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Another dash to London, another academy visit. I dropped by Fight Factory in London this time, another checkmat affiliate supervised by Luiz Ribeiro.
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I suppose it’s a bit telling that I write this month’s log on the 26th when I usually update them during the whole month: motivation has been slightly down. The lack of success in the areas I’m trying to improve and some overall tiredness made me skip my 2 first classes… ever. i usually don’t even think about going to class, I just do. But this week I skipped one to stay home and play Don’t Starve, and another one the next week just to get some rest. I feel a bit guilty about it but at the same time it was relaxing.
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Landing some good things in the middle of a plateau.
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Not much going on this november. Helping with competition preparation and struggling with pretty much anything.
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Back from the camp in Copenhagen, i’m feeling very notable improvements to my game. I’m having success on the techincal and mental sides for the first half of the month, before slowly falling into a slump.
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12 September
Last months explorations was quite dense because I came of a one month break, but since I’ll have less to say this month I’m reverting to the old exploration format.
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I used to keep a notebook about my training but it’s a bit inconsistent so I’ll try to keep track of everything here instead.
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Training stopped mid-july at my academy and during the last weeks we were free to do whatever we wanted. There are times when I have a huge list of things I want to try — unfortunately this was not one of them. I ended up just rolling for fun. I tried to focus a bit on thinking ahead and anticipating what my partners would do but I still find that very hard. I may be abble to predict things but it takes me so much focus I can’t do anything else. Basically I can predict how I get submitted.
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Valentin is one of the training partners I appreciate a lot. He is a blue belt and has been since I know him. Very athletic but despite that technically *extremely* clean -- his moves look like coming out of a textbook. Valentin has also been tooling me for a very long time, exploiting every weakness in my guard to pass, get my back and choke me.
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90% of techniques shown in classes and seminars are from a very specific position, which is most likely not related at all to the current problems I’m having in my own BJJ game.
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I had almost no success with the reverse omoplata, partly because I had a hard time isolating the arm, partly because people just don’t turtle too much around here. I’ll save it for another time.
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I’m not saying I mastered open guard or anything, but it has become pretty decent. I’ve had several people tell mee how hard I was to pass, some top blue belts still smash pass it but overall it’s holding up steady. So I started playing passer against other white belts… and it’s fun!
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As I mentionned, I have been working on my open guard game for a couple of months now. I have a solid closed guard game, but during my first competitions I found that if I am unable to pull guard, I’m worthless. And better opponents don’t walk straight into your guard.
