APH-2025-088

Overview:

• Quarterly Goal: Emphasize better rather than more or harder.
• Monthly Focus: Bad Position / Addressing Deficits
• Weekly Objective: Upper Body Attacks

Intention:

This was a tougher day than I expected. Though it was much needed, and Kyle had a great idea to just run ADCC scored rounds the entire practice to get us used thinking about points and tactical / strategical foobars and gameplans.

I had to sit a couple extra rounds in the middle because whey protein did NOT sit well with me. Normally, I eat dinner around 5:00 - 5:30 and practice starts at 6:30, but the hard sparring doesn’t start until 7:15 or 7:30, so I’ve got time for things to digest. However, today we got right into it and I was pretty nauseous after a couple rounds.

If you’re not familiar with ADCC rules, the video below does a good job explaining the differences between IBJJF and ADCC rules. Of course, there are comprehensive hour plus videos on YouTube as well from ADCC Official.

Warm Up:

• 6 x 1 minute: standing grip fighting for hip control

Work:

• 3 x 6 minute rounds

  • first 3 minutes are sub-only

• 1 x 6 minute round + 3 minute overtime

  • first 3 minutes are sub-only

• 2 x 3 minute: points and subs

This came out to about 1,500 calories in less than 2 hours, setting a new max heart rate of 195 at 36 years old.

Reflection:

What worked well:

• By my count I won 4 of the “matches.” The “point only” rounds at the end were 1-1. The regular rounds were 3-1. All of the wins came early and via submission which is a good strategical thing to take note of.

What didn’t:

• Lost Round: Tried to force a guillotine and got taken down (no score though). But I would have lost the decision due to my partner having more overall offense. The moral of the story was that I did too little too late.
• Lost Round: On the opposite end, I was up on overall offense and pushing the action, then pulled guard at the end to hunt a sub. Though, this too was a bit forced so it ended up just being a guard pull that would have cost me the match due to the penalty point in the scoring period.
• The nausea and flash pump weren’t expected. Typically, I’ve been afraid of hard warm ups, but this was perhaps a reminder that you need to give yourself plenty of time to get worked up AND also calm back down; because I felt much more in the groove after letting my stomach settle.
• Contrary to what I wrote in my reflection yesterday, recovery may be an issue. It hasn’t been above 80 all week, and truthfully my sleep has been shoddy due to the weather / humidity / air pressure changes jamming up my sinuses.

Plan for next time:

• Recovery: I need to figure out the sleep thing. I could try to move my “screen curfew” up sooner, though typically I don’t have a problem going to sleep, it’s staying asleep and related to sinus pressure as of late. I suppose I can also close the windows at night and let the HVAC do it’s thing.

• Warm Up: I’ll have to experiment with this a bit more, obviously the does and timing are important, but getting a bit of a shock / sweat and then cooling off isn’t a bad idea (ref.).

• Strategy: This is going to take some adjustment, that’s much better to find out 7 weeks out versus 2.

  • “Heavy like Gordon” was my plan, but I can’t think of a lot of middleweights that play that type of game.
  • However, if I am going to work that angle, I need to be increasing the pace throughout the match – which Gordon does do – rather than just maintaining a defensive baseline.
  • That increase in output also can’t be forced / subject to tunnel vision. It has to look opportunities and create mistakes.
  • Another possible angle, that I’ll discuss with Kyle, is starting hot early, trying to get fast submissions. That’s counter intuitive to the original strategy, but is something that’s seen often particularly in the lower weights and early in the match when you’re dry and guard pulling isn’t penalized.