The Most Loathed

Not trollish at all. A perfectly legitimate defense and evidence that he wasn't quite in place. You're helping him improve. We have a woman who I have never been able to Americana for this reason. She's known throughout the school for being hyper flexible. It's just and attribute we get to learn to work around

I appreciate the info. I'll probably pay for a sub over the weekend and start doing a day or two per week. Tuesday: BJJ - Marathon Roll It was another all blue belt show. I took 4 or 5 taps off of them, gave up none. I took a couple off of people who are usually a challenge. The most memorable one was an very improvised kimura off of Little Alex. I set it up from half guard but realized I would never finish it so I kept it while disentangling our legs then moved up to his head, lifted his upper body and finished it. He had. a much better range of motion than most guys to I have to put his hand up between his shoulder blades to get there but he's a teammate so I kept it slow and controlled. Other than that, Arm triangles work. I'm trying to work on getting to either the armbar or back from mount but everyone is used to my triangle attack and they just freeze up. So I need to figure out how to make them believe there are escape options so I can follow that. The roll that I liked but didn't end in a sub was Joe. Joe is one of the strongest people I currently know and he's crazy fit. I probably have 50 lbs on him but I can't treat him like he's smaller than me. I like him but sometimes don't like rolling with him because I have to treat him like he's dangerous because he will crank a submission. Knowing this even before I went in I was thinking about this inevitable roll and that I needed to just smash him. I think he started on my back and I got to halfguard bottom, swept him then body locked him. I used that to pin him to the mat and work up to mount. It was still a good fight to get up there. I didn't sub him but being able to see and enact a strategy was good. The last ten minutes were 30 second rounds, winner stays in. Winner is defined not by a pass or submission but by the "most aggressive". I found it really interesting to watch everyone's approach change. When aggression is the goal everyone engages. Some of it is dumb engagement and you wouldn't want to do this all the time but it was really interesting to see people not "playing to not lose". Wednesday: BJJ Back attack - cont Bow and Arrow - From the back, fall to the underhook side. Control arm grabs their matching arm. Their free arm grabs your attack arm. Start the lawn mower to free it then rush back in to over grip their hand (you're now overgripping each of their same side hand) you now need to hand off one hand to the other (so you're cross gripping one hand and you each have the other hand free) then your free hand needs to find theirs for an over grip. Now lock away their attack side arm with your leg lace. Control side arm grabs their control side. Your strangle arm goes to their lapel, cuffing it over to make a groove for your finger tips. All of this is pretty much what we have been doing until now.Now your feet push down on the attack side hip to move the front person down. With the front person lowered you slide your femur up onto their shoulder. Extend your hips to strangle them in a terrible way Crossbow- same setup but your out of position for getting the femur over the shoulder at the end. Control side arm comes up the front of their body and behind their neck. Because you have the underhook this isolates that arm just extended out and useless. Grab your own strangle forearm. Draw your hands to your chest for the strangle Clock Choke / Double Lapel Variant - Set up the Bow and Arrow. For some reason you have extended your hips and they have not tapped. Release the control arm to cross grab the lapel. So you have your danger arm across their neck in a cuffed lapel, your control arm is still and underhook but crossing their midline and grabbing the other lapel. Draw the danger elbow in tricep extend the control arm. Also, "stomp the pelvis" use bother your feet to drive them down into the strangle. Rolls Rob (blue) - he fought hard to not get tapped but got tapped. Rob used to be a push over but he's really earned a lot of peoples' respect lately by deciding that if he's gonna roll he has to stop giving up in a roll. Then, after getting smashed doing that he has realized that if he's going to fight, it's a lot easier to fight if he's not on the bottom constantly. So he fights hard to get inside positions. I still tap him but he's so much more of a handful. Joe (blue) - he started on my back and successfully finished the strangle. First tap I have given up in over a week. We started again, I took mount and noticed that his ear was bleeding so I sent him to clean it up Ben (blue) - three minutes to go, I gave him back. Ben is a nightmare on the back. He is great at controlling people by wrapping his long limbs around them. I got away though Joe (again) - after class Joe and I rolled again to finish where we left off. Took mount and went to work on my arm triangle but didn't quite finish. Different work stuff So the remote vs in office work thing still exists and puts an interesting spin on this topic but this is different. We've been hearing rumors for a bit that the contract with the vendor for our main database is not being renewed and we're going to shift over a very popular cloud provider, Snowflake. Details have been scant but it's just been a thing we've been hearing. I happened to have a conversation with some of the people involved a few weeks ago and tried to connect them with my team. For reasons that took a bit but we finally got to talk to them. Long story short, it's going to be a very big deal, in a bad way. I had said it would probably take about a year of just retooling work initially, now I think I under estimated. Not only would we need to go through the exercise of repointing a hundred or so jobs to a new environment but said new environment does not support the language that they are written in, which means rewriting from scratch. Not only do we have to rewrite from scratch but we need to learn new stuff to do that. We've historically been using a tool called SAS which has its own language (which I hate) called data step. No one else uses this and good on them. It also uses a variant of the most common database language called SQL, that one you've probably at least seen somewhere. Snowflake, however, apparently uses specifically Java or python. I and a couple of my peers have used a bit of python but not at a professional level. None of us have ever written in Java. I think I'm the only one who has use C or C++ which is the closest anyone has come. So we not only need to recode the jobs but in a language we don't know fluently AND we have to devise our policies and procedures on the fly. That almost certainly means the first round of coding will no longer be acceptable by the time we get to the end of the process, because we'll learn a lot about professional coding in the language as we go and will either need to leave non-compliant code running or immediately loop back for a second round of recoding. Neither of which is attractive. The solution I think I'm going to promote is to hire in a python developer, probably as a consultant to help use set up our policies and procedures, start the recode and teach the team. The catch is, I'd want someone very experienced, top tier, which is expensive. I'd want someone with "senior" or "lead" skills, meaning they don't just code but think about coding in a meta kind of way. That means we're probably talking $150 - $175/hour on a consultant's rates. That would pay to two in house developer salaries but that's the price of quality and experience. Of course, this retool introduces new flight risks. For me, I'm here for it. I love learning this new stuff. As weird as it is, I love an excuse to blow it all up and build it better from scratch. To me this is an opportunity but I also see the work that is ahead of us. Some of my peers though, they know their one thing. I can barely get them to code coherently in SQL and write any comments or documentation. I don't look forward to watching those people either try to push back or get angry and leave. Their skills are desirable, they don't have to to do this. That means fewer headcount to do the work and rehiring, which is a mixed blessing. We lose institutional memory but we can then hire in developers than genuinely know this stuff and begin to build a stronger stable.

Yeah, I think the part that baffles me the most about those ongoing stories is that they all end up having to soften the rule almost immediately. You'd think some of them would say "Hey, didn't Amazon do this and then look dumb when they had to walk it back. Let's maybe just skip a step and do the soft version". For our announcement the reason they gave was "We all work better when we're in one place". That may not be a perfect quote but it's darn close. All I could think was "we do?" My boss has made it clear that he has a lot of motivation to figure this out so I'm hoping he does that. If not, new chapter for me. Thank you! 03/28/2023 BJJ Attack from the back with leg lace. From back seatbelt, fall to the underhook side. They use their control side arm to defend. Control the arm with your control arm and roll attack arm between their arm and body and reattack. They defend with their attack side arm (you can sometimes finish here) punch that arm down, release the control side arm to grab their attack side arm with your control arm. Immediately move your attack side arm to control their control side arm. You have them in the straight jacket (your arms crisscrossed over their body. Keep the elbows and knees tight. Lift your top side foot up to their hip and loop it over their arm, trying to tuck the arm over your foot (the lace). Hand off their control side arm to your control arm and proceed to strangle. I was working with Ken and we both make up for what we don't have in height with what we do have in circumference. I couldn't get my foot in place for the leg lace so we had to mess with it. He came up with the idea of a slight hip escape. This does set up the leg lace but it puts your really high for the strangle. So you need to either resort to an arm attack or you need to make your way back down to finish. It does suck something awful though when you're all tied up like that Rolling Ken (blue) - arm triangle tap but was so super winded when I got it that I was really surprised Leon (brown) - game up a cardio tap to Leon. I hate doing that I just had never recovered from y Ken roll. So that's a thing I need to work on. It didn't help that Leon is the once guy bigger than Ken and I and he does all the dumb tricks like trying to cover your mouth and nose if he can Josh (purple) - tapped him with an arm triangle. I think he was a little annoyed because he got teased a bit about the fact that I swept him twice with the exact same sweep. BJJ Study Hall More attacks from mount. I think that they missed a cut in the videos, the one I'm currently on is two hours where the rest are one hour and clearly has two different topics. I'm in topic 2, the armbar from mount. I'm enjoying the instruction and got some great tips. Oddly, I've been hitting these of late, before watching the video. People have gotten so used to fighting against my arm triangle that I found these presenting themselves and nailed a few in rolls without practicing them, I accidentally skipped into the next video and didn't catch it for a bit so I got a preview of the huge triangle chapter coming. Really looking forward to that. I also put on a bit more of the halfguard stuff while I did dishes later. I'm looking forward to spending some dedicated on that in the future. Other I've been trying to eat more and I'm really enjoying the higher energy level however I weighed myself today and I'm running really heavy, 245. I need to start tracking and dealing with that. More on that in future post. However, question to people, what is the current popular food app? It looks like myFitnessPal has gone subscription. When I've looked online and downloaded a couple they all seemed either underpowered or subscription. I don't mind paying for a subscription but I'd like to have some sense of what is good before I just arbitrarily pay for a couple, trying to find a good one.

