The Most Loathed

14 hours ago, Kishi said:

Out of nowhere, I was ranked up in BJJ from a 2-stripe white to a 4-stripe white. This is one step below the next belt - blue - which my academy only promotes at certain points of the year, and it was heavily intimated to me that I should show up for the next time. So getting out to the mats has been a huge priority for me.

Congratulations on the promotion. I recall that there were a couple people at your gym that had gotten promoted ahead of you and you felt a bit snubbed by it. It sounds like they are recognizing that you are on par with those folks. 

 

I totally hear you on having times when you don't know what to do with a challenge.

On 7/1/2023 at 10:33 PM, sarakingdom said:

I've reset some of the spells with the new magical routines.

Kudos on the spell and magical routines. I don't think I have the creativity you do but it's the best marriage of the lore and the daily nuts and bolts I can think of. 

Tuesday

Rec

Row 30 minutes - watched the final chapter of Bernardo Faria. I don't recall the final number but I rowed something like 6.8 km

Kettlebell tabata video I have used once before. It's not the greatest but it's working to keep me active for the time

 

BJJ - Marathon Roll

It was a really small class. We had 6 people when it started and three more rolled in. I lobbied for ten minute rounds but no one liked my idea  We had 7 minute rounds. Let's see who I remember:

• Ken (blue) three taps. The first was an earned arm triangle, I took my time getting it in place using some of the feedback I got on Sunday. For our second go he was trying to be sneaky and go for a throw but that put me on top instead and I immediately kimuraed him. His kimura defense sucks, I should help him with that. My final submission was last second armbar where we both knew the end of the round was coming so I hit it harder than usual and ripped it out of his grip but still had the control to not bounce off the end of his range of motion
• Katarina (white) - This is Dan's daughter, I've never rolled with her as the strength and size difference is pretty game breaking. I basically used it as a chance to practice passing her guard over and over. I'd pass, in side control I wouldn't put any weight on her but tried to keep her in position / move to mount but with no weight she could almost always get back to guard. I'd pass again. I got to an arm triangle once but I didn't feel good about the idea of making her tap so I got it set and then let it go.
• Prof. Ranch (black) - we traded taps. I forget what I got but let's assume arm triangle. He went after it after that and with about a minute to go he got a nice armbar
• Dan (brown) - I've never tapped Dan and I still having. We're both big, older, half guard players so I play right into his game. We did have a good roll though. He let me have top but I moved to mount on him but couldn't quite crack his defenses. I went for an armbar just to make something happen and he came up to get a sweep from the attempt. He got to mount and eventually got to an arm bar and I came up to sweep him. We ended the round with me on tap and him desperately attempting to muscle and Ezekiel choke
• Charlie (white) - My goal with Charlie is to get an arm triangle. I can mount him easy enough but he has good defense and actually getting the tap is difficult. We quickly got to this dilemma. I ended up switching back to side control to kimura him. However, the next time I mounted him his defense was a little looser, maybe fatigue, maybe he was now defending more than one thing. I caught him with his arm up and set up the triangle for the tap. The actual best moment in this roll came right in the beginning. I have been trying to help him with has half guard passing and we were in half guard with me on bottom. My outside arm was trapped between us and I was waited for a gap to go for the underhook or dive for deep half (which I was playing with a lot last night). I'm still not sure what he was thinking but he took his hand inside (left in this case) hand and fed my arm right into an underhook. I just said "thank you" he swore and I swept him. Immediate, unambiguous feedback.
• Adam (white) - I will admit to picking on Adam. We're both very similar on paper but very different philosophically. He has complained that no matter how good he's doing, going against me deflates all of that for him. Honestly, I think I'm being relatively nice to him. I assume Ken is actually much rougher but submits him less. I tapped him 3 times with a 4th where I thought he was tapping but he said he was escaping (he was not). Arm triangle, arm bar, crossbow (a strangle where you hold their collar and basically push into the back of their head to push them into it). Oh, I also had a bow and arrow, so maybe 4 taps. I attempted a mounted triangle that turned into an inverted triangle, which is definitely not my thing but he's a safe person for me to experiment on. 
• Joe (blue) - Joe came in exhausted. I'm not sure what's up with his energy level, if he just goes 100% all the time and burns himself out. I think Two taps. One was an arm triangle that I was very patient on getting right, based on the feedback from Sunday. the second was a kimura to armbar. We had a minute and change left and he simply did not want to restart.

The big theme was that other than Dan (brown) and Katarina (white) I tapped everyone and only Prof Ranch (black) tapped me in return.

 

I don't know if I have said it here but for my final month leading into a meet I always simplify down and just practice my "boring jiujitsu". I'm in that phase. Professor Anderson has been in a few times and mentioned that he wants everyone to be more active in their rolls. He feels like we're all conceding positions to much, doing nothing on bottom, etc. So that's my focus during my boring jiujitsu month. Go a little harder but doing nothing new, making sure I'm always doing something to try and improve my position. I feel like I was successful last night.

 

Food Log / Weight

I had a funny moment yesterday when I realized I couldn't eat enough food for the day Tuesday's are tough because I go to the gym and burn about 500 calories but then I go roll and burn another 900 - 1000 per myFitnessPal's math. I eat breakfast before the rec, lunch right after and then we usually have popcorn after marathon roll because it's late and I don't want to eat a ton but want to eat something while my gi washes. My breakfast currently clocks in at 387 calories and my standard post training lunch is 505. Popcorn is only a couple hundred calories. So I was trying to squeeze in another meal in the afternoon but as I tried I realized that if I ate it, I would be too full for rolling as I was feeling kind of stuffed already, so Iet it go. I had some Reese's Pieces sitting around from our road trip so I ate (and logged) about fifty of those but ended the day at a 1,000 calorie deficit. 

 

I'm also happily below 240 again.

I was just looking back and I weighed in for December meet under 230. I looked back and am a little disappointed to see that I somehow let myself gain about 15 pounds in about 4 months but I'm glad to feel like it's back in my control. Calorie tracking is obviously working for me right now and I enjoy trying to make it work so I'm sticking with it. I feel like, when I get a bit below 230, I should take a month or so and give myself a small surplus, 100-200 calories a day, just to not get the body to up tight about losing weight then return to it. I don't have a target weight, I'm going to be going by feel in large part. I want to be comfortably sub 230 just so I'm not in the unlimited weightclass but right now 230 feels so attainable that I think I'll go beyond that but I don't know exactly where i'll find a comfortable point. It's been most of a decade since I was under 200 and even then it was only briefly and I didn't really like it so I don't think I'll go that far. Maybe 215 or so but we'll just see how it plays out. I'll focus on 230 for now. 

Monday

BJJ

 

warm-up

1. standing, one person reaches for the high lapel or collar tie, second person intercepts the hand and moves it across the body then shoots a single leg or wraps up around the waist 
2. standing, first person takes a same side lapel grip, second person breaks the grip across the body then shoots a single let for goes behind
3. standing, first person takes far side lapel, second person breaks the grip out then moves the hand back across the body for a single leg or goes behind

Instruction

• X-guard sweep - with them in my closed guard, they stand up and my closed guard opens so they can push down one leg. I scoop their ankle to my shoulder on the side they didn't push down. that side foot has to drop to their hip and my knee is below their leg. The pushed leg allows the knee to go behind their body with my foot making a a hook to keep the foot in front. Now move my near leg from the near hip to the far hip. Finally drop the far leg to their ankle (I found the friction of this in gi to be a challenge). Pull forward with the far leg and backward with the near leg and they fall.
• Dummy sweep/ Power Sweep 1 - this is a weird place for this but to the best of my memory it is what the second one was. 
• shallow x-guard sweep - with them in my closed guard, they stand but step back with one leg so I can't do either of the above. Over scoop the forward foot (tuck it in your armpit). Far leg has foot go in behind as a hook and near leg keep foot in front as a hook. Drop bottom foot and sweep.

