The Martial Artists' Training Log

[DarthPenguin]

On 10/14/2025 at 10:05 PM, bushido_man96 said:

BJJ:  7:00 - 8:00 pm.  Started with 2 warmup rounds, 5 minutes each.  They felt like an eternity.  I ran for my life against a young athletic kid in the first round (we were supposed to be going nice and easy...), and I struggled in the second round as well.  Then we drilled.  More side control work.  I still didn't feel like I had anything energy wise.  Lots of struggles on bottom.  I do a lot of work to get a little, then lose what progress I made.  I did learn a ghost pass or escape that I think I can try to use.  No free rolling;  head still not doing great.

As someone who is also not in their 20s anymore i can empathise about going against the young massively athletic kid (though remember you are always free to decline to roll with someone if don't feel safe!).

Also, remember you are allowed to adapt techniques to your own body type a little and also can focus on what works for you: isn't like karate or tkd where there is a syllabus you need to work on for each grade, you can find what works for you. For me, our head coach is small and incredibly flexible - his stuff will never work for me (though he is amazingly knowledgeable etc and a great teacher) but one of the other coaches teaches a much more methodical pressure based game which suits me a lot more.

Some advice i was given years ago is pick a technique or two to work on and gradually improve it: eg if you can only get the initial grip then work on getting that consistently when you want it; then work on layering on the next step and consistently getting to that point. If you lose it then who cares you have already improved and work in this manner until you can reliably pull off the technique / escape etc that you are trying then rinse and repeat for more techniques. You don't need 100000000 escapes from side control; you need a few that you can reliably execute and ability to survive etc.