I have recently moved to Vancouver and I think I am finally in a position to be able to get back to training. It has been four months since I have been on the mat. It feels like even longer. My ankle was hurt badly in a toe hold in November not allowing me to train. I limped my way through my belt exam in December (during which I had my eyebrow split open), but couldn’t get in more then a three or four classes in early January. The result? One word; rust. I went to my first Gi class at Universal on Granville tonight and I must say, while it was good to be training again, I felt very rusty. I felt like I was fighting entirely on feeling. I wasn’t seeing anything, I might as well have had my eyes closed. I fought against things I shouldn’t have, I fought for things I was never going to get, but most of all, I just wasn’t thinking. All in all I am sure it will come back to me pretty quickly, I haven’t been out for that long. I just need to get comfortable again. I think I am going to pull out my old white belt sequence tomorrow and go through everything to get it back in the front of my mind. I will mime what I can on my own, but I think that even just visualizing will be of great benefit. On the one hand it would have been nice to have a triumphant return to training, it probably serves me better to be humbled a little. My face at the moment looks terrible. I have a lot of abrasions and general redness. My face has always marked up easily in Gi classes and it never lasts very long, but right now I look pretty bad. If it clears up overnight as it often does I may go back tomorrow night. If it looks like it is going to linger I will have to wait, I can’t go into work on Sunday looking like I do right now. My skin will just need to get used to it again I suppose. In terms of scheduling Universal looks like the gym for me. I work Sunday through Wednesday and need to find a gym that offers me the most for my money on the days I can train. Universal seems to the place.
When all is said and done, it is good to be back and I am looking forward to feeling good again.
The tournament is over. I went 1 -1 for the day. Over all it was a lot of fun, but very frustrating at the same time. I arrived about an hour early and sat around with the other BTT fighters. I stretched a bit, but didn’t really warm up thinking that It was still early and I didn’t want to cool off again before my fight. Eventually Fabio called everyone together to announce how things would begin. He said that the White belts would go first, then the Blue belts, etc. They would be starting with the lowest weight class then moving up. First would be 147 lbs and then my 160 lbs division would be next. ‘OK’ I thought. ‘Time to warm up, I could have to fight in about 15 minutes.’ Unfortunately I was wrong. Fabio called my name immediately after and said I would be fighting first. Apparently another ref had showed up so they were going to run the 147 and 160 lbs divisions simultaneously. I had drawn the first fight of the day and was going in completely cold.
My opponent and I locked up pretty fast and he fell back into butterfly, then quickly switched to a closed guard. After a little testing on my part, he opened his guard and tried to move back to four points and attempt a take down. I secured his head when he tried and I got a good grip by cupping his chin with my hand. After a brief stink in half guard he went back to four point and I put on an Anaconda choke. I thought it was pretty deep, and I rolled him once and tried to walk my body in to finish it but he survived. After another scramble I mounted him and sunk in a Guillotine. He swept me but I maintained the grip and got back to my feet and torqued it a lot. I’m amazed he didn’t tap. Very tough guy. After the guillotine failed I attempted an X -Choke but he proved again to be un-chokable. The last few moments of the match my arms felt like rubber I had come in cold and was paying for it in my grips. He got some points on me but managed to play defense and hold onto a narrow one point lead. I tossed up a last minute triangle but time expired. The final score was 6 -5.
My second fight was against a fighter that I had not seen yet, so I think he had a first round bye. Right off the bat he scored a brilliant take down. He got a hold of my left leg and used his foot to sweep out my right leg and I went to the mat hard. He took north south on me and held it. And held it. And held it for three and half minutes! I tried everything I could think of to escape; inside, outside, over the top. Nothing worked and we stayed in the same position for nearly the whole match. Eventually he did try to move in to attack and arm and I was able to get out of north south and make some progress. I managed to pass to side control but we went out of bounds and the ref called for a restart in the center. I looked at the clock and had less then 30 seconds to act so I went right for him and slapped on a triangle. I couldn’t clear his arm so I tried to Kimura it instead. That failed so I went back to the triangle, just got it locked in and pulled his head down and the time sounded. Saved by the bell. I lost on points. I felt so frustrated to have spent so much time trapped in north south when all I needed at the end was a few seconds for the triangle to work.
1 -1 isn’t bad though and I shouldn’t complain. I’m 4 -2 overall in competition now so I should still be happy. I learned some thing I need to work on, North South escape is first on the list, but I also need to watch how far I leave my leg out during the stand up, and I guess I should work on my finishing my chokes as well.
Click here, or in the media section for the videos of my fights if you are interested.
Back to class on Monday.
Weigh ins for the tournament are tomorrow. I am going ahead with it. My shoulder feels 90% now, good enough that I have been rolling fully for several classes without anything worse then some tightness the next day. All in all, I think I should be fine. Actually, if I can be honest, I am allowing myself to have high hopes for this one. I feel good, I feel like I have been making good decisions in my rolls, demonstrating good vision, and capitalizing on openings. Everything would seem to be in my favor this time around and I fully intend to make the most of it. I have what I feel like is a healthy level of nerves, but I am not jittery at all. Compared to the last one, it is like night and day. In a word, I feel confident. (Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t backfire.)