It's been a couple of days but a couple of good days 03/25/2023 - Friday BJJ - No gi More back attack stuff, more stuffing the arm. Unfortunately, it's been too long and the details are a little foggy. Shoot. Yeah, I can't pull it up to memory. I recall that we were stuffing the arm the more traditional way, which is to say, not trapping your own arm. Because of the work we did on Wednesday that lead to me easily following my partner's arm out. So, my Wednesday take aways were still there. See, totally worth getting this stuff written down when it's fresh Work Ok. I'll park this topic for a bit after this but wanted to get this last bit recorded. Return to work. I had my one-on-one with my manager. We talked about other stuff too but I had this on the agenda. I corrected myself on my previous statement that this wouldn't be enough to make me leave, yeah, it would. I also asked him if he knew that his boss had called me. He did not. He was totally of of the loop on what his boss was thinking and doing. This is, unfortunately, SOP for his boss, all of his subordinates are frustrated by it. It's taken me a year but I've just gotten used to it, as have they. We were both appreciative that his boss had reached out. Also, my boss was completely unsurprised that this will be a deal breaker if it's not resolved, which I appreciate. He has his flaws but one of his major strength, in my opinion, is that he is very tuned into what his employees need/want. On more than one occasion he has offered me something (trip to a conference, promotion, standing desk) before I have asked. This pretty much worked the same. He went on to express some frustration at the company just rolling this out and not talking to lower leaders (totally hear him). As he talked about, I'm not the only flight risk. He's likely to lose half of his team if they stick with this. He talked about he, at this time, there is no process to exempt people from this policy and, as a manger, he needs to have that discretion. It's nice to have a default policy (I agree) but also, he needs to be able to say "these three people are keepers and this policy will lose them so it just doesn't apply". It was a good talk. It technically got nothing done but simply reassured me that he has a huge impetus to find out how to grant these exceptions as well as the knowledge that I'm in that bucket. So, as I mentioned at the top, this topic is probably parked for a bit as it's simply a matter of waiting for things to unfold. Everyone knows the stakes. If they sort this I, and my team members at risk, stay. If they don't most or all of us go. I have my eye on converting to a full time, independent contractor if that's the case. I've looked at it before but had a couple of problems I didn't know how to solve. Now I know how to solve them. Dinner & Reanniversary Friday was our "Reanniversay" as I have it on our calendar. For anyone who isn't already in the loop on this, I've been married twice but both times to the same woman. It's a bit of story, although one that I kind of love but I'll spare you for now. However, when it comes to our Reanniversay, our first wedding was August 1, 20mumblemumble. Our second anniversary was March 1, 2021. So how did we arrive at March 24? It's the date that we went out in March of 2019 for the first time post divorce. To be clear, it wasn't actually a date. It was part of a plan we had to just make sure we met once a quarter or to attempt to stay in touch given that we had been a huge part of one another's life for 20 years up to that point. There was a moment, the mood was right, a kiss was exchanged. We decided to give it a go. It wasn't free of work, it was really a start to new work but it was a good start. I didn't really want to get remarried, for my own reasons. I'm not saying I didn't want to recommit, it was more the marriage thing itself that I was pretty meh on. However, during COVID and because we're both middle aged and aging, we decided it was the easiest way to ensure that if we needed the ability to see one another in the hospital or make medical and financial decisions, we got married. We had a great a wedding, it's also a story I love to tell. However, March 24th, they day that we started again, is the most important of all of those days to us, so that is our reanniversary. It's also part of why we give it kind of a funny name, to differentiate it from the actual anniversaries So, we went out to one of our local favorites, Nico's tacos. I'm realizing as I write this, I don't have much to add there. It was great, as always. For a small space the people watching is always great and did not disappoint. Just a really nice night. 03/26/2023 - Saturday BJJ You might be thinking "but you don't do jiujitsu on Saturdays" (you're not but I'm using a hypothetical you as a foil for story telling) and you'd be right. And I didn't. However, there was a meet on this day. I opted not to go because I'm trying to keep my eyes on the prize of my sub-only meets. However, I wanted to go and support the couple of guys who were competing (truly, couple, as in two). I got there and saw a couple guys from my gym, one had a kid who was competing and the other showed up to support like I did, no coaches though. We had one adult competing in the gi and one competing no-gi, both were there. So, when our gi-guy gets on the mat, people started pushing me to take the coaches char, so I did. I don't know the gi-guy very well, he doesn't night classes. Nice guy, whenever I've talked to him. Pretty athletic but also seems spotty on attendance (but also, I don't normally do nights). He gets out there and starts. I'm trying to think "what do I say? What are his cues?" So I'm basically calling out encouragement and trying to get him to start the battle. He does a good job, he wins the takedown fight and ends up in guard eventually. He goes for the whitebelt move of strangling in guard, which should never work I'm trying to get him to pass but also he's making a good show of trying to strangle the guy and I'm thinking "maybe he'll prove me a liar and win this strangle". He doesn't, but it causes the other guy to spazz and he takes that opportunity pass. A job well done, all under his own power. So he starts to set up an arm triangle but on the wrong side. I'm not sure what to tell him because he has good control but you can't submit someone from there, at least as far as I know and I've done hundreds of these so while there are things I don't know, I know a lot of things. However, he is able to eventually pass to the other side while holding the triangle and now he's going him in the kill zone. I'm now trying to coach little nuances of how to get it tighter. I know this position so well but trying to give him nuggets without overwhelming him is hard. Just as I can see him wanting to leave the positions (and I probably would have been thinking the same) I see the other guys hand come up to tap then waver then go back down. At this point I am out of my seat shouting. Trying to get that last 10% of the strangle. He gets the tap and comes off beaming. We talked after. I coached him a bit on the arm triangle. We'll work on it next time I see him but I think coaching at meets can be real dangerous. It's the wrong time to change what you do. He also told me that he was just about to stop with the arm triangle when he heard me just start shouting how to finish it and to stay with it so he did. I admit, that makes me a little bit proud. I mean, it was nothing magical, it's just that I saw the hand waver that he couldn't have seen, but it feels good to be a part of his win. Second match comes, he gets out there, it's a bit of a longer thing and he loses the take down fight, if I recall. However, he fights his way back up. Neither of them is dominating and they trade positions. He keeps getting int half guard top and the guy sets up a lockdown, which is so easy to break but you need to know what you're doing, so again, I'm trying to not overcoach but I'm frustrated by what I can't convey in that moment. He gets to side control and I think "they must be tied". I look over and he's down by two with a minute. So I start telling him he needs to get he submission. There are other options but at this point in the match, it's too precarious, if he does anything else it's too easy to get swept and lose. However, he takes mount (three points). I look over, expecting him to be up by one and he's up by 3. I think the scoring table was just behind when I last looked over. There are 30 seconds left. I hate it a bit but I basically start coaching him to just stall on top. He does it and takes the win. His next match wouldn't be for an hour and no-gi doesn't start for 2.5 hours and I have a prior engagement. I felt terrible leaving them without a coach but I had to go. I made my apologies and promised the no-gi guy that next time, I will prioritize his matches over anyone else's and be there to see him win. I did check later and I'm pretty sure gi-guy got hurt in his next match. He lost and the lost the subsequent two b "walkover" which means the other guy didn't show. Unless there was a miscommunication and he thought that once he was out, he was out, which would possibly be more frustrating for him but better too. So I'm really interested to find out more. The no-gi guy had mixed results. I watched these matches and thought "these guys are better white belts than I was" but I'm also a little frustrated because neither of the two guys is brand new. They both are getting really close to blue but they still have the baby giraffe thing when they get on the mat against someone they don't know. They're losing, I think, more to competition stress than to inability. I'll make a point to work with them more. When it comes to my own long game of BJJ, one thought I often have (but have never expressed outside my brain until now) is that I'd kind of like to be the "competition coach" for our school. I already keep track of all the meets and am the first person to notify Professor when they are booked. I plan my meet schedule way out and am more aggressive at planning meets than anyone. I'm also the only person, as far as I can tell, who tries to build a periodized schedule around meets. I would even be game for having a competition only class where I don't teach per say but we just work on peoples' A games and review footage and that kind of thing. 30 weeks out of the year, no one would care but me, but it'd be cool to try and get a couple other people building their year in that way. I'm not saying we'd be making world champs or anything. We're all hobbyists but, for me, competitions are an important part of my journey and if you just show up and follow along, you won't be ready. I dunno. I may talk to Professor at some point. I'm not sure I have the bandwidth right now to do this but in the future it would be cool. 03/27/2023 - Sunday Ok, this is getting long so I trimmed something from Saturday and I'm going to compress Sunday into about a paragraph. The local arboretum does a MapleFest every year. It's a pancake breakfast then they have some things set up where they have tapped maple trees and are actively converting the sap to syrup. The last time we did it it was too cold for sap to run so they did their best to pretend but their hearts were into it. This year was perfect. We had our pancakes and then went down to the sugarring house (I think that's the right word) and the sap was running. You could taste the sap from this morning then see them boiling it down actively to make syrup. It was just fun. This evening Laura had to go to a rehearsal so I had the house to my self. With the party. I threw Minnesota will never be the same: I did the dishes and threw on a BJJ instructional. I figured I'd just listen passively, I know most of what they're probably going to say since it's Danaher on half guard and I watched his other video in painstaking detail. Boy was I wrong. I was sucked into it as he was starting to talk about leg lock entries and all kinds of stuff that has been trickling around in my brain on the topic of half guard but I hadn't found anybody addressing. I had to actively make myself get up and finish the dishes. I've been bad about jiujitsu study hour of late. I think a lot of it was being low energy with having been sick so long but the desire is coming back. After seeing what that video has to offer, I'm hype. I'm still going to finish 4x4, which is like 5 more hours. I'm going to try and get all the way through New Wave halfguard passively in that time with the intent to come back and properly study it afterwards. I had planned on working on loose passing in the fall, and I'll stick to that but this video has me excited plus I have been wanted to pick up Danaher's pinning video for a while but have been trying to get through the hours of video I already have first. Wrap Up Not adding much here so I can get the new week kicked off and get to work. Kick Off Ok, going to rush through this: Monday - BJJ, BJJ Study Hour, Record Keeping Tuesday - Rec Time, Marathon Wednesday - BJJ, Guitar Thursday - Rec Time Friday - BJJ, Drive to see family Saturday - family time Sunday - drive back from family (no BJJ) Record Keeping Review I did pretty meh on this. The first half of the week I did good digital and analog record keeping. I think it was when the Return to Work stuff happened that I fell off the wagon. I got through about Thursday in both venues then nothing. I also wasn't doing my other optionals like guitar practice, PT, and stretching Goal for this week will be to do both through Friday morning. With a trip to see my family over the weekend, I'm going to let myself go dark Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. A couple more notes the upcoming week This week will be a very different kind of week for me. Laura has a performance this week and that means she has something everyday. Oddly, they creep earlier and earlier into the day until Friday when they go late again but they had rehersal last night and will tonight, tomorrow afternoon into evening, Wednesday morning, then perform Thursday and Friday night. This means I have a bunch of unaccounted for down time which is great. It's a good time to set up record keeping an so on. This week I'm also heading down to visit my parents over the weekend. Friday, after BJJ I'll clean up and hop in the car to go see them. So any productivity I might have been able to have on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday is completely shot. So, I have a weirdly open half week followed by a weirdly closed half week, loosely netting out to single, weird, week. Anyway, that's all. This took me about an hour and I needs to get to work. More updates this week. Note to self: tell the story of Nathan and diet later this week.

