A Jiu-jitsu Log Filled With Shenanigans

MMA

Warm Up:

1. 3×3 minute rounds of shadow boxing.

Technique:

1. Guillotine from the closed guard - Worked on turning into the guillotine and driving the choking elbow down towards the ground rather than extending back and thrusting upwards.  If you know you won’t be able to finish the guillotine then transition to a crucifix.  Before you let go of the guillotine underhook their arm with your nonchoking arm, then underhook your choking arm and clasp both of your hands together behind their back, under their arms, and over their head for the crucifix (neck crank).
2. Guillotine from standing - Say you have the standing guillotine but your opponent is defending well.  Release the guillotine by immediately underhooking both of their arms and sprawling your weight onto them.  Then quickly transition back into a guillotine by stepping forward deep with your lead leg securing the guillotine and extending back and thrusting your hips forward.  A good takedown from here is once again you have the guillotine, this time underhook only one side while keeping your other arm above and around their head.  Then drop back with the opposite leg of the underhook and drop to your knee and drag your opponent down onto their back.  You should land in side control with a one arm neck crank.

Sparring:

1. 6×3 minute rounds of boxing.
2. 6×3 minute ground-n-pound circuit (3 rolling, 3 bag work).

Cardio:

1. 2×1 minute of The Mean Lean Drill - Holding the push up position while your partner leans on various parts of your body.  Switch with your partner and lean on him.
2. 1×5 minute Suicide - Run halfway up the mat and back, all the way down and back, repeat.
3. 2×1 minute of The Mean Lean Drill.
4. 1×5 Suicide.
5. 2×1 minute Punch, Punch, Sprawl Drill - You shadow box and sprawl when told to do so for one round.  The next round you shadow box, sprawl and go into mountain climbers.
6. 25 group sit-ups.

Notes:

I did alright in sparring.  The first guy I sparred with was throwing solid punches but I was blocking and covering up well.  Then I started to pick him apart.  I did well against a few other guys, then gassed out after taking a beating from one of the better guys.  I left myself open for a spleen shattering kick in the later rounds.  I am disappointed in my conditioning.

I still didn’t recover in the gnp stations.  I was rolling with a very inexperienced, but powerful and in shape guy.  We were both sweaty as hell so as a result we were transitioning to position after position.  Even when we were hitting bags, I felt exhausted.  Not a good sign.

Cardio sucked.  I did terrible on the suicides and PPS.

I want to bring my training log back to its original glory days.  Ever since I switched over to the wordpress format from the craptastic garbage this website used to be, I’ve slacked off on my training log.  Now, my time is nearing an end at Gracie Barra up here in Alaska, so it seems almost pointless to begin a training log, just to stop it again in a few weeks.  That’s where I’m mixing things up.  In addition to my jiu-jitsu and mma entries, I will now be adding other extracurricular activities to the log.  This could include, but not limited to; running, swimming, basketball, racquetball, competitive eating, sleeping, murderball, and every one’s favorite - cat juggling.  [EDIT: I was looking for a clip from The Jerk when I stumbled across that clip, now I'm a little closer to being dead on the inside.]

Anyways, the point of all this rambling is to talk about a new sport I have set my sights on, triathlons.  I have always been intrigued by the notion of running a marathon, but damn it 26.2 miles just isn’t something I’m interested in doing just yet.  I am more attracted to the jack of all trades aspect of the game (swimming, cycling, and running).  Endurance, plain and simple.  That’s what it is.

All this recently came about because I was tired of running, and tired of not being able to train regularly.  Mix in the fact that everyone up here is looney toones when it comes to being healthy and they are constantly promoting “Bike to Work Week” and the idea just stuck.  So I stared to shop around for bikes, when I stumbled across a bike in my price range at Wal-Mart.  Then I got it on sale for a STEAL.  Now I got a bike, and a place to run and cycle (just by my apartment), providing that no one starts to shoot at me again.  So, if I run and cycle a few times a week, I should become proficient enough to enter into a sprint triathlon that is taking place in Indianapolis in mid-August.

Just gotta work on that swimming part.

If you’re curious, you can go here to take a look at the event I’m thinking about.  For you lazy folks, here’s how it works.

1. Swim 500 meters
2. Bike 12.4 miles
3. Run 3.1 miles
4. Die of exhaustion / dehyrdation / spontaneous implosion

More info to come on all this.  For now, here’s a pic of my new bike.

Here are my picks for UFC 98:

1. Rashad Evans v Lyoto Machida - Rashad to retain but praying for a double knockout. [The knockout was so brutal I'm not even upset I picked wrong.  I hate Rashad so much.  As long as Machida keeps bring the KTFO hammer to his fights, I won't mind him being champ.]
2. Matt Hughes v Matt Serra - Hughes to blanket Serra then retire ($20 bet w/ Michael).  [Hughes brought his warmest blanket indeed for Mr. Serra.  He overcame a headbutt and donkey punch to eek out the decision.  Although, personally if not for my biased opinion of Hughes, I would have given the fight to Serra.  BUT IT WAS ENOUGH TO GET ME PAID!!!  PAY ME MY MONEY MICHAEL!!]
3. Sean Sherk v Frankie Edgar - Sherk to control.  [SHERK YOU ARE NOT A BOXER, STOP IT!]
4. Dan Miller v Chael Sonnen - Coin flip.  [Lots of pwnage and GnP.]
5. Drew Mcfedries v XFP - Mcfedries has just looked so awful lately (my upset pick).  [In hindsight, it was a bad decision to back XFP.]
6. Brock Larson v Mike Pyle - Over in a round.  [Called this one right.  Pyle was more threatening than I expected.]
7. Tim Hague v Pat Barry - I beleive this will be RAPE.  [Barry threw this fight away because he has a white belt understand of jiu-jitsu.]
8. Phillipe Nover v Kyle Bradley - Gets the nod, possible sub.  [Apparently a bad stoppage, I dunno, I didn't get to see it yet.]
9. Andre Gusamo v K-Sos - By takedown and control or possible wrestling in reverse.  [Glad K-Sos got the KTFO.]
10. Yoshiyuki Yoshida v Brandon Wollf - Welcome back Yoshida, glad you’re not brain dead. [Welcome back.]
11. George Roop v Dave Kaplan - Does anybody really care?  [I don't care.]

