Monday, July 01, 2013

Focusing on one thing while training.

So, last Friday I kind of injured my shoulder.  Just a weird position, I was north-south on top of a big bluebelt, and I made a big mistake-- I reached back too far with my left arm trying to transition from the underhook to the overhook on that side.  Because I had the underhook on the right side, he was able to reach behind my back and grab my left elbow (I should have tapped right there, as it isn't going anywhere useful.)  For whatever reason, I persisted in holding position, so he transferred his grip to my left wrist and kind of pulled my arm behind my back.  Ugh.  So I took the weekend off and did some icing and ibuprofen and now I'm pretty much better.  Right knee still tweaked but what can you do?

At least I am better enough to roll comfortably at noon training today.  We had some visitors, a cool whitebelt lady and her yellow belt son, and both were very technical and fun training partners.  I have been working on a few intermingled passing systems lately-- you know I'm all up in BJJScout's business with the Lo knee slide and toreando passes, plus some corrections and tweaks to my X pass from friends-- and I'm pretty much ignoring the rest of my game right now.

Do you do that?  do you focus on one element and kind of let everything else take care of itself?  I used to be easily distracted-- come to class meaning to work on X, leave feeling like I had to work on A-Z... but now I really do try to give myself a pass on improving everything all at once and just think about X for a while.  I rolled with Ketra, our resident Bronze Place Winner at this past Worlds (woot!) and I kind of accepted that her passing was going to be better than my guard.  I tried to be at peace with that (not the pass itself, I still fought that every step of the way) so that I wouldn't end up leaving the roll feeling horribly down on myself.  But it was a nice opportunity to work on my guard and try to remember the places where I screwed up for later analysis.

I realize I'll never likely be a world champion, and I'm okay with that.  But I do want to continue enjoying this journey for many many years, and part of that will require managing my expectations and hopes.

Hope you're doing well :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I definitely do that; right now, I'm focusing on top pressure, especially from side control, as well as some x guard stuff we've been going over in class lately. It's always good, I think, to have a worklist whenever possible.

As always, thanks for writing!

Mark said...

My neck hurts, so I simply roll differently. Try different, non neck required positions.

slideyfoot said...

I try to focus on one or two things from each position, based on where I tend to end up most often. I've been training long enough now that I have at least one thing to try in what I see as the six basic positions (mount, back, side, closed/open/half guard).

My current list is knee cut from top of guard (which handily can apply to all three basic guard categories), maintain and look for americana or choke from top of mount, maintain and look for americana or lapel choke from side control top and maintain and look for RNC from the back.

From closed guard I'm looking for the hip bump/windscreen wiper sweep combo and playing with a butterfly sweep detail off Carlos Machado's DVD (not very successfully so far, which isn't helped by my crappy butterfly sweeping abilities). From open guard I'm looking for the tripod and sickle combo, then knee shield scissor sweep from half guard into back roll if that doesn't work (I could probably do with an option from a more orthodox half guard too, so that's something for me to think about. I don't find myself there much these days).

I need some more focus for escapes, as I tend to always go with the heel drag from mount and running escape from side, then get into a stalemate escaping back mount (which hopefully recent private lessons will help with on both fronts.)

Often I might find I can't get to the position for what I want to work, which is where the "have at least one thing from every other position to work" comes in. Though the problem there arises if I haven't been in a particular position for a while and forget some of the details of my chosen techniques for that position.

Hence why I love it when academies have specific themes for extended periods, like "ok, this month we're doing mount." Makes it much easier to plan what I want to work on. :)