03/24/2023 Rec Time Row 20 Stretch and PT I was distracted and didn't even finish my 30 minute row. I wasn't feeling exhausted or anything, I was just done. Other I saw the Northern Lights I've lived up here for over a decade now and everytime the meteorologists are like "The Northern Lights may be visible tonight" it's cloudy. Last night it was clear and some people Laura follows on social media who live a little further out were saying they could see them. So, for fun, we hopped in the car and wen't looking. Sure enough, we got way out of town and found a couple spots where we could see them. That was cool. Work Weird day on the whole return to work thing. I have worked closely with a contractor for a couple years and when Laura was looking for work she (the contractor) offered to help Laura find work because they do similar stuff. As it worked out we didn't need to leverage that. I had pinged her on Slack regarding my situation and she was super excited. So we chatted yesterday at 8:30. Super short version is that she loves contracting and could see me doing it. I had tried to get into contracting about 7 years ago but decided not to because I needed an in to get started and she connected me with that kind of in, someone who basically gets her her gigs. It was a good conversation and I came out of it thinking that if I need it, it's a super valid option. More interestingly, as I jumped over to a team meeting for work I saw that I had a missed call and the name on it was my boss's boss. He has called me once, maybe twice before. I've been doing some high profile work of late so I was guessing he needed a clarification or for me to rerun some code to update data, something like that. The meeting I was hoping on is run by him and he said nothing at all about it. I dropped him a message on our internal IM saying "sorry I missed your call, let me know what I can help with". After the meeting he calls again, pretty much immediately. He explains that he just wanted to talk to me about he return to work before he heads off on vacation. I was very surprised he was going to that trouble but appreciated it and told him. He kind of dithers a bit and says, "well they didn't say you have to come in all day". Which I think is dumb. He's basically making a pitch that I should do three half days on separate days. So I explain to him that I'm planning to have a detailed conversation with my boss tomorrow (now today) on the topic but since we're talking about it, what will it take to get me classified remote. He saiid he's asked HR and heard nothing and then reiterates that I could just drive in for part of the day then go home. Fwiw, I think he's totally right about how this will work. As he said "there will be a scorecard" meaning someone will create a report based on badge swipes asking how many days a week is every badge used in the building. Three days with any use will be green, two will probably be yellow and one or less will probably be red. They'll probably roll it up over time and then eventually people will forget that they ever cared. I think his idea that I could drive in, swipe in, work a couple hours and drive home is true and in some ways does grant me the flexibility I want but it's also so incredibly stupid and those hours would come out of their pocket if I had to do that. I'd start my work day at 7, pause at 10, get in the car at1, get in the office at 2, work until 5:30, get home around 6:30, so losing 30 minutes of my time but if you run that math, they get 6 hours of my time a day. With set up, tear down, meetings, so on, that's really 2 hours of work a day and I'm sitting in my car for close to two hours and spend $60+ per week to drive, park, and screw around downtown. So I really appreciate that he was concerned. I appreciate that he asked how we get classified as remote. I also appreciate the he confirmed my suspicions that he will enforce a by-the-letter version of this stupid rule and try to game his way around it, basically eliminating option 3 from yesterday. So, I talk to my boss today. I expect things to go similarly. Which, hey, if they are going to be as clear with me as I am with them, it will eliminate any ambiguity and I don't have to play games in May, I can just start an LLC and become a consultant who only works remote. I will lose some of the freedom I have today but less than I'll lose if I have to go into the office.

