Hips and grips.

That's the boiled-down lesson for me in what will most improve my game. More hip movement, more heavy hips, more controlling their hips, and of course grips. Grips you're not allowed to have, grips I want, grip strength.

Found this website, looks kinda big on the promotional "I want your money" side, but might have some useful stuff. Functional Hand Strength, it's called, so check it out. Same guy runs a bodyweight exercise site too. But anyway...

Yesterday I tweaked my shoulder good-- had my arm crossed in front of my body and landed on the shoulder with a friend's weight on top of me. Also have a something going on with my knuckles that connect my pinky & fourth finger to my hand. Eh, so what else is new. I have aleve in my veins ;)

I realized yesterday, during Phil's lesson on the transition from guard pass to side control, that one of my big pass fails lately is due to inadequate control of their far hip. See, once again, hips and grips. I am so happy to be where I am in training again-- not just the school, but I mean the "phase" of training. I have my blinders on, in a sense, so I'm not looking ahead at any particular tournament, I'm just like a kid trying to drink out of a garden hose turned on full blast. I'm getting soaked in technique, it's all coming at me in a solid steady flow, and I'm just trusting that if I keep my mind open I will absorb.

Last night while rolling and drilling with Anthony, I remembered seeing a guard pass on the internet that looked interesting. I tried to recreate it, but it wasn't coming to me. The Dutch Assassin blog posted a few videos of this, the Sao Paolo/Tozi/Godoi pass, aka the Chim pass or the Wilson Reis pass.

Every once in a while, I do what Leslie "BjjGrrl" does-- I channel someone else's jiu jitsu. This morning, I did something from top half guard, something genius and magicky and whatnot, that got me the pass, and it was so cool even my training partner Kirk (the purple belt who beats blackbelts in competition) commented on it. (Now, if I could just remember and reliably recreate it!) Seems it was something like going, going, going in one direction for a while, and then I popped back the other way. Whatever it was, it worked.

So whoever you are, wandering around wondering who stole your jits, it was me and you can't have it back.