 

We didn't do traditionally rolling so much as drill standing to takedown into closed guard, person in closed guard stands and bottom person executes one of the sweeps.

 

Keep the Books

I'm still really getting as lot of value from food logging so continuing to do that.

For some reason I stopped my timers after dinner, not logging some stuff but c'est la vie

 

Live Your Best Life

I didn't take any great breaks yesterday. I got to the end of my day and wanted to workout or run or something but felt rooted to my chair. I eventually gave up and made dinner which is when I realized just how hungry I was and I think I was having trouble getting going due to low blood sugar. I did some tidying and the promised thunderstorms had not rolled in so I managed to get a 40 minute walk before coming home and going to bed.

 

Sunday

BJJ - Akagi

I started off pretty well. I rolled with other blue belts initially, in the gi, and the first threeI took at least on tap off each while still being in a pretty moderate mode. I also rolled with a couple purple belts who were just magical to me when I first started at Akagi and neither of us got a submission and I felt like it was an even match. However, I ran out of gi partners so I went down to roll with the no gi folks. There were three particularly big guys that I wanted to roll with since we matches sizes better. Because it's no gi I don't know the ranks but the first guy was probably a blue belt. I threatened him more often than he threatened me but I let him set up a darce choke and he actually landed it. I can normally survive those but he locked it in so the take away there was "don't get cocky about darce/anaconda chokes with big guys, with some strength and technique they can finish them".  I then rolled with one of the other bigger guys. I assumed he was higher rank by how people interacted with him and he was more fluid than the first guy but it ended up being an even match with no submissions. Hard to say if we were actually evenly matched or if he was a black belt letting me work. I eventually but the gi back on and got a few more rolls in but wasn't finding a ton of partners. A lot of people seemed to have found partners to just drill with. 

I had a roll with a black belt I try to get a round with as often as possible. He plays half guard a lot and is largely responsible for my ability to deal with lock down. He locked me down but was succeeding it keeping me there so he taught me a third technique, the hip switch, thatI need to drill

I had a roll with a brown belt from Alliance who plays a similar game to me. He pointed out that because of how early I'm setting up my arm attack, I was failing to add pressure, instead of being heavy through my chest to their chest, I'm heavy through my arms into the mat. So something to work on. I've never had someone tell me I'm NOT heavy before, its' the other way around. So invaluable feedback if a little hard to take at first. 

 

Week Wrap Up

Well that week did not go as intended. However, it ended up being a relatively good week. 

I did a bunch of food tracking and used the tracking to inform my eating in a way that I think was positive. I did not do any time tracking because I was on vacation and I'm totally ok with that. I had three open mat sessions which were good but also informed me that I don't have enough structure in my internal training plan to do that long term. Not really a risk but good info. 

 

Week Kick Off

This week will be farm more normal. I'm going to keep tracking food but add back time tracking.

• Monday - BJJ, housekeeping in the evening. Can I squeeze in a job or kettlebell workout? Technically this should be a marathon roll monday but will people remember?
• Tuesday - I see a conflict on my work calendar for me normal workout time but plan to get to the rec at some point. Marathon roll in the evening.
• Wednesday - Day off, BJJ, Stretch, Guitar
• Thursday - Rec time
• Friday - BJJ
• Saturday - Chores in the morning, dinner out and St. Paul Saints in the evening
• Sunday - Akagi

On 7/7/2023 at 9:25 AM, sarakingdom said:

 

The former, actually. Aikidoka who's been without access to a dojo since the start of covid. I've even considered switching arts just to keep busy, but there's nothing near me apart from a couple of very uninspiring McDojos. That plus some some injury rehab means even most good martial arts-themed workouts are often off the table. But I miss the dojo. Also hitting things with things.

Ah, now I feel like I man-splained something to you. Definitely not the intent.

I'm sorry to hear that injury and access are keeping you out of the dojo and I hope you can return soon. I've never done a standing thing, other that wrestle as a kid, but no striking or the kind of dynamic thing that aikido does. I had a neighbor who was into it and we talked about going together sometime but he aldo had an injury keeping him out of the gym at the time and we just never made it happen.

 

22 hours ago, Teros said:

Also, hope the doggo is doing better.

She seems to be improving. She's still on a bland diet but she seems more comfortable. We learned that she hates rice. She normally will eat anything she is given permission to but she was actually eating around rice so we switched to potatoes as the bland carb.

I just got done boiling two pounds of ground beef for her next couple of days.

 

Friday

BJJ - Open Mat

Really small crowd. I started off working with Rob on the three points of contact drill that Professor was talking about at the end of Thursday. His job was to clear hooks and dangerous grips at about half speed and my job was to reestablish a third point of contact each time he did but I kept accidentally sweeping him because keeping those points of contact is enough to off balance the person. Then I decided to work specifically on the overtime rules for submission only. Rob didn't know the rules so I explained them. Below is a paste from when Eddie Bravo first wrote them down years ago

Quote

Each competitor gets a shot at either their opponent's back, with both leg hooks and a seat belt, OR the spider web position aka arm bar position. The competitor on offense gets the choice. In Spider web, the competitor on offense gets one deep hook, either arm, and the other hand has to be planted on the mat, palm down, it can be right next to opponent’s bum or leg. Competitors must be in a perpendicular angle, meaning the guy on defense can’t be turning away or turning into his opponent.

So we started in "spiderweb". Rob was baffled and, I think, initially scared he would hurt me. However it quickly became obvious that he sucks at finishing armbars. So we took a break to teach him about the armbar. Then I tried escaping a few more times. After this I rolled with Alex (Blue) and got the sub. I usually struggle to finish him because he's great and bumping and hip escaping but I got it this time. I rolled with Charlie (white) and never quite finished him. Initially I was deliberately giving him to time to pass my half guard since he's working on that but once I swept and mounted him I just couldn't get his arm over his shoulder. Something to work on. I spent a big chunk of time with Auto Body Rob (white) trying to help him understand the initial part of my halfguard sweep series. I also tried to have him help with my EBI overtime prep but he had the same issues the other Rob did so I tried to help him there too. I had a good roll with Hawkins (brown) but could get the tap from the arm triangle. He gave me some pointers after to help get the tap next time. He used to be a wizard to me but the last two times we've rolled, he's been a muggle. 

It didn't feel like I used my time as well as I could but I struggled to find good training partners. I ended up helping other people more which is fine but wasn't the mindset I went in with. I was hoping to take more away myself. Ah well. 

 

Upcoming Meet

I've realized that I'm four weeks out from my next meet and starting to obsess. I have an opponent and I'm doing some light facebook stalking. He looks closer to 300 lbs than 250 so I'm going to need to stay on top. Part of me wants to believe he's and "attendance" blue belt but a browse of his posting history says he is as enthusiastic as I am. So I have to assume he's got a plan and the practice executing it. He's only competed once but he had four submissions on three distinct opponents. So he's got something he likes to do but I don't know what it'll be. If we don't get another person in our bracket we'll have 4-6 matches for me to figure it out. If we do, then I'll have 2. 

 

 

I'm heading out for a jog. Tomorrow is Akagi.

1 hour ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I never understand the technical stuff about what you learned but always love reading your reports about rolling with people. What is your own belt color again?

I’m glad. I have found that recording what we learn, even if it’s gibberish to anyone but me helps so much with retention. The rolling reports are similar. It’s easy to let those just flow through my brain and not see the trends. Even recording it the next day I lose a lot of details but the rolls are completely gone from memory a week later.

