On… Tuesday, maybe? Earlier in the week, one way or another, my right ankle started hurting. It was the one that Angelica popped doing a toehold around Thanksgiving; I figured it was a combination of catching it on the mat and the weather recently (it’s been down in the thirties which is a) unusual for San Diego and b) means the gym is COLD COLD COLD and drafty all the time), so I taped it up and went about my business of training and lifting and stuff. I just played from the bottom as much as possible to give it a chance to heal. My guard was getting passed a little easier than usual but I wasn’t too concerned, because I couldn’t use my right foot very well.
Then, in the middle of sparring with Angelica (again! I don’t know!!) I went to hip escape with my left foot and BAM, instant pain in my left ankle. Exactly the same pain as a hyperextension on a toehold, except all I did was hip escape! I am really anxious about it since the Trials are coming up and I want to be in awesome shape. Yesterday it was pretty bad at the beginning of strength/conditioning, but then once I warmed up it was much better. It feels okay-ish today. I did manage a 40-inch box jump yesterday too, which is pretty cool considering the bad ankle and the fact that I’m only 62 inches tall, haha.
I also managed to squat 145lbs. Squats and I have a really tumultuous relationship. By tumultuous relationship I mean “I hate squats.” My squats are bad– not because my form is bad, or because I am weak in my legs/core, but because I have this mental block about getting out of the bottom of the lift. If I could get over my mental… thing… about squats, I think within a few months I could be pushing the 200-pound marker, but I swear, I get to the bottom of the lift and my body just goes, “you know, this weight was perfectly fine on the rack, why did you even bother picking it up?” Ugh. Squats. I know they’re important, and I know my lower body is weak compared to my upper body so I need to pay more attention to it (there’s no reason for my 1RM for the floor press to be 115 lbs and my squat to be 145lbs) but UGHHH I hate it.
This week I’ve been working on my positioning from the double guard pull. It’s bad. Maybe not bad, but certainly not good. This week that’s going to be my focus: working from the double guard pull, and from single-leg X, because holy crap my single-leg X is bad (and it should be good, because it would fit into my game so well). Another thing I’ve noticed lately is that I’ve become too complacent about letting people grab my collar when they’re trying to pass my guard. That needs to stop, I need to focus more on that and preventing the cross-face.
So that aside, after lifting yesterday I went to the aquarium. J and I have decided that we need to expand our horizons and explore more of San Diego so we’ve been doing enriching things. Like going to the aquarium, and going to see instruments of torture.
It’s a pretty cool place, the aquarium.
Have you ever tried screwing around with box squats? They have a reputation as being really good for getting people comfortable going ass-to-grass.
Naw, my form is good (we’ve got a really good trainer who has cleared me to lift heavy). I’m not scared at the bottom, and I’m not anxious about ditching the weight if I need to, it’s just the mental block of driving through my heels to get the upward movement started that I struggle with, not the lift itself. I get down there and I’m like “well this is really heavy, why did I do this again?”
Jellyfish are da bomb. I could watch them all day.
Have you tried going ATG > stretch reflex > slight bounce out of the bottom? It might help with the mental block. Works best with high bar squats, obviously.