Guarded.

Warning: the following post contains a philosophical diatribe about Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and as such may not be all that entertaining.

I have been thinking a lot lately about guard, and what it means to play guard. The thing is my natural inclination is to get the hell off of my back, so learning to play guard was very humbling for me, and required a lot of thought, but I've been forcing myself to play guard for that very reason (if you suck at something you need to do it more). The more comfortable I get with guard the more I realize that it is a binary state. Someone is in guard, or not. There are no shades of gray. If they are in open, closed, butterfly, spider, rubber, or de la riva, they are in guard. The guard that presents itself is the one that you should be able to play. Just as you should be able to pass any guard that is thrown at you. Thinking this way really opened up my game, because it allows for more flow from position to position while still being 'in guard.' In stead of having to think of transitioning from spider to de la riva guard just to keep someone in guard and THEN looking for subs/sweeps. One only has to think about looking for openings. It is mind set that keeps your guard active and attacking. It doesn't allow you to fall in love with one particular guard. That said it takes far longer to get comfortable because you have to learn to attack from a number of positions. Thus far it seems a preferable mind set. I will let you know as I progress if this continues to work.

Training updates:
sunday:
with all of the days off last week I decided to train on sunday:
Glute hams at purple band:
10,8,8,8

super set:
1a dumbbell press
1a dumbbell row

press:
90 x 5/5
row:
105 x 5/5
press:
95 x 5/5
row:
105 x 4/4
press:
95 x 5/5
row:
105 x 4/4
press:
100 x 2/2
row:
105 x 4/4

chins/dips:
3/5
2/5 x 4
rest
2/5 x 4
at bw

10 minutes of intervals on hand bike. standard program
level 15

Monday:
good class, big class. very basic: break posture and cross choke then cross choke to arm-bar.
Lots of positional work.
I was moving ok, but my recognition was a little slow. Probably a bit rusty.

Last night:
box squat:
worked up to 1 at 315 haven't squatted in a while, and just never got comfortable. Cut it a little short.

Bench:
worked up to a miss at 265. My right (surgically repaired) delt is by far the weakest link here. I got 250, but 265 stuck badly. I'll bring that up and hit 275 fairly soon.

chins:
8,5,5,5,5 (sup, sup, over/under, under/over, pro)

prowler work:
140 lbs
row 40m
push 40m
rest (walk down and back)
x8

Mahalo.