 

 

I’m a mid-level blue belt. I got promoted somewhere around the end of last year, November-December. I will probably make purple around next spring, March-May. If I mis a promotion then it’ll be the end of next summer.

in general, I expect to dominate the vast majority of purple belts and pull taps off of most of them. In my gym the purple belts tap to  me rather than the other way around. In a more competitive place like Akagi the more competitive blue belts and the “attendance” purple belts kind of blend together in terms of difficulty.

 

On 7/1/2023 at 9:38 AM, sarakingdom said:

I'm having deep "frustrated martial artist" envy. I should work on scratching that itch.

I don't know your history well enough to know if your saying this as someone who has done martial arts and is not feeling the progress or if you've not done martial arts and want to try it. I read your log a bit and get the impression is that it's the latter. So I'll speak to that version.

I was in that second place a little over two years ago. People had told me for a while that I should try BJJ but I had passed for a few reasons but I don't rally know what I was saying no to. I'd advise past me me to go try it out with no commitment. I don't know anything about anything except BJJ but for us it is standard to get three lessons for free at any gym with no hard sell. If someone went to a gym that didn't offer free intros or went for the hard sell, I'd suggest walking. So, if your interested in trying something out, I'd look for that in whatever art you want, take a couple free intros and see how it feels. If they pressure you or you feel icky at all, take a walk. If you find you don't love it, no worries, now you know what you're saying no to. 

 

On 7/1/2023 at 12:06 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Well done on. Getting those taps, that's awesome. Proud of and happy for you.

Thank you. It made me feel good and I think it's lit a bit of a fire under Stan.

 

 

So vacation plans blew up...

We headed down to Omaha on Saturday. We met up with my brother-in-law and his kids and wife for dinner. The next day we went and got our 10,000 steps at the Henry Doorly Zoo. They took off and we finished the night there. I'm not vegan but went to a great vegan restaurant, Modern Love. So if you're someone like a @Shello who lives near there, I'd say go check it out. It's pricey but their fried mushrooms and nachos did me right. 

The next day we headed to Kearney and had a final quiet lunch at Hy-Vee before showing up. While we were there we got a call from the place we board the dog that they were worried about her. She had stopped eating but started vomiting. We gave permission to take her to a vet or whatever they judged. We headed to my in-laws and said high to everyone. they all buzzed off to do other things and we were left just hanging out when the kennel called again and they were taking Clementine to an emergency vet because she was vomiting blood (a little, not tons). So Laura sent out a broadcast text to her family that we had to go. So at 3:15, after being at her family's house for 2-ish hours we hopped in the car for a 9+ hour drive home and specifically to the emergency vet our dog was at. 

We drove at a reasonable pace but tried to strategically plan our stops to minimize downtime to get home as fast as we good. It was bout 8.5 hours. About an hour quicker than normal and it was nearly midnight, a time I don't see very often, when we got home. We headed over to the vet's office to see the vet before she left for the night. Clementine appeared to have pancreatitis which is basically an inflamed and angry pancreas. In most cases it's painful but resolves without significant complications. It can become chronic and then your pancreas tried to eat itself. 

That was the night of the 3rd. The 4th Laura stayed in touch with the vet and we made some minor gestures at putting away travel stuff, took naps, not much got done. We were able to pick Clem up in the afternoon which made us happy. She had been on IV fluids and pain meds for a day or so. She was clearly disoriented and out of sorts. We also learned quickly that she had no bladder control at all and seemed to just constantly leak very hydrated urine. We just went with it. It was good to have her home. 

Since then she has improved and today she seems very normal if a bit angry at the very low calorie and restrictive diet she is on for a few more days. I'd feel the same to be honest.

So we're home.

 

Tuesday (Independence Day)

I didn't do anything of note

 

Wednesday

BJJ - Open Mat

In the past the gym has closed this week but the decision was made to keep it open but not formal class. Whomever shows up, shows up but bring your own study topics. I worked on the back step stuff I like. I worked with a Chris (brown) who wanted to work on North-South chokes. A guy named Marcelo Garcia is known for using these throughout his career. They aren't seen very often from other people. I get them every great once in a while but I think they are very easy to prevent finishing on, baring in mind that Marcelo probably has them dialed in a enough I couldn't stop him. But against mortals, go ahead and try it. We worked on it for a while. Chris told me we'd have total mastery by the end of the week but we'll see.

I accepted a couple roll requests

• Ken (blue) - I got him right away with an arm triangle. He know what I'm doing and I enjoy hearing him curse as it happens. I got him later with a kimura. He did manage an Americana on me. I was in mount and trying to set up a third distinct submission and he caught me thinking and bumped me off. We swept and counter swept a couple times but he got mount and set up an Americana and earned the tap
• Chris (brown) - Chris is better than me but I think he was trying to do something different and being in his thought brain meant I tapped him three times if I recall.
• Stan (black)- This roll started bad for Stan. I immediately took top and then mount and then started setting up the arm triangle but he got a good bump and swept me. Then he proceeded to hold that position for a long time. The clock went off for our round while he was up then so I invited him to break to move away from the wall and restart from that position in a new round. He was doing an excellent job of keeping me under the impression that I was seconds away from being submitted It kept me reacting to him. I managed to build up to my knees a couple times but it wasn't enough. Afterwards we had a chat about how he kept me in place and I was able to give him some feedback, enough so that he got his phone out and recorded a little instructional to himself on what we had discussed. I'm excited to see if he can build up an attack pattern from here. 

Thursday 

BJJ - Open Matt

Most of my time was spent helping white belts. I helped the New Josh with his closed guard. I probably gave him too much info but I tried to distill it down and give him "if you remember one thing, remember this. If you can remember a second thing, remember that. But if your remember one thing, remember the first thing". 

I also worked with Auto Body Rob. He wanted to practice standing arm drags, so we just did stand up to the take down. He was so uncomfortable at first that it was just a lot of him touching and tapping but not doing any thing. I took him down a few times but would trying to encourage him and give a suggestions. We worked this for a while.

I accepted one roll, Josh (purple). It was the sound of one hand tapping. I got him twice, each under a minute, the demoralization was clear. He didn't quit so much as stopped restarting. 

Professor was there and called that last few of us in to talk about guard theory. Essentially he was talking about how we need three, useful, points of contact at all times in guard. Many of us just ball up and wait to get passed. If I'm actually trying to play an open guard, I'm guilty of this. Fortunately, I rarely do that. I mostly suck people into my half guard immediately. That said, there is a really good drill here of just keeping three points on contact. I hop to train that tomorrow. 

 

House Cleaning

Props to Laura for suggesting we go after the TV room today. Until a few months ago we called it our Room For Improvement because it was the one room we just didn't use and had boxes and junk in it. Then we moved out TV down there but still had boxes and junk but we called it the TV Room. Today we cleared the boxes and it looks so much better than it did a few hours ago. It could still still use some tidying but it feels like a room now, not just a large closet. 

 

Plan for the rest of the week

• Friday is open mat again
• Laura and I have been talking about going to the theater to catch Asteroid city so that is hopefully tomorrow (Friday)
• We'll treat Saturday like a normal Saturday, Groceries and chores. I will try to squeeze in a jog or rec trip
• Sunday - Akagi
• Back to normal patterns for next week. 

I'm getting ready to head out on vacation so this might be a short one and then I'll be going dark for a week or so. 

