Another Pandemic Update

Purple is starting to catch on to wrestling. I’m needing to be way more active in defense and preventative offense. While I’m defending kimuras and chokes better, his ability to threaten with them is in no way waning. He’s doing a great job finding his own resources and fleshing out his own approach to everything. I honestly think he’s getting really close to brown belt levels of skill if he’s not there already. Watching the footage of rolls it’s pretty clear what I need to work on against him, but other than learning to break down a turtle it’s not very clear what he needs to work on against me other than just continuing to grow his wrestling.

Blue is still dealing with recovery. It’s not going nearly as fast as either he or I had hoped. He’s starting to get how to relax to do his snap down from a Greco stance. He’s also able to work leg locks on one side and back control as long as we don’t go belly down. He’s still making progress despite the injury which is admirable, it’s just slow because he still has very limited use of his leg.

White is doing better. We need to stop showing her a bunch of variations and focus in on just repeating the same content over and over again which is a challenge when she’s working with three of us who all have different advice. I also feel like we may have gone in the wrong direction after summer. Over the summer we were focused on trying to lay out a fundamentals curriculum and take her through it and see how it went (which by the way was super well). Since Blue’s injury it’s just become a lot of leg locks because Purple keeps leg locking her and then she’s going into leg lock entanglements with me. While I’m all for teaching folks the basics of leg locks from day 1, I don’t think this is the best investment in White’s time as much as focusing on a path to the back.

Goals for myself – keep working routes to the back, revisit half guard passing, work on foot sweeps in no gi wrestling

My goals for others – everyone needs to learn to attack turtle better. I shouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing with turtle.

Pandemic Pod Updates

White seems to be regressing without the regular training sessions with Blue as his knee is still healing. This makes me sad, but without taking focus off of Purple to focus on White there’s not going to be a lot of options to see improvement here short-term.

Blue is still injured, though making good use of the time to watch videos and has been repping standing concepts, basic back attacks, and some leg locks on the good leg. I’m struggling to find good ways to continue progress through the injury for them, but I’m confident they’ll come back in a better spot than they got taken out as long as they follow the advice of their PT.

Purple is doing really well emotionally and their game is shaping up super well. Threats are constant and I feel like the only times I get ahead are when I escape into a counter rather than escaping and then advancing position to a dominant spot. While my arm was injured (see below) Purple has been really good about doing slow paced rolls and attacking my neck or the other side.

My forearm has a really weird pain. I’ve confirmed it’s not a fracture, but the doctor didn’t have any other advice beyond to let her know if it still hurts in 4-6 weeks. I’m afraid it might be tendon inflammation based on how bad it hurts and that it’s made worse when I use that hand. I tried to stick to drilling and slow paced rolls where I kept my arm tucked into my body as much as possible. I’m finding I post a lot, which isn’t itself bad, but means I need to adapt to the injury more until it’s healed.

Black has not yet joined the group, but has received their first round of vaccine. It’s my hope they’ll be joining us when possible so I can get more perspective on what I should be working on myself and so any ranking that should happen based on pandemic progress can happen. Plus that will complete the infinity gauntlet – one of each color.

Belts Comparison

I’ve compiled all the measurements into one place with photos on a new page on here to compare and hid the individual posts that were just impressions. The posts still exist so I can reference them, but they don’t really serve a purpose. I’m likely to modify my Fundamentals Curriculum posts similarly to have them be pages/subpages rather than blog posts to be able to better reference them myself and have them exist separate from ongoing personal blog posts.