Rhythm & Blues

I’ve come to realize how important consistency and rhythm are in physical activity. This past weekend was Labor Day, and as such, it’s thrown my schedule off a little bit. Maybe it is in my head, but coming back after missing a day just makes getting back into the groove a little bit harder.

It turns out that there’s a tradition at Crossfit. On holidays, since people generally aren’t constrained by work, the Workout of the Day is one of the harder and longer ones. This weekend, it was “Murph”, named in honor of Lt. Michael Murphy, Navy Seal and Congressional Medal of Honor recipent, who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005.

1 Mile Run
100 Pull ups
200 Push ups
300 Squats
1 Mile Run

I didn’t go on Labor Day, but I did do a “Half Murph” on my usual Crossfit morning. I broke the body weight exercises into 5 rounds of 10-20-30. 27:02

And then I double dipped and did jiu jitsu in the evening. Brady was teaching, and the lesson was escaping mount. Basic upa & roll and elbow escaping. Short Josh and I teamed up, and I lamented about how poorly it seems my elbow escape is. He pointed out that my topside elbow is always in the wrong place, which allows my opponent to easily switch to s-mount. It was a good observation.

After class, Tim and Ron joined the advanced class, but I passed. Three classes in a day would be too rude of a welcome back to the grind. So instead Bob grabbed me to roll. Bob’s an older guy, who’s been around at a couple of different gyms, but never has stayed in one place long enough to receive an official rank. I fully expect that to change on Saturday at the belt ceremony, because he’s a monster on the mat. We rolled for 40 minutes, in which, I passed his guard exactly twice. He reminds me some of Quinten and Damien, and just schools me with butterfly guard.

In one of the moments I passed, I tried the same knee slide mount I attempted (and failed) against Rod on Saturday. This one failed too, but we talked about it afterwards, and I think I know what’s going wrong. I had his farside arm jacked up, but let my elbow come in tight as I was mounting. If I leave it out, it provides a bit of base…enough to keep me on top.