 

Thursday

I tracked food again even including heading out for happy hour. I'm enjoying the food tracking right now. It's weird how sometimes my brain rejects it as an activity and sometimes it embraces it

 

Rec

Row 30 minutes, watched a Bernardo Faria halfguard. I'm going to enjoy rewatching this later with more attention. He covers a lot

Kettlebell Tabata video

Stretch

 

Friday

BJJ

From closed guard, what I have previously heard called a waiter sweep but I 'm now hearing called a handstand sweep. I think it's because their is deep half sweep called the waiter sweep .I have no idea why the deep half one is called that but I understand why this one would be. Anyway...

 

Their in your closed guard and they stand to break the guard. Let your legs unlock and scoop one ankle in a "boombox" postion (on the shoulder) The other hand goes to the mat over your shoulder (like a waiter carrying a large tray above their shoulder. Extend your body to knock them down and ride the momentum up to mount.

We also worked on a rolling armbar from the above entry but they are not necessarily related.

Your opponent is in turtle and you are to one side. Same side leg goes across their waist, far side shin goes to the back of their head and you grab their arm up. Roll to your foot side hip, it will be the hip that was away from their body. Use your near side arm grab their hip and pull them close to your hips then roll them over you and slip the shin from behind their head to in front of the head and set the armbar for the finish. 

I worked with Joe through these and I think that we had a productive session and worked through some things.

 

We didn't do usual rolling, instead we did shark tank and top, bottom, out. The only roll I specifically recall was Leon (brown) because we went to war immediately . We're both bigger, and stronger than normal. I've never tapped him or even gotten close but I also think he worries that day is coming.  I started in his guard and passed we fought around and he got an underhook so I pulled back and we ended up standing. We both realized we were sucking wind and tried to reengage. We battled again, traded some sweeps but ended up standing again. At this point I realized I was really winded and he seemed to have found some recovery. I knew I was in trouble. He got on top and I held him off for a while but it was eventually a tap from me. I think it was four minutes, so not even a full round. A good fight but I'm disappointed in myself because I lost more from getting winded and not finding recovery than from technique.

 

After class I was looking for some easy rolls but all the easy folks paired up but Stan (black) came over, looking for our typical after class roll. We started seated and he didn't resist me passing enough so I quickly did so, he tried to pummel his way out of side control and we end up in half guard. He made a poor choice and I was mounted with a high underhook. He hates arm triangles but it's my thing so I tried to set it. He got his arm out but put it right back (you'd be shocked how often we all do that) so I locked it in tight. He bucked a couple times. As he came up he went "Whoa, that was much closer than I thought". He knew I was locked up and thought he had lost the position but realized he was light headed and had waited too long, ending up in danger of passing out. 

We went again. Rob (blue) hit me with a surprise kneebar earlier in the week or last week which sent me down the rabbit hole of kneebars Since then I have been hunting for a specific setup and Stan gave it to me. I was in half guard top, my knee got in front of his and his knee shield got low. I back stepped and he thought I was looking to pass but I scoped his foot up and started the knee bar. As I'm doing this I'm look right in Leon's face as he's walking out the door and I literally see his mouth drop open in surprise. Stan taps and Leon says "Did I just see that?" Stan playfully says "no, look into this flashing light". I caught everyone off guard by landing a new kneebar on a black belt. 

We went a third time as everyone left. Stan was hunting the kneebar and got in position but I never gave it up. We broke the next time the timer went off I showed him the specific kneebar setup I had used as well as one more I learned but don't think I'll use. 

This was a record for me. I've never tapped Stan twice in one roll. I know he's not at 100% when we roll but he's not trying to give me taps, he is trying to take them. I also realized that this is third training day in a row that I've had really good rolls with Stan. Three ago I tapped him with a shin in armbar, two ago I shocked him with a powerful sweep that he didn't see coming or understand until we talked after and this time I got two taps. I will confess I'm proud of this. He will have to go harder with me to keep me from tapping him. I believe he can easily do it but I'm going to make him work for it. 

 

Wrap Up 

This is my wrap up because we're heading out in a couple hours and I'm not planning to track food or time while I'm out. My goal is to eat moderately and go with the flow, both things I am bad at but also there won't be any documentation. 

Have a good week all. 

Wednesday

This is one of my Wednesday's that is so busy that I took the day off.

 

6-9:30 - Zelda and breakfast

9:30 - 11 Gym prep

11 -12 BJJ

12 -12:30 drive home, grab a sandwich

12:30 -1:30 Team Meeting

1:30 - 2:00 shower, change, drive to the rec

2 - 2:30 warm up

2:30 - 3:30 stretch session

3:30 - 4:30 drive downtown

4:30 - 5:15 guitar less

5:15 - 6:15 drive home

6:15 - 6:45 dinner prep

6:45 - 8 dinner and catch up

8 - 9 tidy up and dishes

9 - 10 read in bed

10 lights out

 

BJJ

working on triangle setups, which are not something I do generally so good learning opportunity

• start with them in closed guard, disrupt their frames and bring one leg from their waist to across their back, other foot goes to their hips. Use the hip foot to close their shoulder in. We did notice one key is to keep one hand on the back of their head or jacket to keep posture very broken
• Option one - reclose your feet, pull their arm across, hang on the head and strangle
• Option two - reclose your feet, extend your hips, and set the arm for the break

We did a bit more than that but it's a bit fuzzy as I'm trying to write it down. That's alright. 

 

Rolls

Josh (purple) - I deliberately gave him the look we had been training today, trying to let him set up the submissions we worked on. True to our predictions during the learning portion of class, they just don't work very well on me. I have wide, high shoulders and a shaved head plus I read these attempts easily so they are all just passing opportunities. I went ~75% until we fell out of that situation. I don't recall if I got a submission and we reset or we just wrestled around a bit. I think the former, anyway, I got on bottom eventually but swept Josh as time expired.

Reid (white) - Same as Josh, I started in his guard and gave him the look we were drilling then passed. I subbed him twice, one by arm triangle and I forget the second. 

Bradley (white) - Started neutral and I took half guard and swept. Arm Triangle, big surprise. We went neutral again, I went for some kind of strangle as time expired but not in time

 

In general, I could feel the toll of the week on my body. I've been pushing the pace a little bit and I found I had no reserves to push with when I wanted to. Gotta keep training that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

We did a "The Hot Ones" challenge two years ago (like the YouTube channel). My brother-in-law had ordered 10 bottles of hot sauce (that were all featured on the show) and we had them with chicken nuggets, each time picking hotter and hotter sauce.

It quickly became apparent which ones were actually *good* and which ones weren't. "Da Bomb - Beyond Insanity" for instance is crazy hot, but it tastes very chemical, and I consider it inedible. Not because it's too hot, but just because it tastes bad. A number of sauces (Tapatío, Dawson's Shawarma Hot Sauce, Dirty Dick's Hot Sauce and especially Bravado Black Garlic & Carolina Reaper) were not just spicy but also very tasty. Those are used regularly.

The others not so much. ☺️

I do remember "Burn After Eating" being by FAR the spiciest, although according to the challenge "Hellfire" was supposed to be the spiciest. But the taste wasn't particularly good, and I still consider that the main aspect.

Hot ones was a gateway drug for many of us. For me it was a combination of Hot Ones and a local distillery called Norseman. They had a "Silver Platter Pizza" on their menu. It had to be the cheapest freezer pizza you could buy, I suspect Totinos. It came with six hot sauces and a bottle of ranch dressing. I had never had someone deliver a diverse set of hot sauces to my table but it was game changing. To learn hot sauces weren't just Tabasco and Chulula was huge. Years later, for my 40th birthday we had a "Silver Platter Pizza Party". I ordered six or so cheese pizzas. I asked that each guest either bring a hot sauce or a drink to share. We had something like 20-25 people show up and we had a grand old time plus people went out and found weird hot sauces I would have never found.  I think that did almost as much to inform my hot sauce palette as anything. 

