APH-2025-091

Overview:

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

Intention:

I had a crazy overnight fever and only slept a few hours last night, so I needed today to be a more moderate session. That’s not to say casual or unfocused but more flow and “cultivate” than a hard “development” push.

With that said, I wanted to to focus on adding off-balances to the collar tie game – which looks like mixing in judo to setup wrestling.

Warm Up:

• 1 x 6 min: flow roll

Work:

• 6 x 6 min: moderate sparring rounds
• 2 x 6 min: drilling / troubleshoot

Reflection:

What worked well:

• With an average HR of 133 and net recovery of -5%, this session hit the sweet spot that it was supposed to.
• Tactically, I feel pretty polished, between point-scoring awareness / denial (of opponents’ scoring).
• I feel like generally I did a good job “bothering the feet” from the standing position via threats of throws and footsweeps which are a nice compliment to heavy collar ties.

What didn’t:

• About half of my training days in the last two weeks have started with a recovery score < 80%. The combination of the weather flip flopping, pollen overload (if you’re in the Southeast US you know what I mean), a little sunburn, and a little overtrained, took a tole on my immune system.
• I still forced a few guillotines that cost me, though this is the last week for that before really getting back to refining my A-game.

Plan for next time:

• With the gaps (mostly filled) it’s time to start polishing my A-game – wrestling and leglocks.
• I still want to work a few escapes / bad positions every day though. I feel pretty positionally sound, so emphasizing the escapes from high-percentage submissions seems like a good idea (heel hook, RNC, guillotine, armbar).