill training/sparring in the evening, 6x/week, to maybe 30 minutes morning workout and 1.5 hours skill training/sparring, 3-5x/week. This means I’ve had to reevaluate my priorities and change my schedule accordingly. Cutting down on the skill training has been the hardest – I can’t make it to the kickboxing classes, and I miss two of the three weekly BJJ technique classes – but I wouldn’t feel nearly as comfortable cutting any of the BJJ/no-gi sparring sessions, because those always feel like I’m getting the most physical bang for my buck, and I want to take advantage of the easy access to talented opponents for as long as I’ve got it. In order to compensate, I’m going to try to spend more time watching DVDs to give me ideas for things to work on. I’ve been trying to work on more X-guard stuff lately; hellooooo Marcelo Garcia DVDs.

Interestingly enough, the chronic lack of “explosiveness” that I’ve worked on over the last few years benefit considerably from cutting down on the training time. Feeling like rolling time is a scarcity makes me want to get the most from the training sessions, which is something I don’t feel quite so strongly when I’m at the gym for over 15 hours a week. Since the Japanese system has people pick their own opponents during a sparring session, it gets all too easy to wait out every round or so because I’m just going to be there again the next day for three hours. Now, I’ve noticed that I’ve got more energy and I’m much less hesitant. And it feels really, really good.

Perhaps the part that has suffered most from my girlfriend’s presence is my diet – I’m eating a lot more junk food, especially ice cream and pastries, than I did without her here. That, I suppose, is the price one must pay for love. I reckon I could stand to gain some weight anyway…

pat m.

Self-evaluation, Part 2

Okay, I think relaxing has officially gotten boring. So is feeling like I’ve been sitting on my ass for the last week and lost all my conditioning. On the plus side, those deep nagging aches, pains, and soreness have all gone, so I’m ready to go hard this coming week.

I was explaining to my Fulbright advisor today that preparing for a tournament is great for narrowing my game down, but always being in tournament-prep mode doesn’t leave me with much opportunity to experiment or diversify my game because I’m trying to focus all my energies on figuring out how to play the game I want to play. For example, all the work I’ve done in half guard over the last month or so was mostly oriented around getting back to the closed-guard and spider-guard games that I feel most comfortable with. With no tournaments on the immediate horizon, I can try and make my half guard more dangerous in its own right. Kind of what Sirlin describes here, though this is about video games.

The biggest hole in my game is my standup grappling. This becomes immediately apparent to virtually anyone who stands up with me for more than thirty seconds – with the gi or without, my standup game sucks. I love watching Shinya Aoki fight because everyone is so intimidated by his guard that he can jump around and do whatever the hell he wants. I want that. While I know that I need to work on this, I’ve come to understand that BJJ gyms are not the place to go to work on my standup (in retrospect, this should have been obvious). So while I’m focusing on BJJ, I’m going to be more focused on finding ways to win on the ground – making sure I can turn bad situations into good ones. A blue belt at Open Door BJJ told me once that fighting from the guard is just the first step to getting your opponent on their back. I like that a lot more than using all my energy up wrestling someone down to the mats. When I have a chance to get some dedicated standup instruction, I’d love to work on my wrestling/Judo, but for now, I’m a BJJer first and foremost. If I’m standing up off the BJJ mats, I’d rather punch anyway.

The other hole that this tournament exposed was my guard-passing game. It’s pretty bad – my coach told me later that we need to make my passes tighter. Like my standup game, I think that a lot of this is a matter of adjusting the techniques to my body type. Along similar lines, I need to get better at taking the back and getting my hooks in. I don’t mind hanging out there and looking for a submission, but being able to consistently break a turtle guard would make me much more dangerous.

I’m fairly comfortable with my guard by now, unsurprisingly. I want to make my butterfly guard more dangerous, start developing an X-guard game, and keep developing my stronger points. For now, I think I’ll actively work the butterfly guard, and spend the rest of my time trying to get better on top.

Physically, I was in pretty good shape for this tournament – cardio held up, though I could have been more explosive, and I didn’t really have to worry about being outmuscled or anything like that. I think I’m going to rearrange my workout schedule with an aim towards increasing grip strength, core strength, and flexibility, as I’m kind of plateauing when it comes to things that I can do with the equipment I have.

Okay, that’s like three posts about how awesome I wanna be. Enough of that.

Peace.

pat m.

Training Journal 4.21.08

This week’s goals are pretty simple: since I’ve got a tournament coming up in about 2 weeks, I just have to make sure I do my conditioning hard enough to bust my ass every day, and don’t miss BJJ class. So far, things are going fine on both counts.

My morning workout was inspired by the “Fifteen Minutes of Hell” workouts that Diego C. made us do to prepare for the Pan Ams last year. Since I don’t have a mat or weights in my apartment, though, I had to improvise:

1 minute high knees dumbbell water bottle press

1 minute dumbbell duffel bag swings

1 minute burpees

1 minute funky compound lift (I don’t know what to call this. Usually you hold two dumbbells, squat, shrug, curl, overhead press, and extend them out in front and lower them down to do it all over again. I did this holding on to the fully-loaded duffel bag handles, which made for a very different – and painful – stress.)

1 minute shadow boxing

x3. Bleah.

It got me feeling real good come evening practice, though. Even though it was pretty hot today, and still pretty hot in the gym (my glasses fogged when I entered), I managed to get a bunch of really good sparring sessions in. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever felt stronger or more confident in my ground game. Which is good, because my standup takedowns still suck phenomenally. I’m probably going to be jumping to guard with a quickness this time.

pat m.

Goals 4.13.08

BJJ:

-Hit a sweep from butterfly guard.

-Hit a sweep from spider guard.

Exercise:

-Add finishers to the workout schedule.

Striking:

-Throw more combos. Finish them with kicks.

Other:

-Try drinking protein + carb workout drink during training sessions.

Goals – 4/7/08

As I mentioned previously, part of the reason I started this blog is to have a place to write down my goals in an effort to make my improvement a little more concrete. So! Here we go.

BJJ: 

-Hit a sweep from spider guard.

-Hit a sweep from half guard.

-Watch Rigan Machado’s half guard DVD a few times.

Exercise:

-Finalize the routine.

-Don’t skip anything.

Striking

-Throw full combos in sparring, especially if I go up against that weird white guy.

-Finish a combo in sparring with a hook to the body.

Other

-Train at least four days this week.

-Heal my toe.