Monday

BJJ

Instruction

Attacking from closed guard. 

Draw your legs in but directing them to one side or the other.

• Kimura - They pot their hand on the mat to stop from falling on their face. Grab their wrist with the same side hand, go over their elbow with your far side arm (you have to sit up or curl up to get this), drive away with your far side leg. Grab your own near side wrist with your far side hand. Wing your far side elbow down, into your ribs to lock the shoulder, pull the humerus out of its socket (you can't actually dislocate it this way, you're just putting tension into the ligaments) then move the hand straight towards the ceiling to get the tap or tear the shoulder out
• Triangle - clear the arms like for the kimura but they posture up. Let your near side leg come out from under their arm and shoot it over the shoulder and connect your ankles on their back. With the side hand that your leg is under  their arm, control their head. Your other hand scoops their thigh up. Use the thigh scoop to turn your body to the side so you are perpendicular to them. You can not lock your legs and curl with the hamstring over their neck. This applies a really solid strangle.

I struggled with the instructions today. They weren't bad but I have it hard wired into me to grab my opponents arms and move them off to the side, it was hard to overcome that habit. If you do that you don't leave these options open. You really need your opponent posted out on both sides of you for these to work. I do hit the kimura attack pretty often so it was nice to work on that. I never do triangles because I'm stocky and since I'm heavy, so are most of my opponents. Plus, to me, a triangle is a signal to pass their guard, so it feels like the wrong choice 100% of the time to me. Lots of people are very good at triangles. It's a common submission, so this is not something that is universally true but they work so rarely on me that I actively invite people to shoot them.

 

Rolls

Shane (Blue) - Started out in his closed guard. I think he eventually went for the triangle, I passed. He did a good job of getting back to closed guard. He was working on the clamp when he accidentally kneed me in the nose and I was bleeding. Probably the best nose bleed I've ever had. I took the rest of the round to clean up. 

Leon (Brown) - Post nose bleed I was in a tough roll and Leon likes to push away on people's faces. So the moment he did that I could feel that drip coming on. Had to stop the round one minute in and go stop the bleeding again

Rest - I sat out a round to avoid bleeding on people

After Class

Rob (Blue) - Rob wanted to roll. I warned him I might bleed on him. He has been wanting to work on stand up so I went kind of easy but eventually had to take him to the ground. Then mounted. He worked out of mount, which he has gotten good at. I recall a nice pass I made where he had been defending me coming around front well but I just moved to his back instead (he was on his side). What I don't recall is why we stopped. I don't think that I tapped him. I think he may have gotten frustrated after the pass and stopped to ask what happened. 

Stan (Black) - Stan wanted a roll, I warned him I may bleed on him. I quickly passed him open guard, which he, I think, allowed. I took side control. I don't recall how he swept me but he got on top. I tried to keep active under him. I'm reading his kimura attempts much earlier so nothing was available to him. He went north-south and I knew that if I kept letting him move freely he'd get me so I untucked his jacket and looped it diagonally across his back and held the lapel in an underhook. My other arm was free to try and move his legs or transition between a couple grips. I had limited his options but was still stuck under him. The timer ran out and we agreed to keep going. Finally, probably a minute after the timer was out I caught him in a moment where he was trying to move and flipped him over to his back, sweeping him. We had a good laugh and called it. I'm a little proud of this one because after the roll he came to me and wanted to unpack what had happened as he was totally surprised by it. If I can surprise and sweep a black belt, I.m feeling good

 

Clean Eating

I tracked my eating yesterday and even used it to inform what I chose to eat. I feel really good about this. I went 100 calories over what My Fitness Pal thinks I should but I'm ok with that. I'm attempting to do it today too. 

 

BJJ Study Hall

I had a spare hour last night so I did something I haven't done in a while and sat down and took notes on my Danaher video. Really happy to have done that. 

 

 

Keep the Books:  Yes

Share the Information: Yes

Live your Best Life:  Yes

 

39 minutes ago, TimovieMan said:

I actually have several bottles open. Different hot sauces for different meals. There's one that's better for pitta, one that's better for Mexican food, and one that goes surprisingly well with tomato soup to spice that up. The "black garlic & Carolina Reaper" one is all-round best, though. I absolutely love it. And I'm on my sixth bottle in less than two years (and I'm the only one using it)... 😅

 

Not quite sure if it was the best idea to have three consecutive days with spicy meals, though. Especially since I also added Caroline Reaper flakes each time.

I mean, I love spicy food, but I don't really want to put myself on the fast track to an ulcer... 😇

We have a small stable of regulars and then continually rotate other sauces for fun. I don't generally enjoy to CRAZY hot ones as much. I gave up on a half full bottle of Burn After Eating because it just hurt to eat it. Each time was like a paper cut on my tongue. That said, Bravado has done right by me with their Aka Miso sauce in the past so I'm looking forward to this one as well. Carolina Reaper flakes are a little outside my window of happiness but my wife might enjoy them. She likes the crazy hot more than I do. 

On 6/23/2023 at 5:06 PM, TimovieMan said:

my Black Garlic & Carolina Reaper hot sauce

You've probably mentioned this elsewhere and I missed it but which sauce is this? Is it this one? I have a bottle in my cupboard that I'm looking forward to opening soon but need to clear out a couple of the open bottles I have right now.

 

We had our cabin weekend. It was a bit of a mixed bag. The cabin itself was lovely. However, I have never experienced mosquitos like that. You could cover yourself in bug spray and when you walked outside you just got mobbed. When you came inside you rushed to get through the door and close it like it's the coldest day of the year and then immediately set about finding every mosquito you could and killing it. Even getting in the car to leave, we spent the first hour or more on the road just killing bugs. 

So, not much walking in the woods happened but it was a nice down time. 

 

Last Week

• Monday - BJJ
• Tuesday - Marathon
• Wednesday - BJJ
• Thursday - Rec
• Friday - BJJ, Drive to Wisconsin Cabin
• Saturday - Cabin day
• Sunday - drive back

Keep the Books: I'm fairly happy with my record keeping last week. I didn't keep books on holiday time and that was a deliberate choice but my work week was documented. Not sure why I stopped recording at 4:30 on Thursday but I won't get to bent out of shape on that.

Share the Information: I'm happy with the amount of posting I did last week. I could do more with other documentation, but thumbs up on the week

Live your Best Life: I did pretty good. Got some vacation on. Could do more with my afternoons but that seems to be the current struggle. 

 

Important take away from last week

My professor was in the gym a little bit last week. He's still got months to years of recovery to go but he was there doing admin stuff and just being around. He approached me twice and had the same message for me both times. The first time was during Marathon when he said (this is to the best of my memory but almost certainly not a perfect quote) "I don't need to teach you anymore techniques, you just need to be more aggressive". We talked a bit and the gist was absolutely that for my level and time in training, my catalog is big enough and my execution is good enough, I just need to stop being nice to people and execute my attack plan on them.

On Friday I was have a great battle with our black belt instructor Stan. We were moving across the mat, attempting various things. He had me on bottom but I kept moving and his attacks wouldn't quite land then I swept him and attempted a few of my own. Time ran out and we were both huffing and puffing. Professor came over and gave me basically the same talk. I need to attack more and faster, I need to never stop moving in the roll. I need to turn the aggression on from the zeroth second, not wait for them to warm it up.

So these are things I need to figure out how to implement. How do I turn on the aggression against some nice person who is doing me the favor of training with me? How do I keep a cue loaded in my brain so when I start to slow down or get lazy I prod myself to action? I don't have these answers handy but they are things to work on. 