03/26/2023 BJJ More hand fighting from the back - today it's all about trapping the arm From the back, fall to the attack (overhook side). Use the control hand to move their same side hand to the hip. Step over both of your arms (meaning yours and theirs on the same side) then lock your feet with that control side foot closer to the body (better lock and it matters for setting up technique three). Thighmaster and hip in to tug your arm out, leaving theirs in. Now use your control arm per previous techniques to free your attack arm. Today we were mostly coming back to the control position, pull up on their one defending arm with your control arm, punch downward with your attack arm, twist it slightly as you pull back and strangle. I won't recap that in the sub sequent techniques. Strangle Same set up but they have their control side arm too high to grab it with your underhooked arm. Pull your control arm out and go double over hook. So, for your top side (was your underhook / control arm) do basically the same thing, over wrap their hand this time, punch it down, step over trapping both peoples' arm on that side (it is really key that you do trap your own arm. Failure to do some lets them just race their arm out too ). Once it's trapped, follow the final steps above for the finish Below I will describe the defense to this process in a bit more detail but assume you have set up either of the above and they are starting to get their arm back. You now have a ticking clock to finish or you're going to have to set it all up again. Unlock your feet, your bottom leg turns so your foot is pointed up, keeping their hips close to you. Your top leg lets the foot slip behind them so your shoe laces are on their hip but knee in front of their body. Thighmaster. This is actually super uncomfortable and you can accidentally armbar them here too. They are on their way to be free but you've bought a bit more time to finish Bonus: defense once your arm is controlled The first technique I made up to befuddle my training partner Since you need to trap your own arm to make this work, once I knew we were both under his leg, I would attempt to glue my own arm to my body, with his in between. This meant that while I was still one armed, so was he. I needed to use the time to bump and scoot to get my hips freed up before he succeeded in freeing his arm. I also piggy backed on the friction of him freeing his arm to get mine out too. We demoed this for professor and he showed that if this happens, you actually need to climb a little higher on the body than you might want to. But as you climb higher you trap more of their arm and less of your own. You can climb so high as to make the strangle unavailable so this is a real balancing act but it's the answer to my first defense. The second defense is what is being dealt with in the third technique above. If you're the front person and your arm is trapped like this, you have to twist so that the shoulder of your trapped arm is moving away from their body and use this to let your hand slip behind your back, bending the elbow You're effectively moving into a kimura but both of their hands are busy and they are in a bad spot to use it so keep it moving and limp arm your self out of this bad spot. Bonus Bonus: a thing I noticed about posture I was watching professor demonstrate and kind of playing with posture a bit. He was talking about how you want your head right up against theirs and you want to hip into them to free your arm. I realized that he is sitting very tall . That's when I realized that sitting tall with good posture is key in this position. I mean, posture is huge in BJJ but when we fall to the ground in a seated position, it's easy to relax but no, you need to sit like your wicked step mother just scolded you. This sets up the hip pressure, puts your head next to theirs and your chest glued to their back. I think I made Professor very happy today. I was talking to a teammate before class and asked "Where you here on Monday"? When he responded "No, what did we learn"? Instead of the vague, handwavy answer that most people give I called him over and walked him through the three techniques in detail. I didn't realize Professor had wandered out of his office during this so when I turn around he's just watching then nods and goes back to putting on his belt. Ben, my teammate , asks a question, I look to Professor, he looks back to me and just puts out his hand to say "go ahead". I answer and he nods and then calls the class together to start. It was a very midwestern guy moment with lots of subtext but the vibe was that I had explained the previous class to his satisfaction and he was very pleased that I could and would explain it and take questions on it. I've not told him about Nerd Fitness per say but I have told him that I found I couldn't recall previous techniques and that frustrated me so I started to write them down each day and it drastically improved my retention. That's thanks to these logs. Work Man, the return to work thing is under my skin. I have a more esoteric issue with the idea of a blanket statement of "everyone works better in one place" but I have a very practical frustration with it as well. When we moved to this house. I had a conversation with my leaders before hand saying "I'm making a big life choice here with hundreds of thousands of dollars involved and I will make it differently if I think I have to come back into the office someday". One leader is no longer with the company and I know he would have supported me and just said not to worry about coming in. Also, he and I are still friends now that he's no longer with the company. The other manager is still there and I like some things about him but he's a bit spineless and I know he'll do what he's told, meaning insist that I be there. There has been significant backlash so I still hope for a walk back of the policy but yesterday, on my way to the gym I drove past an old employer that I hated working for. I had the thought of "They're close enough that even if I had to go in, it's 5 minutes away. I could do that". I had a moment of realization that I had the thought. I don't think I'd ever work for them again but I realized I was having the thought. When I told Laura about it, and prefaced it with "this is me realizing a thought I had and what it says about my frame of mind", she got pretty frustrated that I was going to leave my current employer just as she was joining. So I spent a bunch of time talker her down from that and trying to make it clear. I want to stay for a lot of reasons but I can't do three days a week in the office. So, my plan to deal with this frustration is as follows: I have time booked to talk to my manger on Friday and I plan to be 100% transparent about where I am and I intend to offer four scenarios, in order of preference: I get declared a remote worker. I don't know what this entails technically, it seems trivial to me but it's been off the table in the past The policy gets walked back. Neither of us has agency on this so it's just a "thoughts and prayers" approach He and his boss agree to look the other way as I just violate policy and don't go in but once or twice a week. This grants us agency but it will be snatched away the first time they catch any heat and then I have to do this all again I walk I have sent out vibrations through my network and already have people asking for a phone call to discuss if I want to come join them. I will entertain these calls with transparency to the above as well as the timeline I'll lay out below Timeline Between now and May 1, stay in negotiations with RBC leadership Weeks of May May 1 - take one day of PTO, go in two days May 8 - take one day of PTO, go in two days May 15 - follow policy (quiet week before my next meet) May 22 - Follow policy May 30 - begin ignoring policy, go in one or two day, start sending resumes out and/or taking serious interviews with companies that friends work for and have hooked me up with June 6 - openly break policy until I leave I realize that all of the above is probably overthought and overwrought but it's my way of processing on stuff, make a plan to deal with it. Stretch Stretch session yesterday went really well. Better than my previous two. She gave me more of a stretch than she has in the past. There was one quad stretch where the thought entered my brain of "I may have to tap". I don't know if we're just finding our pace with one another or what but it was good. That said, will I continue after my prebought sessions end, still thinking no. Retirement Once or twice a year I think about what retirement might look like and this whole return to work thing has got me there right now. Last year, when I was having this thought I had a couple meetings with my financial advisor. I was trying to get a read on when I could plan to retire and what that might look like. I was mostly just looking for a couple numbers but that wasn't how the conversation went and I think that's for the better but it's left me with some questions that I still can't answer. In terms of numbers, I have more set aside for retirement than I make in a year, that includes the recent market issues. So, I'm doing ok. I only have about 20% of what I think I probably want to retire fully. However, that really is the big question that was introduced, what do I actually want to do . I love the idea that in ten years I could more "step down" than retire. That is to say, I could back off from full time work to some kind of either part-time or contract work and that it could be in something that is less about just making money and more satisfying. I could easily do the first half, I could keep doing what I do part-time or on contracts that aren't always running from 55ish - 70ish and be fine. It would make me lots of money, it would give me even more freedom and flexibility than I currently have. However, I keep trying to entertain the idea of, what if I did something else that paid less and that's where I stumble. Over the past six months or so I have slowly and gently been wracking my brain, asking the question of what could I do in old age as "retirement job". Something that is personally meaningful, provide flexibility but also fulfillment. I have no idea. Everything I like to do, especially that I could get paid for, is physical and I don't want to sign a 60 year old body up for a universe where it needs to be able to carry stuff, move things, etc or it can't work. Ideally, the work should be something I can do if I'm tired, injured or just feeling old. I just haven't come up with that thing yet. Anyway, this is long and I'm a bit late in starting my day so I'm off

Am I doing this correctly?

Week at a Glance Monday - BJJ Tuesday - Rec Time & Marathon Roll Wednesday - BJJ, Stretch Session, my night to make dinner Thursday - Rec Time Friday - BJJ, Anniversary Dinner Out Saturday - Chores Time Sunday - Maple Syrup Festival, no Akagi this week, rec time Monday 03/20/2023 First thing, I just noticed I dated my first couple of pages as January, rather than March. BJJ Back Attack Series - Hand Fighting Our entry to the back for this series was from turtle with seatbelt. Slide your near side leg in as a hook then drive the near shoulder down, rolling them into your back control. Attack arm side down. Instead of going straight in for the strangle, place your attack arm horizontally across their chest, try to wrap your hand around their shoulder. Control arm grabs their wrist and holds it just out of range for them to grab your attack arm. Some people will just let you have this as it's not an immediate threat. If that happens, you just strangle them Assuming they defend with the same side arm If they grab towards our elbow, they have nothing, strangle them If they grab towards our wrist, use the control arm to elevate that side arm up to the shoulder and away from the body, shoot the control arm out (freeing up their same side arm) and grab their defending hand in a halfhand grip and pull it then push it to break the grip on your attack hand and reset it a little higher so they can't easily grab it or go for the strangle Assuming they grab with their arm on your control side (you either missed the grip or they did this after you did the above technique to free your hand to attack.) Wrap your control hand over their defense hand, hooking under the grip and pull it away and reset your attack grip even higher or go for the strangle The actual hand fight is basically going back and forth between these techniques until they escape or you strangle them Rolling Alex - Alex got a (very light) warning for stalling from Professor. He's figured out that when he's in back control, he can just hang on the attack arm and do nothing. However, if you assume it's a competition scenario, he's already down by at least 5 points, probably more. Yeah, it prevents the submission but only on a technicality. Other than that, not a ton happened here. I took back, tried to handfight but was still overthinking it, he started to escape so I mounted and went to work on my attacks from there but time ran out. Alex was attempting to escape via the back door and as such had fed his arm under my body. I know there is a seated triangle there if he's going to do that but couldn't workout the physics in the moment. I need to learn that. Joe - I gave joe my back to start which given his athleticism is not a great starting position. I managed to roll in and he went for an armbar that could have been a problem but he was oriented wrong on the joint so I was never in danger. I took top and we had our usual fight. I have noticed that with Joe professor has started coaching against me. I take this as a compliment. We both know that Joe is super athletic, just doesn't have my time in the sport yet. His approach is antithetical to my own, he's fast, explosive and chaotic where I'm slow and methodical. So, I sit it as him trying to build a good training partner for me. After Class Stan - We rolled for about 7 minutes and Stan finally got his kimura. I think we diagnosed why he missed three then landed one as well as why he landed so many last time. He refers to it at "attacking in transition". I would call it "not giving me time to think". The idea is that if he's moving into where he would do a kimura from, he needs to already be setting that up before we get there. If he moves then sets up, I have time to counter. This is a level I don't even really think at but will need to learn to. Annoying work thing I got a call yesterday from my manager that the company is going to do the same stupid thing every company seems to be trying and regretting, it's going to declare "you have to be in the office three days a week". I hate going into the office, I'm much less productive, it screws up my day, it costs me money to drive and park and eat, it just sucks in general. In fairness to my manager, he was giving a me a heads up because he had just been tipped off by his boss. He and I'll talk more about it. It probably means I'll have to go in sometime but we can't actually have everyone in the office, we don't have enough desk space. So lots of details to sort out and I'm not freaking out about it because I trust those immediately around me but I'm super disappointed to see a company that has done fine remote and hybrid doing this same dumb thing that I've seen so many companies try and typically have to roll back. To my mind you lose credibility with this stuff.