***5-6 on the night, 47-32 over all.*** AND TWENTY BUCKS THE WEALTHIER!!!!!  CHA CHING!!!!!!

Here’s my friend Mr. Jackson.  Tomorrow night he is going to go out and make another friend named Jackson to come and live with me.  MICHAEL GET READY TO PONY UP $20 WORTH OF VOLCANO TACOS!

Today is Armed Forces Day.  I’m not really sure what the difference is from Memorial Day, but I have a few friends that have or are currently serving this great country, so I will recognize.

Aaron Klene, one of my best and oldest friends.  Today is actually his wedding day, and while I’m sad and feel worthless for not being there, at least I can give him a shout out on this blog (even though he probably won’t ever read it).  Thanks for serving our county and being a great friend.  I LOVE YOU MAN!

Josh Cantrell, one of my Tennessee buds, and a guy I give credit to for helping to launch my stellar MMA career.  You’ve done your tour and now you’re living your life, but thanks for doing your duty and keeping me safe so I can stay at home and live my life.

Alex Hughes, one of my best friends ever, and probably a future roommate.  You’re just about to get out of basic training and then the fun starts for you.  If you do end up making the ultimate sacrafice for our country (sorry Lindsey lol), then remember, I get dibs on everything you own.

Now down below I’ve included a few tear-jerker photos in honor of those who serve.  If they don’t put a lump in your throat, then you probably don’t have a soul or a heart (and you should really see about getting to a doctor to get that fixed).  So get your tissues ready folks…

 This one is hard to appreciate because I couldn’t find a better format for the picture.  Click on it to enlarge and get a better effect.  The text reads “This is my friend saying goodbye to his brother, whose off to Iraq.  This is my same friend, months later, saying goodbye for the last time.”

A marine’s wife sleeping next to her husband one last time.  Playing music on her laptop that reminded her of him, until she feel asleep.  The marine stood guard by the casket all night.

Click here to go to the thread where I found these pics.

The ONLY THING in my ENTIRE life that I regret is moving out of my first apartment at Chelsea Place.  Not because I loved coming home to find my ceiling leaking water from the backed up pipes of my neighbor above me.  And not because the management took my grill and put it next to the dumpster or because they cut down the privacy bushes surrounding my patio so everyone from the street could look into my living room and see me dancing naked (If I was the dancing type).  It was because by the good grace of God I was sticking it to my only real sworn enemy, the cable company.

You see, I had gotten fed up with the trash that frequented the library when I was there to use their internet.  Finally, some many months of living the dark life, I chose to upgrade my life style to include internet access.  It was here that I was offered a promotion that would include internet access and a basic cable (13 channels) for a very reasonable rate.  Of course they were trying to stick it to me with their ridiculous connection fees.  But after all was said and done, someone made a boo boo.  Whoever hooked up the cable screwed up and gave me FULL PREMIUM CABLE with HBO and SHOWTIME.  Let me borrow a phrase from my favorite mma figher, Frank Mir:  Niice!!

All this ranting brings me to the point of this blog, which is:  I hate GCI which provides cable and internet up here.  They suck, their connections suck, everything about them sucks and they have me very frustrated at the moment.  First of all, who in the hell limits bandwidth usage?  That is ridiculous and so is their ridiculously high bill that they sent me for apparently slaughtering my limit.  By my guestimation, I went over my limit somewhere near day 5 of the billing cycle. lol  And they have what I like to refer to as “brown outs.”  Which basically means that their craptastic internet just decides to not work for about five minutes every hour or so.  It’s like I’m back in the stoneage with dialup.  And don’t even get me started on how bad my phone connection sucks up here.  Although, that’s partly my fault as I refuse to give up the sweetest phone number since the invention of the cell phone by Ernest Hemmingway back in 1327 (the year of the dragon of the apocalypse).  What?  You don’t believe me?  You know it’s true.

[Hey guess what?  I had another brown out while citing those sources.  Yay!]

All this led to a delay in this blog, which was originally intended to talk about my awesome (not awesome) 12 hour work day, free bagels, or the fact I dropped my clippers into the toliet tonight while trying to buzz my own hair.  But now I don’t want to talk about any of that.  So you guys miss out and it’s GCI’s fault.   So blame them.

It’s all but a certainty that I’m moving back to the lower 48.  I was looking at July to fight up here, but I’ll be gone by then.  It’s been forever since I fought and I miss it.  I feel like I’m throwing away my opportunity to have some what of a decent journeyman career.  Anyways, my friend Kyle, from Kentucky, is looking for a fight soon.  We’ve already fought once, and the outcome now lives in infamy on YouTube.  He’d like a rematch, and I’d like to give him one.  We’re looking to set up a possible early July or August fight time.  More info to come on that.