 

 

This Week

• Monday - BJJ, clean eating, stretch
• Tuesday - Rec, Marathon Roll
• Wednesday - PTO day, BJJ, Stretch, Guitar Lesson
• Thursday - Rec, Happy Hour
• Friday - PTO - BJJ, Extra Rec time?
• Saturday - Drive to Omaha
• Sunday - Museum Time

It'll be another short but full week for me and I'm happy with that. I don't have a lot to add as I'm up against the start of the week so I'll leave that there.

 

 

Thursday

Rec Time

Row 30 minutes

Stretch

 

I took it fairly easy on the row, not really pushing myself to hit sub 2:10 /500 so my final pace was something like 2:15. I watched the first video in Bernard Faria's no gi halfguard videos as I rowed. I haven't done that before and I'm not sure I'll stick with it. It, of course, means I wasn't locked in on the video, which was kind of the intention. I just wanted to get an overview. I was really surprised by the first video. 

It's a halfguard video but he started with the stand up game. It was talking about pulling half guard. The idea of pulling guard, for the uninitiated is the idea of facing a standing opponent and instead of trying to take them down you pull them into your body and fall into the guard position. It's pretty often joked about because it doesn't seem very sporting or like something you would ever do in a fight, because the person in your guard is teed up to punch you in the face. It's effective though, in jiujitsu anyway. I don't do MMA so I can't speak to its effectiveness there. I feel like in a fight against someone untrained it could still be used but it's a bet you place that if you're wrong, you'll pay for.

Regardless, Bernardo was talking about pulling halfguard from standing, then eventually from the knees (most schools don't do a lot of stand up for space and safety, whey work from the knees a lot). Then he started to move into his half guard system. It was interesting in how it varied from Danaher's. It looks similar but is different in some interesting ways. He takes a tight waist type set up but with a goal of going for a single leg takedown more than getting into the dog fight. I will have to play with it a bunch

 

Friday

Today I will head to BJJ but then we're heading out for a long weekend vacation in Wisconsin. Thus, I'm out until Monday.

Tuesday

Woke up feeling a little sore in the back so I skipped the rec. Still recovering from my back tweak on Sunday. So I did some dishes and tidying up.

I still don't know how I did this but I walked into Marathon roll 5 minutes late. I was sure I was early like usual. I guess I just got caught up in stuff I was doing and totally missed the time. Regardless, I smash.

 

Paul (blue) - I felt like I was just picking on him at a certain point. I think I submitted him like 5 times.

Adam (White) - I tapped him 3 or so times. Since he's a white belt I don't allow myself to repeat a submission so I got 

Shawn (white) - Only one tap. I was getting close on a future one

Ken (blue) - Ken knows my back is tweaked so he just worked with me on my deep half entries, which are still struggling

 

There were a couple more I don't recall the details on but I kept it pretty easy.

 

Wednesday

I decided to try and track my calories today. I'm doing some vacationing soon and won't do it then but I'be been struggling with my weight sliding up as I need to it to slide down. So, we'll see how this goes.

 

BJJ

From closed guard, pull forward on their elbows and push them off to one side, far hand on the bicep, near side on the face. This puts you in the clamp.

• Take your near side leg over their head and sit up, maintaining control on the elbow. You're not in an omaplata. Scoot your butt away and lift your body up to tear the shoulder
• From clamp, try to take your leg over but they square up, shoot your hips up to set up a triangle. Scoop the far knee and lock up your legs to strangle
• From the clamp, near hand grabs their wrist, far hand grabs their elbow. Lift their hand for a kimura

 

 

Kevin (White) - took and easy sub then let him ride out the time defending a kimura attempt

Reed(White) - Arm triangle

Josh (Purple) - He managed to get on top and we just kind of rode out the time.  The tweaked back kept me from going 100%

 

Work

I got all of my current projects to a stopping place. So I've picked up work from a former coworker who got fired. that means rooting through his folders to try and find the "done" version of his code. It's not going well. Ah well. We'll see where this goes. 

8 minutes ago, Teros said:

How's it going?

good. I had left my last update in writing mode and forgot to submit it last night.

 

Thursday

Rec Time

• Row 30 minutes
• Kettlebells - 5 rounds, 10 reps each
  • swing
  • squat
  • clean
  • overhead press
• Row Tabata - I found a 20 minute video and really liked using it.

 

• Keep the Books: Success. Using my log from the day as I write this
• Share the Information:  Fail-ish . I didn't get anything logged for four days
• Live your Best Life: middling. I took a nap because I needed one but I failed at stretching or getting outside.

 

Friday

BJJ

I don't have any notes from Friday. We were working on attacking from having guard to putting them into  The Clamp

I need to learn to do The Clamp better. It's an easy position to get to but a hard one for me to finish anything from.  

 

Dinner Out

We have a local James Beard award winning chef who hosts small parties and serves dinner. It's all for pay, we're not her friends or anything, but we do it this every once in a while and we did it on Friday. I always have mixed feelings for these outings. We had a nice dinner and talked to the couple across from us, Eric & Sara. They are both musicians, Eric sings and Sara does drums. Laura is also a singer so she and Eric know a lot of the same people. However, Sara appears to be a person who needs attention so she announced that her husband and Laura would sing to entertain everyone after dinner. Laura does not normally do impromptu performances to spontaneously and I mostly glower at people who suggest it. However Eric did sing. He was fine. I mean, light years better than me but for a "Singer" he was fun. To be fair, he was exactly at the level that he had advertised himself. When Laura sang though, I was genuinely impressed. I have heard her sing for decades but in many ways I think this was the best I've ever heard her. She's been louder and more dynamic at other times, but for being after a meal, in a live room, pulling out and Italian art song with no warning. It was the amazing. 

Fortunately no one asked me to perform. When they were asking "who else has a talent" after Eric and Laura sang, I leaned over to Laura and whispered "I'm pretty good at strangling people". She laughed and gave me a playful hit and said "you can't do that talent here".

 

Keep the Books: Middling. The time tracking was great but I missed getting my notes  from BJJ so calling this 50%

Share the Information: Going to call this a fail for the fact that I'm just now recording this and lost the BJJ notes to the sands of time.

Live your Best Life: Gonna go with 75%. Still not getting out or stretching but did get out to dinner together

 

Saturday

We had several guys in a BJJ meet today. I've done a meet with little to no support so I though tI would show up and support people. I'm glad I did. I showed up about 10:30 am or so and left a little after 2:00 pm. I videoed a few matches. I cornered/coached for even more matches. I tried to help people relax or cool down between matches and kept an eye on the time so they could relax. As a team we did ok. We have a blue belt who is a little under belted, Joe, who I often roll against. He just owned his matches, as we all thought he would. The rest of our folks were white belts, which are always more of a crap shoot. They started out strong but faded as time went on. That's the drag of the a meet sucking your energy away as well as the mental game of one loss causing another because your brain just isn't in the right place. 

Selfishly, I got to spend a ton of time with my favorite brown belt, Dan, the same guy who put a bug in my bosses, bosses ear to get be back to remote. We had good chats and he's going to help me with guillotines but wants me to teach more takedowns.

 

Keep the Books: Fail. Logging two days later but also, once I got done coaching I appear to have closed my tracker.

Share the Information: middling. Posting 48 hours later.

Live your Best Life:  you know what, yeah.

 

Sunday

So, I had done BJJ all day on Saturday, I decided I'd make sure Laura got first pick on my time today. The previous weekend we had started picking up landscaping bricks from one of her coworkers and I knew we had more to get and that was what we did. I think we hauled about 150, maybe a little more. We have somewhere between 250 and 300.