The weight is perfect for me, assuming I haven’t gained any weight today. If I go weigh in first thing on Friday, without eating breakfast or having anything to drink I will be under the 160 lbs limit for sure. I dehydrate a lot over night and as long as I step on the scale before re-hydrating from sleep, I am sure I will be fine. After that I will have all day Friday to carb load and try to mentally prepare. That reminds me, time to make another Pre-Fight playlist.
My shoulder injury is day by day right now. Some days are great, others not so good. I have come to accept that, while the injury is probably nothing serious in the grand scheme of things, it is going to take some work to get it back to 100%. As a result, I have come to the rather painful conclusion that I will very likely have to miss the tournament at the beginning of October. Although I suspect I will be up for it by then, as of right now I can’t roll without aggravating the injury. I can work soft technique, but hard rolls are to much for it right now. I don’t fee like I will be able to perform at the level I would want to in the tournament. What’s more, if I am committed to doing it, I will be more likely to rush my rehab and re-injure the shoulder.
The upside of this is that I can still focus on working for my blue belt, and, I can work a No-Gi class back into my schedule again. If I am not going to do the tournament I don’t have to work Gi as hard. I like No-Gi classes and it will be interesting to see how Cote’s training is coming along for the big title shot next month.
For now I am working on shoulder rehab. I found an interesting protocol on YouTube that I am using. It uses a lot of the standard stuff, rubber band rotator cuff rotations, etc., but it also has some other stuff I have not seen. Whats more, I like the workload and frequency. This is the video below, and I will post a link to the page I found it on in the sidebar. Thanks to Diesel Crew for providing it.
After two weeks of at home, not doing so much as a single push up, I had my first class back the day before yesterday. My shoulder still felt sore, but not anywhere near the level it was before my time off. I took the class pretty easy but still ended up with significantly more pain the following day. I am going a little nuts not being able to train as hard as I would like. Furthermore, I have not been able to get a strength training workout in at the regular gym in three weeks. I feel like I am stagnating because of this injury. As I said before I had hoped it was just some bursitis but it has been a problem now for long enough that I doubt that is the case. It is more likely a sprain of the Acromioclavicular joint. Hopefully it is just a type one sprain with no actual tearing of the ligaments, but it could be a type two. It is hard to say. Whatever it is, I just want it to heal so I can get back to work. My plan was to come back from this break and train all out for the tournament at the beginning of October. So much for that. I have high hopes though. I went and picked up a fresh supply of Bromelain today. As detailed in my joint care supplements post, Bromelain acts as an anti-inflammatory and helps to speed healing. Considering how long it has been since the worst of the pain I should be ready to turn a corner on it any day. As of now my range of motion is pretty close to normal but I feel some weakness and when ever I push it I feel like I take a few steps backwards. I probably just need to be patient with it for a few more days, but you would be amazed how difficult that can be. A few days can feel like forever.
Last week I cam home from class and developed some discomfort in my shoulder. It was strange because I know I didn’t get caught in anything that would have stressed it, in fact, I don’t recall anyone even attacking that arm. It was one of those rare classes in which I performed pretty dominantly in my rolls.
The pain was not too bad, and the weekend was coming up anyway, so I iced it and rested it for three days. I went in to a Gi class on Monday and although I had some soreness it was nothing I couldn’t deal with. I had a pretty good class in fact, winning all of my rolls except one in which I decided to try to work only on my weak-side Halfguard. The pain in the shoulder was worse that night but I iced it again and it felt good enough yesterday that I decided to push it and try to get one more class in before I go home for a little vacation today. This was probably not the brightest idea but I knew I was one day away from taking almost two weeks off so I figured that any damage I did would have plenty of time to heal.
The class was No-Gi, which means it was a healthy mix of more and less experienced guys. I ended up in some really tough rolls and essentially got killed all day (although I did manage to finish an Omoplata for the first time in No-gi, its so much harder when people are slippery). One roll was with a guy named Greg utterly dwarfs me in strength. He tapped me four times in five minutes, all of them were attacks on my shoulder and none of them were gentle. By the time I got home last night my shoulder was just a mess. It doesn’t hurt all the time, only when I raise my arm forward, and it gets dramatically worse as I move my arm across my body. After some research I am hoping it is just a really bad bit of Bursitis. There is only so much room between your collar bone and your shoulder blade, and there is a lot of moving parts in there. When they become inflamed and swell, they can get pinched between the two bones. They call this impingement. I have a more common case of it in my right shoulder. In that one it built slowly and I have gotten it under control with a combination of Glucosamine and Chondroitin ( See my Joint Care Supplements entry for more info) and by paying more attention to form in my strength training work outs. This latest episode in my left shoulder was very different. It came on very quick by comparison and is much more intense.
As I said, I am hoping it is just a temporary flare up and that R.I.C.E. will do the trick, but there is a chance it could be more severe. For now the plan is to go home to windsor tonight, take ten days to two weeks off and maybe as a last resort see if I can wrangle a Cortisone injection if it is not improving, but again that is a last resort.
