Putting techniques together (The Lo guard)

What has been taking the most thought for me throughout the years has always been connecting techniques and creating "games". Even as little as five years ago many instructionals or classes were quite unstructured so you had to figure out how to combine things for yourself. One day you were taught a sweep that worked in combination with some other technique shown 6 months later. This meant you either had to have good notes or an elephant's memory. Today the situation is better, especially with sites like MGinaction.com offering you a complete game to imitate.

However, one of the more interesting new guards has never been presented as a system. I am of course talking about Leandro Lo's De La Spider guard that BJJ Scout introduced us to. It is probably due to Leandro usually getting by with one or two sweeps in competition. This means a lot of guys at our academy use the De La Spider basic sweep only as an isolated technique which is never quite optimal. I recently started looking at different options and came up with my approach for a more complete Spider DLR game that I present on the video below.

Putting pieces together for De La Spider -video

Connecting techniques is something the Mendes brothers also emphasize in their teaching as you can hear from Gui Mendes himself:

# 5 Testing fitness levels

The project is slowly but surely moving ahead. I've cut roughly 80% of everything sweet from my diet. Next in line might be reducing my beer intake. The weight is still hovering around 85kg but training seems to be going good.

Anyways, I spent this weekend with my wife at wellness resort Långvik just relaxing. Besides jacuzzis, they had a really cool spa section where I could do hot-cold treatment on my twisted right foot.

I also did a check on how many chin ups I can do if I need to do at least 10 to be in acceptable shape. Chin ups have always been difficult for me which was part of the reason I chose them as a development area. Anyways, I found a chin up bar on a forest trail and decided to give it a go. I managed to do seven, which was alright I guess. 3 more to go at least.

The unforgiving and slippery chin up bar in the woods:

#4 Ups and downs

I've been able to maintain a fairly high motivation on my mini project but there's been some setbacks as well. What I am most proud of is my diet as I have only had one sweet snack a week during the past two weeks. It is affecting my energy levels somewhat but I guess that is normal. My weight hasn't decreased that much though and it is hovering around 85kg.

One of the set back was not being able to train judo on Saturday last week due to a Aikido seminar at the judo club I didn't know of. Had to go to the gym instead and running felt like shit which is not good news regarding my 3000meter target in Cooper's test. I was also planning to go test my current running shape at Esport Arena where they have a good in-door 400 meter track on Sunday but my legs were killing me so I couldn't go.

Today was a day of rest but tomorrow it is back to the grinder.

Today's night snack

As a sidenote, I'm trying to put together a quick look to one specific grip that Roger Gracie uses to excerpt pressure against open guard on top. Hopefully I get it ready in a week or two.