Saturday, January 31, 2009

Wrecking Machine!

So Friday at Open Mats I showed up early and got warmed up a bit, then grabbed a guy that I had last rolled with before christmas and rolled light to warm up. He's got MAYBE 6 months but is gorilla strong. I passed his guard and worked on him a bit, he regained guard, and I tried to bait the triangle to pass again, which had worked GREAT 2 months ago. Well, he's since learned how to lock it in and caught me. I fought it for about a minute but he was having none of that and cinched it in for the tap. I saw him hit 2 or 3 other people with the Triangle over the course of the evening, he's gotten pretty slick at it.
Other than that, I did not get tapped, I spent a total of maybe 2 minutes in an inferior position all night. And I finally started finishing people. STRONG people. I got 3 RNCs, an Arm Triangle (From guard no less), an Arm Bar, a Bicep Splicer, an Omoplata, and I think I got a triangle in somewhere, but can't remember.
Even the one guy I didn't finish I spent a lot of time in mount on. I certainly was positionally dominant. I mostly just glad that I'm starting to get the subs successfully.

After that I went down to meet the guys to workout and they had brought a ton of people to play with us. We had 7 other people there which was awesome. One of them was a 260lb guy who was rediculous strong that I subbed twice with a straight armbar that I've been calling the KoalaBar because you wrap your entire body around their arm and drive the blade of your forearm into their elbow and you're attacking the "wrong" side for a regular armbar. I've been working on it and hit someone with it at the last monday class, but it's still not 100% reliable for me.

Anyways, I'm awesome. I feel awesome about my Jits. I feel like I have a real chance at NAGA even though I'm moving to Intermediate.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A New year, time to update!

SO, my Jits goals for the year are to get my Blue Belt, which I hope isn't far away since I can hang with most of the other blues already, though just barely. And to place in the intermediate division at NAGA.
My weightlifting goals are to get my Deadlift up to 300. My bench press to 200, and my squats back to 400.

My guard passing has gotten way way way way better. A few things came together that really made the whole process click for me. Pinning the leg with my instep instead of my shin, keeping my upper body tight, getting the farside underhook... It all just kind of came into focus right before the end of last year and now I'm passing a lot more guards than I was before. My biggest problem remains opening the guard against the stronger guys, but that's getting better too.
My sweeps are pretty slick, the z-guard scissor sweep, the basic situp sweep, and my giftwrap sweep have been money for me still and are just getting better and better.
I've gotten better about not waiting for the EXACT PERFECT setup to try subs, which means I get reversed more often, but I'm also finishing people more. I had a couple of weeks of rampaging through people with a bicep splicer from guard before everyone caught on and started shutting it down. I'm a million times better at finishing arm bars than I was 3 months ago, the same for kimuras.
All in all my whole game is really solidifying. I just need to put in the time to keep improving. I've been hitting 2-3 times a week at HCG and my 2 hour friday gig almost every week. I just took a week and a half off because I'm switching back to polyphasic sleep (Which explains why I'm awake at 2:20am doing deadlifts on a Wednesday) and needed a few days to adjust.

I'm up to 144lbs now though, so actually gonna have to try to cut 5 lbs for NAGA.... Should be doable.

Gonna go see if I can hit a personal best on overhead press tonight too...