Training has been going well lately. I have been pretty dedicated to learning the sequences and feel like I have turned a bit of a corner on them. The last time I was in the gym I did a very detailed run through with a purple belt and he showed me a lot of things I had been missing. I feel like they are really starting to sink in. I have been running through them on my own at home, kind of miming them, to try to keep them fresh in my head and I think it is helping.
My sparring has been going really well too. Lately I have been employing a new strategy where I try to pull spider guard right off the bat. It seems like most people are not concerned about it at first, at least they don’t try to defend it very hard. I love it, there is a very easy triangle available from spider guard that I have been pulling on lots of people only a few seconds into the match. When you have both their sleeves in spider guard and you fire the leg over their shoulder you can apply a ton of force and the result of that push/pull is that the triangle ends up very deep and the arm is already cleared. Anyway, people in the class are starting to catch on and I doubt many people will be content to give me the grips for long. I may switch to working a spider guard sweep to start if people over defend the triangle.
I find the key to getting spider guard is to kind of ‘walk’ your feet up their body. You don’t start by grabbing their sleeve and trying to stick your foot right in their elbow. Instead I put a foot on their knee, then their hip, then their chest or shoulder, then finally into their elbow. I find it keeps the distance, allowing you to have a check on their movement the whole time and not putting you into an off balance position as you might if you went right to the elbow. Also, they don’t seem to defend as much. Kind of a death by inches thing, they don’t see the danger till it’s to late. At first I thought it might just be that the white belts lack the experience to spot the danger right away, but last class I tapped a blue belt and came very close to catching a purple belt with the same move as well. In the end the purple belt managed to turn the lower leg of my triangle into a butterfly before I could close it. It was close enough that I could tell he was worried though, and that’s enough for me to keep working it.
It seems like I have a new way to advance toward my goal of graduating to a Blue Belt in the fall. Gamma will be holding a Gi tournament on October 4th. I have been told that the next chance to test for a Blue will be in November, so the two should compliment one another well. The motivation of another tournament will drive me to train as hard as a can, which in turn will further my technique for the the exam the next month. Also, the month in between will give me lots of time to learn from the mistakes I will inevitably make in the tournament. I look at the videos of the last one, and even in the matches I won there is a lot of room for improvement. The time line of having almost 2 months to work my Gi skills before the tourny seems pretty much right on the money as well.
I am also excited because the weight classes seem tailor made for me. There is a division of 160 lbs and less, which means I would have to cut maybe a pound. It will be nice to be on the top of the pile this time. Also, the divisions are split up by belts, so assuming I am up to testing in November, I will be getting this tournament in right at the last minute, likely making me one of the most experienced fighters in the white belt category. All in all it sounds like a recipe for success. That said, I still have a lot of ground to make up to get my skills to where they should be in a Gi. I have a print out of the White to Blue sequences that I have been using to go over the techniques mentally in an attempt to keep them fresh. They say visualization is important in sport and I figure it can’t hurt.
I have class tonight at 6:00. The goal is to memorize both spider guard sweeps and both DeLaRiva sweeps. For some reason I have a very hard time retaining those four.
With the tournament over, I find myself wondering what’s next. I find that for myself I work better with clear goals, with something specific to work for. There is a number of other tournaments coming up that I could sign on for, but I think for the time being my next goal will be to test for my blue belt in the fall. At our gy there are lists of move sequences which you have to know fully in order to attain he next level of training. I have gone through the sequences a number of times but, I don’t know them anywhere near as well as I should. When someone shows me the move, I will recognize it and can do it easily, but when I am put in a position of leading a newer studen through the list I have a really hard time remembering everything. Where does my left foot go for a standing Spider Guard sweep? Do i want a cross grip for the Omaplata sweep? etc. One reason that I don’t know the sequences as well as I should is that I have focus my training on No-Gi in preparation for the tournament, but still that feels like an excuse. I have been training for four months now and I should know them better. My level of technical knowledge is not on par with my sparring. In sparring I am super comfortable because I can stick to what I know and do it well, but when working technique I often get flustered. I need to go in and just work though the sequences several times untill I burn them into my brain. Everyone tells me one day it will just ‘click’. So that ‘click’ is my new goal.
I woke up yesterday at my normal time, ate my normal breakfast, and drank my normal two cups of coffee. I went through the motions like nothing was out of the ordinary, but in reality I was in turmoil. I won’t say I have never been as nervous as I was yesterday, I’m sure I have been , but I will say that I don’t know when.
I weighed in on Friday so that I would have the luxury of getting to the tournament a little later. I figured the less time I had to sit around and stew the better. I weighed in at 161 lbs. Right in the middle of the 147 – 170lbs division. As I was putting my gear in my locker, I heard someone say, “I weighed in at 174 but they gave me 170. That was nice of them.” Yeah, real nice. Back out on the mats the gym was filling up fast. There was dramatically more people than I had expected. Looking around I spent my time trying to guess people weight and picking out the guys I hoped I didn’t have to fight. My understanding was that they would seed the fighters so that hopefully no one would be fighting a teammate for the first few rounds, and looking at the size of the crowd there would be no shortage of opponents.