In my last challenge I focused on jiujitsu and keeping records of my classes and rolls. I was also supposed to be working on mobility a bit but never made any time for that. During the challenge I also went to the doctor and was diagnosed with hypertension and put on medicine for that. I also had my usual struggles with having more to do than I can make time for. All of this tees up this challenge. Analog Record Keeping - I've got a ton of notebooks around. You know, you buy a two pack of nice notebooks, use one, put the other away and forget about it. Or buy a notebook for some specific use case then realize it's not a good fit and put it in a closet. I dug one out and experimented last week with a couple different versions and settled on a daily log. Digital Record Keeping I've also been experimenting with using my phone and accessories to document things like blood pressure, HRV, and so on. I'll continue to do that. Finally, long for record keeping, journalling, will belong to NF. I used it last challenge to record my BJJ classes and rolls but also worked to get back in the habit to just use it a place for journalling a bit more and more. I'm going to continue that growth. That's it. In some ways it may not seem like a challenge in the standard list, I'm not trying to lose 5 pounds or save 20 dollars. I'm just trying to sort out where I record stuff. However, if you look into the details of what I'm recording it includes: Sleep Recovery Blood Pressure Activities Guitar Mobility activities Hygiene Dietary no-nos BJJ academics and more I think it's going to be a lot but ideally it will build a foundation to stand on for future challenges.

Totally agree. We all ned to vent sometimes, I get that , but yeah, it went into a weird place too fast 03/19/23 Final post for this challenge, a bit of a short one Akagi today. I did something I have never done, I forgot my belt. I could have probably borrowed one but I decided to to embrace the no-gi lifestyle and just left my jacket in the changing room and rolled in rash guard and trousers. It was a good day of rolling with strangers but I quickly learned something, not being someone who normally ventures to that end of the mat. Everyone down there is purple belt and above and a whole lot of black belts hang out down there. I got a single submission with an arm triangle. I rolled with two different black belts three times each and it was an easy 3-4 taps for them most of the time. It was interesting with no belts to determine rank. You'd match up with someone, roll, then after they might ask "How long have you been doing this". I was twice met with incredulity that I'm right at two years. Anyway, I'm working on my appraoch for next challenge. I'm not sure if I'll get the thread started tonight or tomorrow night but I'll post when it's set up.

I hope it pays off. I never entirely planned to start that process but kind of arrived at it organically, realizing I had heard of others doing but also realizing I wanted to know if I was getting the subs I wanted, how I was getting subbed, and, at the time, I really was holding top but not finishing as often as I wanted ( i was/am). For me, it was more successful at that than I expected but it also made me feel like I had an opportunity to tell the story of the gym that I wished I was telling. I also found that while it was a little tough at first but just the act of having to remember enough to be able to write things down has made my retention of my gym time so much higher. Glad the roll with the purple belt was so good.

03/17/23 BJJ More Butterfly attacks Guillotine - Start seated, in butterfly with apartment kneeling, Go for the collar tie but then step back for the stand up then snap down their head. Attempt to pass but they put their arm out to prevent you taking their back (which they should normally do). Underhook on the near side and drop your other arm over their neck, connect your hands in the middle.Drive in to put them back on their heels then slide your head side leg under and outside leg over. pinch their head in your armpit, do and ab crunch and side bend then lift your wrist over your shoulder. They tap or go out. as a variation, if they just sit back on their heels when you drive in, you can just standing guillotine them. The only key thing to remember is to sag to your knees so they can't double leg you. Clamp - start seated, go for the collar tie and snap down. As you go for the back their arm comes out. If you miss the underhook or the head grab, control their near arm but frame their face away. Assume the clamp then proceed with a submission of your choice: kimura, omaplata, arm bar, triangle, probably some kind of loop choke, etc Rolling Ken (blue) - I don't think I ever got a tap. It was the usual rigamaroll for me of take mount, go for the choke, eventually I think I settled for the back, then I think I ran out of time Alex (blue) - pretty much the same as Ken. We did start with me in his guard if I recall and he worked some good open guard and I was more focused on passing because it's something that has been on my mind lately, so that chewed up most of our time Manny (purple) - Manny started in turtle. He knew, and he is right, I would never strangle him from them. I do the same thing to people. However, he got lazy and didn't even try to escape, he just wanted to show off how good his turtle defense is. I knew a secret though. I have been having. A lot of luck lately with letting people "escape" back control . However, it's all a set up. It's something we covered last month. I let him escape over my choking arm. I slip my control arm all the way across his body to his opposite trap and use that to retain control. Depending on the exact situation I may keep mount or let it go. In his case, if I recall, I kept mount. But, this puts you in a loose arm triangle already. I make my adjustments and boom, tap. I think this has been my most frequent submission for the past two weeks. Stan (black) - normally I make Stand work. Today i did not. I don't know what was different but he got, I think, 4 taps on me. One was an d'arce which people almost never finish on me but I was close to going out. After that it was just one kimura after another. After Class Stan (black) - no one else hung around so we went ago. It was just kimura after kimura. It felt like I was fighting a black belt. I was. Other I got to class a bit early and one of the guys I know pretty well was there, on the phone to his wife. There were having once of those conversations where each is clearly frustrated with the other. He wants to make plans for dinner tonight but that means he needs to stop at the store to get stuff but as they talk he's getting more and more stops added on and getting frustrated by it all. It happens to us all. We head out the the mats and are just getting moving, I'm about to ask him to start drilling with me and he makes a statement to the effect of "man, women just don't understand the word 'no'." I don't think that's a perfect quote but it's close. I kind of just freeze. I don't really want to have any conversations like " Women are like" , or "White dudes always", or "This religion is like". I'm out the moment you open that way. He proceeds to tell me how his wife doesn't understand how hard he works, then tells me a story about some weekend where she took a nap while he did some home project and then when she woke up and he thought he was done for the day, she wanted to do more work with him. These all feel like normal but scalable relationship grips. However, the moment you convert it from "she and I did a thing but didn't communicate and it went poorly" to "bitches be like..." I'm like However this is when other guys, who have come in are like. "Is your wife, my wife cause they sound the same". Man, there is nowhere to hide in this moment. As the whining about wives mounts and I occasionally anemically protest with "It's not really like that for me" or "yeah, I've been there but we talk about stuff now". I see a couple guys start drilling and I'm trying to sneak over to them but because misogynist eyesight is dependent on movement this just draws their attention. They turn to face me and redouble their complaint. Now I'm a deer in the headlight, looking on with sadness as people drill and people who don't know me well enough to share some details they are now sharing, continue to trash talk their spouses. I hated it. I share it to vent a bit but also to say, "hey, if you ever say {some people group} always do.." Just don't. check yourself. Other Ken, my training partner, missed a couple of days for a family thing. He came back and asked "what did I miss". It was so nice this morning to copy my notes from this thread and text them over to him. Unplanned for benefit of this thread.

Oomph used to be in regular rotation for me. I had forgotten them in recent years. I think I need to put them back in rotation. Thanks for the reminder.

