Recalibrate and try again

Wrist issue has been diagnosed as tendonitis. Advice? Well take a pile of advil for 2 weeks and see how it feels. If that doesn't work, we'll try cortisone shots. If not that, surgery.

Okay so I did that. And it pretty much feels the same. I can't flex my thumb more than 30-45 degrees. This makes for a host of painful annoyances on the mats.

Oh yeah, took like a month and a half off from bjj, judo, the whole bit. I'm doing my own diagnoses from now on. The first one being: bjj and judo didn't cause my tendonitis. So I'm back at it.

I'm very fortunate to have a friend I train with whose spent time as a personal trainer. He's helping me out, since I clearly have no idea what the hell I'm doing anymore. As of this writing, I'm on the eve of my 2nd Monday morning weigh in. Last week, I'd dropped 6 pounds. And that was with only one trip to nautilus and one night of bjj. That is, 6 pounds off just from diet.

Variables at play this week include daily morning cardio, whether or not I'll continue to have egg protein shakes before said cardio (or go on empty stomach henceforth), and one variable I KNOW I'll be changing: yeah, just because I had a 2-a-day training day that ended with an evening of martial arts training doesn't mean I get to pork out on a footlong from subway.

(I say pork out, but at least they were relatively harmless in terms of content. It was the portion size methinks that was off the standards I'm aiming for)

I'm nervous and anxious to see what the scales say tomorrow morning. I'm being way more public about it because I probably need the pressure of guilt to stay on point.

As for bjj, I was utterly frustrated by a number of items. Butterfly guard in general eludes me, both in offense and especially defense. As in escapes. I can't correctly judge which way to shift my weight when in butterfly guard. I identified quickly that my base being limited compared to most everyone means I'll have to find other methods (I say base in terms of the say the base of a pyramid - the available span I have to balance my posting points -- it's smaller than 90% of my opponents, so it's making it way easy for them to off-balance me).

People escaping my open guard by backing out. Laziness on my part, I am sure. That, and I'm accustomed to most people playing into my open guard with forward pressure instead. I need to work on keeping hooks in, keeping them near so as to tie them up/sweep.

Tying up too high on the arm for omoplatas. My legs are biting up way up into the armpit/shoulder, which is all fine and well for making the opponent topple, but when I go for that rotation to sit up and lock in the omoplata, my mobility is limited by having my hips pinned to their shoulder. I can't achieve the sit-up.

My grips are severely affected right now. Setting up chokes is about out. Difficulty with moves involving changing grips from sleeve to sleeve. Can't post much, nor push away using my right hand. Trying to maintain c-grips to secure elbows when applicable. Pistol grip is out. All tendonitis related. grrrrrr.

Judo proved more difficult. Not surprising, given the gripping issues. Need to work on my leg sweep more in O soto gari.

Still, all in all, it was nice to be back to the usual grind.