The bad news is that I twinged my back about 30 minutes in. Between all the standing Saturday and on Sunday being bent at the waist and rotated, placing a 5 pound brick at arms length, ping goes my back. It scared me but fortunately seems to not but a big deal. 

 

Keep the Books: Fail. No time kept.

Share the Information: good enough.

Live your Best Life: Yes and No, Fail in total. I should have done more stretching and movement to avoid the back issue but also, I'm glad I spent the time working with Laura

 

Week Wrap Up

Keep the Books:

It was interesting looking at these numbers. Fitness got more time than expected because I allowed prep and post time in there. 

 

Share the Information: 

Gonna call it a fail but that's pretty subjective. I dropped off the second half of the week and lost some of my BJJ stuff. 

Live your Best Life: 

mmmmmm. Gonna go fail. I totally failed at getting my extra activities in that. I should be doing now that I have WFH back. 

 

Week Kick Off

I'm posting this late on Monday, a holiday. 

The week is pretty basic with two exceptions, Today is Juneteenth, a bank holiday in the US and I have Friday off as PTO for a long weekend out of town. Laura actually bought this weekend for us, explaining that I have done this a few times and now that she has a better paying job she wants to do that now. TBH, I don't recall this but I really appreciate it.

 

Monday

BJJ

More of the clamp

Start with your partner in the guard but your partner is hunkering down, keeping their elbows and hands low. Grab and elbow and pull up to make space. Open your guard, use your off hand to push them laterally. Xavier and I found that we preferred pushing on the head, but they were teaching to push on the bicep. I get why but I like the head better. 

 

Armbar

Near hand slides to the elbow. You can wrap the near arm under to set up a platform armbar and hip into it. I suspect this will not break break the arm but most people will take to it. 

Armbar II

This will break the arm, quickly. Roll your high leg over their shoulder to a belly down armbar, shin against their neck. If you do this with the arm already locked in your armpit you will snap someone's arm. If you let up you can move it to your chest and go for a more traditional armbar, allowing for a tap. 

If they roll through

In the latter case, the torque on their shoulder may encourage them to do a summersault (I don't think I've ever had to write that word before but spell check says it's a real word). That's totally fine, just make sure you get your shin side leg over their head. Again, be wary of breaking the arm if you still have the arm in your armpit. 

Kimura

Get The Clamp. Top arm grabs the wrist, bottom arm goes over the tricep and locks up on your own wrist. Move their hand to the center of their back and rip the shoulder out .

If they roll through

Press the kimura grip to their sternum to keep them flat. Move the north south. Put your near shoulder into their shoulder. You can break the arm in a variety of ways here. I like to extend it away and then I can break across the elbow. 

 

Rolls 

bear in mind, my back is tweaked. So I dodged the hard rolls and more flow rolled with people I knew I could beat. 

Xavier (blue) -  I took the position we had been training so he could attack the clamp. I ended up passing to half guard. We fought around a bit and he ended up north-south. We went through kimura attempts be he landed a nice armbar attempt at time. 

Reed (white) - Again, I started in his guard, hunkered down. 

Reed 2 (white)

Rob (blue)

 

Keep the Books: fail. I didn't start a time and, screw it, I'll start that tomorrow.

Share the Information: Pass

Live your Best Life: 100% neutral

 

Wednesday

Man, what a day

 

Keep the Books: Success. I got most of the day documented (see spoiler below)

Share the Information: Success. Doin' it now Boss.

Live your Best Life: Success. Days like this are part of what inspired this part of this goal. I'll unpack below

 

 

So, Wednesdays have traditionally been pretty full days for me. I have work, BJJ, guitar every other week, and often I schedule other life events on the off weeks. I have often felt bad that I wasn't giving my all to work on Wednesdays because I had too much life stuff scheduled. So, for a limited run of 4 Wednesdays, every other week, I have just taken the day off and moved all the things to that Wednesday. So here is how my day went yesterday:

0530 wake up, make coffee, play some Zelda, log into work long enough to kick of some scripts I haven't fully automated yet, make and eat breakfast

0900 do some light tidying up, putting away laundry, etc

1000 shower and get ready for BJJ

1030 drive to the gym, clean the mats, warm up

1100 BJJ class

1200 Roll once, head out home, grabbing a sandwich on the way because I'm booked at this point

1230 Sign in to take one meeting at work (it's a team meeting every other week and know I was going to miss 4 consecutively I decided to make an effort to attend despite PTO)

1300 Meeting wrapped early, took a shower, washed my gi, etc

1400 drive to the rec and get warm again

1430 stretch session

1530 stretch session over, change and hop in the car to drive downtown

1630 guitar lesson

1715 guitar over, drive back home

1800 arrive home and put away my stuff from running around all day

1830 have dinner

1930 power goes out so I can't stick to my plan to shave and shower (I need lights to shave)

2100 head to bed just before the power comes back on

 

BJJ Notes

Still working on this "side guard" series. It was interesting

From closed guard, their hands on your hips swim arms in but asymmetrically block one side (right for me) out and away while taking the underhook with the other (left for me). Wrap your underhook arm around their head to hug it to your chest. Attempt the flower sweep from last class but they post with their hand that is over your shoulder. Use the space the swim your hands in to a shoulder crunch:

• Traditional Shoulder Crunch Sweep - We didn't cover this but is seems important to put it in context. Traditionally from this position you have their arm trapped on top of your shoulder, both of your hand are pulling down into their shoulder joint, locking their arm in place. If they try to drive into you then you can elevate their far leg with your far leg and sweep them over. 
• Non-Traditional Shoulder Crunch Sweep - Let's say you try the above but they aren't pushing into you, nothing happens. You have to do a hip switch to get your far leg out from under their legs and your near leg in between their legs. You have to sacrifice your grip (near side) to grab the back of their head and tuck it then Granby roll to sweep them over. You need to move quickly to mount to finish this
• Knee Lever Sweep - In this case your opponent goes forward rather than across or away, this lays you out flat but you can shift to half guard. Move both feet to the nearside, outside of their legs. This means one leg is cross over their outside leg and one is now. Shift your hips under them. Hold their leg tight with your legs. Now tilt your body to the exposed side, the outside, and tip them over into a sweep. 
• I don't recall the third technique

Rolling

• Ken - I forget the details but we had a good roll around, it felt short
• Bradley (white) - He put up a good fight. I could see that he's learned a lot but I submitted him once and very nearly got a second go.
• Xavier (blue) - I have like 50-60 lbs on xavier and he's not  super strong for his size but I use him as a good opportunity to work on my flow rolling. We had fun

Post Class - in a time crunch

• Rob (Blue) - I started out pretty playful and not giving him my full weight. I heard someone call out "10 seconds. Go1" so I attacked the arm triangle hard and got him to tap with literally 1 second left. 

Guitar Notes

• Hotel California - Chords on this one came easy and the pace is slow enough. We did one run through with just a drum track then one with YouTube playing the song
• Should I Stay or Should I Go - went back to this one as an easy rhythm filler as I had a three week break between lessons (semester change for the school). Played along with the track so we parked this one as well
• Behind Blue Eyes - still working on the picking portion. I'm getting parts of it memorized but I get flustered easy at a bad chord change. The Aadd9 still really messes me up, so he wants me to drill that specific transition
• Seven Nation Army - New one for me. Such an iconic sound and easy to pick out in the mix. We worked a bit on the line everyone knows

 

 

If you could just age a little faster you might catch up to me. 

23 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following along.

19 hours ago, Teros said:

How long have you been playing guitar?