03/16/2023 BJJ Attack the back from Butterfly Guard With an opponent who is not driving in (because you'd sweep them if they were) one hand to a collar tie, other hand goes behind you to allow you to stand in base. You collar tie hand needs to be elbow down so your humerus is a frame. As you stand, snap down their head. Place your chest over their shoulder blade on your non-collar tie side, slide your collar tie across the back of their head so that the back of your hand can pressure into their shoulder mostly as a monitor but also providing some slight resistance to them raising their arm. Spin towards the hip Go all the way past their back and drop your knee (this would have been the post side knee) next to their matching knee and either grab double under hooks or double lapels and pull them to their butt/your lap. Go to the near side and slightly behind their hips, post side arm goes under their armpit and grabs their wrist, roll it down towards their hips, put your elbow down as you drive their shoulder down. this will roll them into your lap again note: I found in rolling that I could easily beat this by extending my arm away. This was not addressed today but I'll ask about it later. My best guess if you go back to the first variation or you take advantage of the fact that I've exposed my side for a very easy back take. This did not occur to my opponents/teammates Go to the near side and grab the wrist as above. They grab their own gi or otherwise resist you rolling the wrist under. Go two on one one the wrist and pull it out to set up a kimura or armbar grip. Use this to lift them a bit and attack a classic side-on kimura Rolling Josh (purple) - One tap. Well, I missed an ttempt at the final move taught today. That meant fighting up from the ground but I got mounted. He was super focused on my arm triangle (fear me!) but was losing that battle. His other arm was flailing above his head. So I took both arms. Now I had a choice to make I either abandon one for either my arm triangle or my back take or I try something I have never tried in a live roll. So I tried a seated armbar from mount with double underhooks. and tap. I will fully admit to being proud of that one. Evan (white) - Two taps. Evan always complains that I beat him up but he's started seeking me out as a rolling partner. I took an arm triangle and an armbar off of him. I don't think there was third but their might have been. I feel like there was a third but I can't pull it to mind. I came home feeling like I dominated so if there was, it went well After Class Rob V was looking at me like he wanted to roll but then wanted a break first. Totally fine. Other Rob approached me with a similar look but when I asked he said he had a question, I said I'd try to help. He's getting stuck in Turtle a lot. So we covered basic headlock defense then I taught him the sit out. I made Rob V be his training partner for a couple of reps to let him get it in his brain. Then Other Rob and I did 5 minutes of standing. He's clearly uncomfortable from his feet so I taught him to snap down and arm drag and just let him work. Finally, in the last minute I started taking him down over and over. So he got four minutes of work and once minute of seeing that it does work. 03/16/2023 HRV is in the toilet today. I have to admit that I would expect Wednesday and Thursday to be the bad days. Prior to monitoring, if there was one day per week that I was likely to feel like crap and not do anything, it haas been Thursdays. So not a surprise but keeping an eye on things. I'm undecided on going to Rec right now. I'd like to get in some cardio but HRV says no. My body does feel a little beat up but not terrible. I feel like I'm in the phase where a moderate, predictable workout is good but my device is telling me to take the day off. I have been monitoring my blood pressure for almost two weeks. A pattern is emerging but I can't explain it. It's been a five day pattern, which is weird. I can't think of anything that I do in a 5 day cycle. Anyway, monitoring continues. So far I haven't made any lifestyle changes, I just wanted to get the lay of the land. Next week I'll pick. change and track it. Or course changes are all of the things you would expect: lose weight exercise don't experience stress get more sleep don't eat salty foods Obviously the sleep plays into my overall recovery plan but it and "lose weight" are kind of crappy advice because they are so much more complicated than the simply phrases imply. I expect that to be the most frustrating part of trying to take this on.

03/15/2023 Marathon Roll Small crew tonight and the room was stuffed to gills with blue belts. Joe (blue) - I should have known better than to go with Joe first. I like him but he always wants to rip my arm off. We started with him on my back and I managed to get to half guard but he locked up an Americana and I do mean locked. I spent about three minutes keeping him from blowing out my elbow Gavin (blue) - 1 tap. I started in turtle, I reversed, got an arm triangle, he tapped. He reset with him in turtle and tussled for a couple minutes and it was time Alex (blue) - My usual with him, mount, back, mount, no submission Little Alex (Blue) - 1 tap. I think we started with him on my back. I escaped, got mount, got him in an Americana and held it, slowly applying more pressure until he tapped. In hindsight, I needed to move his arm down to set it fast, rather than lift his elbow more Professor Anderson (black) - he let me work and take a few taps off of him but he also made a point of setting me up. for an arm bar over and over and then make me work hard to get out. I got out about half the time but it's because he was giving me space. I think the balance of taps was two for me to his three or four but again, it's because he was letting me go. Professor Ranch (black) - gave up one tap. Ranch was not trying to let me work. He successfully set up a leg triangle on me which I'm notorious for escaping but I could tell as it was going on that I was screwed. My brain was alerting me that I was not escaping fast enough and it was right. We reset and I managed to fend him off for the rest of the round. He was trying to get a seated triangle but just didn't have it. Then he want for a goofy bow and arrow but time was running out and I'm way stronger than him so I rode it out. Gavin Again (blue) - I started looking for white belts for an easy roll but Gavin wanted to go again. Nothing came of it. I got mount again but didn't finish Army Dan (Blue) - Gave one, took one. We started in side control with bonus head, he managed to get to a kimura but was having no success and I was working on escaping. In my brain, I was thinking I was glad he wasn't thinking about going to the armbar that was available, then he did. I think I was too far in the mental rut of defending the kimura and didn't transition to armbar defense fast enough and had to tap. I took top and almost immediately got mount then arm triangle. He fed me over to the correct side to finish so I too my finish. Namless White Belt - One tap. I really need to learn this guys name. Maybe it's Adam or Ben or I don't know. He's a big guy and really uncoordinated. I can tell the other white belts struggle with him because he just gets on top and tries to smash. First round I put him in half guard and as he tried to pass I arm dragged him, took his back then moved to mount for the arm triangle. He told me he thought it was a crazy move that got his back. I took a couple minutes to show him how easy it was and have him do it to me. We went again and I got to mount then, to avoid repeating my arm triangle, I took his back. I couldn't quite get my hand under his neck before time expired. Paul (blue) - Three taps. I think Paul was a blue belt or almost was a blue belt when I started two years ago. He used to give me fits. Tonight I felt bad for the guy. For every rep he started in turtle top with seatbelt. I took mount and arm triangled him. Reset. I took his back from turtle and went for a crazy improve armbar. Rest. I took his back and submitted him. It was a hot knife through butter. Total, not counting Professor Anderson. I took 8 and gave 2. Take aways I don't know why but everyone bugged out afterwards so I lounged around and BSed with Professor and couple guys who were slower in getting out and I got some great take away advice At Akagi - start picking the guys I want when they're resting and ask if they want to go next round. This will help with the problem of not getting any easy rounds I need to start getting my toes under me. I have a habit of resting on the tops of my feet when kneeling. Roll me toes under to be ready to go Keep one foot up. Professor and I are talking about upping my guard passing (after August, more on that in a sec). I need to not sit on both knees but one knee down (toes under as mentioned above) and one knee up From the back, instead of shooting straight in for the strangle, take your danger arm across their chest and cup their shoulder. This is stronger position for you and a weaker position for them and it doesn't feel dangerous. If they leave the arm alone, because it's not trying to kill them, then chose your moment and take the strangle. If they attack the arm, you can use their own leverage to drive your elbow down and snap your hand up in that moment for the finish. Other Right before class I paid my money for my next two tournaments: May 20 - Submission Challenge Minneapolis August 5 - Submission Challenge Des Moines As is hinted at by the name, both are sub only. Both have a single 8 minute round and a round robin bracket. These are intended to be the capstones on my current submission focus. I plan to be through my Danaher video before the May one. I plan to use lessons learned in May for August. When that's done, assuming I've done a reasonably good job, I plan to shift my focus to guard both passing and playing. Recovery Wednesday mornings are always a bad time for recovery. I finish rolling at 7:30 or 8 and am in bed by 10, out of bed ar 5:30 so ten or so hours have passed. That said, I slept pretty well. My HRV still shows me in the yellow but I can also tell that the metric was last read at 1 am so I don't totally trust it since it was halfway through the night. Wednesdays are always a bit dodgy anyway because I have jiujitsu and either stretch or guitar later so it's a short work day for me which should theoretically be relaxing but I let myself get worried about the shortened day and try to squeeze in as much as I can. No one really seems to care but me so I need to learn to let it go but I haven't yet. Other Other My fellow Minneapoliteans are grumping about yet another snowfall coming this week. We are already in the top ten snowiest winters on record and I haven't found the numbers to check but I believe this will push us to the top five. It is not unreasonable to think that we'll get more snow before the season it out. We'd need like a foot more to take the top spot which is unlikely (possible though) but even being in a top 5 is wearing on people. Personally, I prefer this winter to "normal". The temps have been pretty mild and while shoveling can get tedious at times, I'd rather shovel 6 inches once a week and have the temps stay above 0 than never shovel and have a month or more of sub-zero temps.

You're absolutely right, the greatest privilege is choice. Don't beat yourself up for having imperfect foreknowledge of how you want to choose. As long as you keep paying attention and making little tweaks, you're doing much better than most. You're wise to see the change in demands on your time and call them out for what they are and know that the seasons will change.

