I Confront My Fear of Heights

So I have trained three days in a row, and plan on training tonight. Last night we worked on two positions I recognized from Marcelo Garcia's playbook. I've been meaning to add them both to my game, and have had a lot of success with the first one already so it was a great review.

The first technique was a single from the sitting up guard that Marcelo plays a lot. The second was a double leg from the same position. I didn't love the double that much, but felt more comfortable with it by the end of the night.

Training was fine; I trained with Katie, Lex, Owen, and Ray. Ray finally brought out the elbow on bell technique that I've heard so much about. I'd like to learn that. I'm really focusing on the butterfly guard, and trying to force myself to get to the regular hook sweep. It's hard enough just to get to the position I need to start it. I really need practice with it.

Since Monday night is so short I've been staying for Judo although I don't get home until 10:30. We didn't do any specific stand up technique but we did a cool drill where you went for a sweep every time you stepped. Since I know about two and a half judo techniques I just basically kicked the poor guy in the leg whenever I got a chance. Then we drilled whatever technique we wanted and the guy I was working with threw me so high with an ippon seonagi that my feet hit the metal pipe on the ceiling. It was fun though.

Randori was also good. I tried not to play too much like a BJJ guy, bent over and stiff, and I tried not to be totally defensive but I know so few throws and I'm not comfortable with any of them so it was tough. I got thrown a bunch of times which is fine. My gas was not terrible actually.

Newaza was good, Ray taught a couple of basic BJJ techniques. Newaza randori was also fun. Again, I tried not to play a BJJ game, going for a pass and a pin rather than hunting for submissions out of a transition, and trying to be mindful of a ref that would stand us up if nothing was happening. Attacking the turtle is really tough when guys just tuck the chin. It's hard to get past that I obviously I don't want to just do a chin crush. I did fight a BJJ blue belt from another school. It was his first Judo class, so we definitely had more of a BJJ fight. But I enjoyed it.

Afterwards I felt pretty good, although my back is a little sore today it should loosen up. I will not be able to train tomorrow due to an eye doctor's appointment, but I'm going to try to get to the Barn on Thursday and see what's going on there.