5 years but I'm still terrible. I wouldn't say there is anything I can play that you would immediately say "oh, that's {song name}". I attribute this to two things 1) I never did anything musical until I was almost 40 and thus have no instincts and have to learn it all academically 2) I don't practice enough, a couple hours a week is normal.

 

14 hours ago, Shello said:

Following along.  Glad to hear you got the exception to work from home.  

 

As for your book recommendations, I have none but there is a great reading thread in the PVP section.  They are always good for recommendations.  

Me too! Them too I think.

I will go look for these book nerds you speak of

 

 

Monday:

Keep the books: nowhere near as much as 75%. I kept track of ~5.5 hours of my day. Admittedly, I can go back and flesh out about 2 more hours but that gets me to 50%.

Share the information: Success. I set up this thread

Live your best life: mixed. I did not get all of my scheduled breaks in and when I should have taking a little more time for guitar I opted for 30 minutes of Zelda. I made other so-so choices. Just a mixed bag all the way around≥

 

BJJ

We're working on a different closed guard setup than I'm used:

From closed guard, both of their hands bracing on your hips. Choose one arm to push wide as you draw them in with your legs. With their posture broken I want to go straight to a shoulder crunch but you basically hug their head into your chest from the side, trapping that near arm against you. Unlock your guard and running man your legs to get your hips around, turn your face and chest down to put their arm on the ground. 

1. wheelbarrow walk until you are perpendicular to to them, block their far leg with your bottom shoe laces and wheelbarrow back into them for Dung Beetle sweep
2. Assuming they start to drive back into you, drop your near side foot to block their knee, kick them diagonally across your body with your far side leg for a Flower sweep

Rolling

• Ken (Blue) - normal training partner. We traded submissions. I was impressed by him pulling off a chain wrestling series that borrowed heavily from my playbook and I'm never seen him train. He was in half guard bottom, he went for the underhook and got it (not sure how or why I let that happen)Isat back, he went to deep half, rolled through, came out the back and managed to take top, We fought back and forth and I think he did everntually get an Americana out of that
• Bea (Blue) - our size difference is laughable so I just tried to keep going slowly and lightly. She attempted to strangle me with my lapel but doesn't quite have the physics down and just exhausted herself
• Reed (white) - I gave him top-side just for fun and practice. I got to half then to mount. I think my first submission was an arm triangle. We did it again. I don't recall if I finished him off a second time
• I feel like there was one more but can't say who or what

After Class

Stan (Black) - we rolled three times if you count each submission as it's own roll. The first one was short. I think he finished with and arm bar. The second was my win, which I don't get often on him, maybe two or three ever. We let the round go long so the submission came around the 8  minute mark. I had escaped him and taken side control. I was trying to pry his far arm up and he was trying to get his arms between us. I switched my base and grabbed a kimura and he didn't respect the danger enough. I got his arm extended and rolled under (elbow pointing to the sky) and made the choice to slow down for fear of his range of motion and he tapped. He told me after that he was ok on range of motion but because I had completely isolated his arm, he couldn't imagine getting out of that. We went one more long round and he eventually got a clever armbar on me. He had chased his kimura for a why and I was spoiling the efforts. We tried to recreate it afterwards and even then we couldn't recreate exactly what had just happened. 

I'm curious if anyone reading this can make some fun book recommendations. My last couple picks have mostly been duds:

• Babel - currently reading and it's just kind of boring so far. 
• Terraformers - read but it was a slog after the first 1/4
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within - I liked the first Becky Chambers book and even generally enjoyed the second but as the series continues I don't feel like she has a story she really wants to tell as much

Some stories I have enjoyed

• Ink and Sigil (I also liked the ten books in the Iron Druid series)
• Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastard)

Beloved Series I don't care for:

• Silo/Dust
• The Three-Body Problem
• Powder Mage
• Game of Thrones

 

If that sparks a suggestion of a genre book in someone, let me know. 

Upcoming Weeks

1. 6/12 -6/18
   1. Monday - BJJ, BJJ Study Night
   2. Tuesday - Marathon Roll
   3. Wednesday - PTO, BJJ, Stretch Session 7, Guitar
   4. Thursday - Rec & Recovery
   5. Friday - BJJ, Lunch Out, Supper Out
   6. Saturday - Assistant coach at BJJ tourney
   7. Sunday - Chores Day
2. 6/19 - 6/25
   1. Monday - Juneteenth (work holiday), BJJ
   2. Tuesday - Marathon Roll
   3. Wednesday - BJJ
   4. Thursday - Rest & Rec, BJJ Study Hall
   5. Friday - BJJ, Cabin Weekend Begins
   6. Saturday - Cabin Weekend
   7. Sunday - Cabin Weekend
3. 6/26 - 7/2
   1. Monday - BJJ
   2. Tuesday - Marathon Roll
   3. Wednesday - PTO , BJJ, Stretch Session 8, Guitar
   4. Thursday - Rest & Rec, HH
   5. Friday - BJJ, Nebraska Trip Prep
   6. Saturday - Nebraska Trip, Drive Day
   7. Sunday - Nebraska Trip, Zoo Day
4. 7/3 - 7/9
   1. Monday - Nebraska Trip, Museum Day
   2. Tuesday - Nebraska Trip, Drive Day
   3. Wednesday - Nebraska Trip, Lake Day
   4. Thursday - Nebraska Trip, Lake Day
   5. Friday - Nebraska Trip, Family Day
   6. Saturday - Nebraska Trip, Family Day
   7. Sunday - Nebraska Trip, Drive Day
5. 7/10 - 7/16
   1. Monday - BJJ
   2. Tuesday - Marathon Roll 
   3. Wednesday - PTO, BJJ, Stretch Session 9, Guitar
   4. Thursday - Rest & Rec
   5. Friday - BJJ
   6. Saturday - Chores, St Paul Saints
   7. Sunday - Akagi
6. 7/17 - 7/23
   1. Monday - BJJ
   2. Tuesday - Marathon Roll, 44th Birthday
   3. Wednesday - BJJ, Power Lunch
   4. Thursday - Rest & Rec
   5. Friday - BJJ, Date Night In
   6. Saturday - Chores
   7. Sunday - Akagi

Coming out of my last challenge I was a little uncertain what to do. It came through in my posting (and not). Towards then end though, I found the footing I wished for. My last several, and more useful threads have revolved around book keeping so this one will. For me, this provides and internal accountability that I need and helps to focus me on what I'm doing in any moment. 

 

Keep the Books

 

This will involve recording what I do. I'm going to fall back on Toggl, my current tool of choice. I'll use this to keep track of how I spend my work days but also a really rough cut of how I spend my free time. 

The challenge here is to use it as much as is useful. So I will be tinkering a bit with it but if I, for example, lounge in bed in the evening, watching  video for 20 minutes then reading for forty minutes, I won't keep those details. I'll just record pre-bedtime. 

 

Goal: account for ~75% of my waking hours

 

Share the Information

 

This is where I'm most likely to fall off the wagon. I get busy and NF falls by the wayside, however, it is an important part of the accountability for me to put it into writing.

 

Goal: Post at least every two days

NOTE: some leeways is allowed for upcoming vacation time

 

Live Your Best Life

 

Two things:

1. I had some very minor drama of late where my work ways trying to make me go back to the office. I got an exception but it gave me more appreciation for being at home. It is my goal to maximize the fact that I am at home.
2. I have a bunch of vacation coming up. I'm going to enjoy it. 

 

Goals:

1. During work days, take 3 "constructive breaks" per day
   1. walk break
   2. guitar break
   3. stretch break
2. Non-work days (may be weekends, may be vacation)
   1. Be active for an hour
   2. Read something fun for an hour

 

I'll has out some supporting documents to these goals later but that's my basic setup