03/13/2022 BJJ Back Attacks From the guard, take a cross collar grip. Use this to disguise as you cross body grip the sleeve then arm drag. Control the arm drag sleeve to keep your opponent broken down, elevate your head above theirs, use your free and to grab the lat and pull yourself into mount Roll through the top position. use your lat arm to block what was the far side leg. Use what was the dragging arm to get a strangle grip. As you come to the other side you can kick the far side leg over to set up a bow and arrow As you come up, set up the dung beetle buy sticky hooking the far leg with your bottom leg and backing into them. This tips them over and drops you into combat base. From here you have access to armbar or gift wrap. Worst case, retake the back from seated. As you come up, turn as if you're setting up the dung beetle but use your head side arm to fish out their elbow. Move the top leg so the ankle is behind and above their head. Roll to your head side shoulder, so you're facing their feet. This will either give you a belly down arm bar or will flip them over so you need to switch your head side foot to in front of the body but then you can finish the armbar. Rolling Ben (blue) - two subs including one using the armbar we just learned as number 3 above Professor (black) - took two, gave three. Evan (white) - two subs. I took it easy on him, he's older and new and still gasses out super easy so I didn't give pressure. I took a back strangle and an armbar. After Class - Joe (blue) - gave one sub. I knew it was a bad idea for a roll but it's hard to turn them down. He got my arm away from me and I was feeling beat up from yesterday so not quite 100 % and he secured a nice armbar. Other As mentioned above, I'm feeling beat up from Sunday. I kept thinking that if I could just get the right roll I could get two more taps but then a purple belt would call me out and it would be another hard roll with no taps. I also got hit with a (totally preventable) bicep slicer that still hurts. In theory, if I touch that hot stovve enough times I'll learn. Sleep haas also been terrible the last two nights. It could be feeling beat up, it could be daylight saving, it could be a lot of things. Recovery is going to be a focus of next challenge. I'm popular at work. The banks hitting the liquidity crisis made all the work I did a few weeks ago super important. I have been able to provide a list of clients who have don't business with those banks so their advisors can call them and see if they can help with giving them somewhere a little safer to keep their money. Add to that that some important job ran last week with a bad load and I've been telling people for five years that we can build tests to alert us rather than allowing silent errors. Suddenly this seems like a good idea to people. So I spent chunk of time yesterday writing a macro to test key fields. Today I'll write two more for more nuanced tests. Then the team will be able to test their inputs and bail out of jobs with bad loads and be notified to get ahead of the problem.

03/13/2022 BJJ Back Attacks From the guard, take a cross collar grip. Use this to disguise as you cross body grip the sleeve then arm drag. Control the arm drag sleeve to keep your opponent broken down, elevate your head above theirs, use your free and to grab the lat and pull yourself into mount Roll through the top position. use your lat arm to block what was the far side leg. Use what was the dragging arm to get a strangle grip. As you come to the other side you can kick the far side leg over to set up a bow and arrow As you come up, set up the dung beetle buy sticky hooking the far leg with your bottom leg and backing into them. This tips them over and drops you into combat base. From here you have access to armbar or gift wrap. Worst case, retake the back from seated. As you come up, turn as if you're setting up the dung beetle but use your head side arm to fish out their elbow. Move the top leg so the ankle is behind and above their head. Roll to your head side shoulder, so you're facing their feet. This will either give you a belly down arm bar or will flip them over so you need to switch your head side foot to in front of the body but then you can finish the armbar. Rolling Ben (blue) - two subs including one using the armbar we just learned as number 3 above Professor (black) - took two, gave three. Evan (white) - two subs. I took it easy on him, he's older and new and still gasses out super easy so I didn't give pressure. I took a back strangle and an armbar. After Class - Joe (blue) - gave one sub. I knew it was a bad idea for a roll but it's hard to turn them down. He got my arm away from me and I was feeling beat up from yesterday so not quite 100 % and he secured a nice armbar.

Wrap up: Last week represented a bit of a change in focus and a lot of improvement in my health of late. I didn't document my work hours and, instead, allowed myself to work a little less in exchange for naps. It was also a bad week for focus at work but I did get some things done. I began tracking some health/body related metrics more and I think that was a benefit. That included digging out my Apple watch to keep an eye on my sleep and HRV as well as tracking my blood pressure daily. I had expectations going in on what would impact my HRV and BP and I don't think they have born out. So, I'll keep tracking and try to learn some more. Submissions: 18 or 20 to my count. 18 is good for me. I've never tracked all week before but I don't think 18 is a normal number for me or most people. That's 18 times that people said "you got me". I'll take it but I'll also keep working on it. Arm triangles were not my drug of choice this week, back strangles were. I also saw lot of possible tools for the toolbox this week but I have to make sure I rep them or I'll lose them. Documentation: As mentioned above, a pretty significant change in focus this week but still documenting. I'm going to keep on my current trajectory for the foreseeable future. Mobility: Very poor. This is my biggest opportunity for improvement Kick Off: Monday - BJJ. Will I actually do BJJ study hall tonight. I think I will but I have missed it the last couple weeks Tuesday - Rec Time and Marathon Wednesday - BJJ and guitar Thursday - Rec Time, easy day Friday - BJJ Saturday - Chores Day Sunday - Akagi Submissions - let's go for 16 this week. I'd like to keep taking the back. I'm also working on getting a feel on when to transition from attacking the arm triangle to the back take. I don't have it quite yet. I think I'm staying with the arm triangle longer than I should at this point Documentation - Sticking with the same thing as last week, BP daily, wear the watch to sleep at a minimum to get HRV and sleep pattern. Let's say 6 x to allow for some weird exception. Mobility - time to improve here. I have my PT stuff as well as some other mobility work I should be doing but am not. Going for 5 x this week

Saturday I slept so much. Friday night I went to sleep around 10 and Saturday I woke around 7 am, which is pretty normal for me. It's 9 hours but normal on weekends. But then after groceries we were both feeling tired so I went back to bed in thee early afternoon for 90 more minutes. Then we both we dragging at 8 pm so back to bed. I think I read until 9:30 or so but back to sleep again until 8:15 ( daylight savings time so still about 9.5 hours. Then, bleeding into Sunday here, I took at nap after Akagi for about 30 minutes. So, 20.5 hours from Friday night through now. Sunday Akagi -I didn't make my 4 needed subs. I got two off of blue belts but I spent almost all of my time with purple belts and a couple brown belts. The couple of blue belts I rolled with were tough. Taling afterwards, both of them were 4 year blue belts. Not a good enough excuse, I could meet them in a tournament but what sandbagging is going on when you're a four year blue belt? Overall I had good rolls. I think I gave two taps, one to a purple and one to a brown. My professor showed up to Akagi today, it was his first time. Man, every brown belt and most black belts saw a new guy and had to test his mettle. I didn't see him give up a tap but I didn't watch every roll. I also enjoyed getting to be his warmup roll. He needed someone safe to warm him up with a flow roll. So we just traded moves and submissions to get him warm. Then a huge, competitive brown belt attempted to kill him right after and had to tap instead. So I hope I was able to contribute to making it safe for him. I eft today feeling pretty beat up. I expect tomorrow's HRV to be in the toilet but we'll see. I've taken it pretty easy since. I got a nap, had a good dinner. I've got a sore arm from a bicep slicer I know better than to let happen but did anyway. So, we'll see.

Thursday No training HRV was in the toilet so I took it easy. Unfortunately, it did not matter... Friday HRV was even lower. I don't have enough of a sense of the metric yet to say why. My hypothesis is that because I got into a coughing fit at 11:30 and got out of bed for an hour, it screwed up my sleep and thus my HRV. Honestly, other than a little bit sleep deprived, I feel really good today. So I went to BJJ Wrestling today The snap down - from neutral, with inside position, hand fighting. Wait for them to push back, grab the back of the head with the same hand as your lead leg, pull your leg out the way and put their head where your knee was. Sprawl The double - from the snap down position, you snap but they don't go down, stiff arm the head away, by swimming your hand over the back of it. Drop your level and just catch the far leg as you drive and down they go. The guillotine - complete a snap down. Snapping hand places your flexed wrist right in their throat. Other hand goes through the armppit to overwrap your own hand. Elbows tight to the body, walk around the arm you have trapped in the guillotine to land on that hip. through your outside leg over their low back, clear your hands upwards and they tap or go out. Rolling Tim (blue) - One tap. Tim is small, fast, athletic, crazy strong for his size. I had to keep hammering away with submissions but eventually caught him on his side and muscle a kimura into place. He must have been tired because he hunkered down instead of fleeing. At this point I did exactly the kimura to armbar I described in my last post. It's just so dang effective Professor (black) - took two taps, gave three, I think. Understand, I get what he gives. However, I think I caught him off guard today. He was looking for me to go for my usual mounted assault but I'm finding my back attacks finally. Twice I caught him on a one armed choke from the back. Once, is him letting me work, twice is at least one of those of me getting away with something. That said, he put on a total clinic on me on how to use the kimura submission from back. He practically called his shot and made it happen. That is mastery. His other tap that I recall was a guillotine which is something he is very good at. I don't actually recall if he got two or three but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to say three because he can take one more anytime he wants. After Class Alex (blue) - one tap. I got lucky. I had taken his back, he got back to turtle but my hooks where in but I was high. He went for sit out and lifted his head in the process, in went the arm. One armed choke number 3 on the day. Afterwards we talked and discussed having him tripod instead of sit out. It was a split second decision, he probably made the wrong one but this is why we practice. Ben (blue) - one tap. Guess what, it was a one armed choke from the back again. Ben fought me hard and I was giving him lots of Shoulder of Justice but I was not sealing the deal from mount. Everyone knows what I want there and fights like hell to prevent it. But, I used my Danaher video knowledge switch my grip, knee pillow to the back and bang! That's five taps on the day. I'll need to go back and count but I think I'm at 16 of 20 and still have Sunday ahead of me. The rest of the day will be very chill. Despite my app telling me my recovery is 31%, I feel 90+%. I have a lot to learn about this metric still. I'm planning to track it through the next challenge and then I'll make a ruling to keep or lose it. I suspect the fact that I'm still recovering from the long term cold, and I still wake up coughing at night is making it less reliable than I want. We'll see though. Random, not workout, news The big news of my professional world is Silicon Valley Bank. They are a venture capital supporting bank in, you guessed it, Silicon Valley. They are having what is known as a liquidity crisis. Basically, they have more money loaned out than they can back with their cash reserves. This is fairly big deal in finance but normally I would merely brush it off. However, as one of my team members, who really follows finance news closely, was talking about this I went, wait, I know something. I did that big project over the past month that I complained about, about tracking where our cash was going (nowhere). In the process I invented I was able to find banks that mattered in the analysis based on how much cash they moved or how frequently. I had never heard of Silicon Valley Bank but it showed up in my analysis so I wrote a flag to track it. I had no foresight to this new story, they were just a big enough deal on their own to hit my radar. So, when my teammate was done telling the news story, I grabbed the screenshare and showed everyone the last year of our history with them. Cool, we all thought it was neat that we could see how we related to the news story. But, when I got back from the gym my inbox had a dozen new emails andI had slack messages from the teammate. Big wigs wanted to know how much detail I could tell them and how long it would take. So I sent them the detail of every transaction for the past three years and explained that the hooks were in place that I can tie this to a client, branch, advisor, whatever. Nothing new since then but that little project has once again drawn a bunch of (positive) attention. I may have heard the end of it for this once or I may asked to provide names, phone numbers, and account balances, who knows.

This is dumb BJJ politics. For people who don't know, at some gyms people love wearing many and varied uniforms, others, blue, black, and white only, and others still, there is a single uniform gi. Many gyms will never tell you, you're just expected to get it from the vibe. BJJ, while I love it, has a lot of this dumb culture stuff that you're just supposed to vibe with but then people who get different vibes tend to hate on one another. You're correct, if coach has a problem, coach needs to ties his own pants up and tell you and purple belt can take a walk.

I can vouch for the runny egg on a burger. It takes the umami to 11. I always dislike the idea of peanut butter on a burger but the two times I've had it, it's been deeply satisfying.

She'd like that but I never go into the office if I can help it. I told her that I'll ride with her to the office a few times so we can get lunch and so forth but in general, I love working from home. She does not and so it is another benefit for her to get to go into an office. 03/08/2023 BP: 145/90 Recovery: 33% BJJ More back attack stuff. I really like this one, it'll fit well into what I do. From back control with seatbelt, fall to the underhook side. person in front clears the legs completely but not the arms. Person who had back control locks up a kimura on the near side arm and hip escapes until they are nearly north/south, belly down. Use the pressure on the kimura to keep the "front", now bottom, person in place and you climb up to kneeling or crouching in typical Kimura submission position. At this point I'm on auto pilot but just to lay out the rest of the details, go for a kimura in your usual way. For me that's two or three tugs on the kimura then a downwards push to try and break any grip on the lapel. If you break the grip you move the arm behind the back until they tap or their shoulder fails. Assuming you can't break the grip we move into armbar. The version I personally don't do is to rotate towards the front of their body. Step over the body with your back side leg then fall backwards to start to extend. Switch your grip to have your head side arm in elbow to elbow and reach for their pants with your leg side arm to break the grip then lean back and square up until they tap or their elbow fails. The version I do, because I don't quite have the mobility and balance for the other version, is the shin in version. Starting from a kimura you can't finish, rotate towards the front of the body and basically kick their low back with your back side shin and fall back. One piece of spice that I add is I keep the kimura locked in super tight and pulled to my chest. I have people tap to this compression lock pretty often. I don't think I can actually screw up their elbow but it hurts a lot. It's also so tight that most escape options are shut down. Assuming they don't tap and their grip still won't break, you now have an extra step to do because of doing it this way. First, lean towards the head, this will create space so your hip side leg can now clear the body and go over. Now you return to center and switch your grip and reach for the pants to break the grip. We did learn a third option. This one assumes you don't even want to go for the kneeling kimura. So from the back escape you hip escape but instead of getting up you just slide your body over theirs to have the cross body kimura. These are hard to finish and have fewer tricks but you can roll thier body upright and go for the break. Rolling - 3 taps Ben (blue) - tap. I was pretty proud of this tap. Ben is nightmare strong especially from the back, which is where we started. So I had to fully escape, take top then arm triangle him. Josh (purple) - two taps. I frustrate Josh so much We're similar size and styles but he's been doing this for something like five to seven years but is super inconsistent. So in the time that he's gone from four stripe blue to purple he's seen me go from white to blue and from easy money to the one that wins more often. This particular roll really annoyed him but I taught him what I did. First tap he had my back, I escaped, took mount and we switched between me controlling his back to mount several times. I'm getting decent at that. I noticed that when I was transitioning from back to mount he would try to roll away while I had the underhook in deep. I took the opportunity to connect my hands and lay him down for an arm triangle, twice. So I taught him the move, we'll see if it comes back to me or not Rob (white) - This guy have been a white belt as long as I have been doing BJJ. He shows up for a couple weeks then disappears for several months. Whenever he shows up he's in "super try hard mode" which can be a real problem. As soon as we started he was practically hyper ventilating. I took all my pressure off of him (I do have like 50 lbs on the guy and was giving him some pressure but not a ton). I told him to slow down and breath. I let him work. I never gave him a sub but I treated it like a flow roll or like I do for a lot of new people. I'll let you work up to the point that I think I may not be able to come back from it without a tap. Then I'll reverse the situation and make you work up to that again. After Class Alex (blue) - no tap. Alex is a squirmy one. He wanted me to start on his back, which was generous. similar to Josh I took mount and back to back and back to mount a couple times. He was doing a great job of stymieing me by holding my choking arm forward, when I'm on his back. I knew we had covered this last month but couldn't think of what to do so I'd go back to mount. Fortunately, after we were done he was game for me calling Professor over to help trouble shoot it. I wanted to make sure I got what he said written down.. From back control, the front person has gone two-on-one on the choking arm and is pulling it forward so the back person can't strangle. This doesn't solve the problem of having someone on your back trying to strangle you unconscious but if you have a fixed time limit it's an incredibly effective stalling tactic. Option one is to force the front person to clear your arm over their head. They usually want to do this anyway as the next step in escaping. However when they have cleared your arm to the near side of their head, while you can't strangle any more, the two on one grip is very weak and you can rip your arm back then fire it back under their neck to reattack from the same position. In the event that they hang on for dear life and won't clear it or if you just have good control of their lower body and the center of gravity, you can slide your underhook out (near side) and take it over the shoulder to grab their trap then transition them to your other side, dropping them into a strangle on the opposite side. You have given up having an underhook in this moment so you have less control but that strangle is a legit threat so finish it or establish and underhook with what was your previous strangle arm. This was a great class for me and I need to drill the back to kimura as well as the solution to the two on one a lot. I was supposed to go get stretched yesterday however, as I went into just warm up a bit a fire truck pulled up to the rec with its lights on. I saw and heard one of the staff jogging with a fire fighter that someone had fallen off of a bike and been unresponsive and that the staff had to shock her twice and do chest compressions. This whole thing was off in one corner so I stayed clear and just did some light rowing to warm up. As I got ready to go do my stretch session I saw the woman who does it standing with the fire fighters talking, looking red faced and sweaty. She and I converged and I said "You look like you have a lot going on. If we need to reschedule this we can. " She looked relieved and explained that she had been the person who had seen the woman go down and had been doing some of the first aid, so I assume she was sweaty from literally doing CPR. Obviously I bid her well and went about my business. Rough day for her. Today My HRV says I should chill today so I'm going to. I'll do my PT at midday and do some house chores instead of the gym. I don't feel two beat up but I'm trying to follow the HRV. In truth, I had. a couple G&Ts last night and I'm pretty sure that is why it's messed up. I kind of suspected that would be the case and was very aware of it as I had them last night. I specifically timed them for a day when I didn't have anything major the next day. But, yeah, it looks like alcohol might be a no go for my recovery, which is not a bad thing at all.