First Lesson

My first lesson at Dorking Judo Club was a little unusual in that I was the only senior student who turned up, I was however assured by the instructor that this was not the norm and it meant I would be having a pvt lesson with two instructors, one black belt and the other a senior brown belt so I wasn’t complaining.


The instructors were both aware of my previous martial arts experience as I felt it was only fair to be honest about this rather than trying to impress them as a total noob. After the initial warm up and break falls we went straight in to some ground work (Osaekomi-waza).

The first thing they showed me was a chest hold (Mune-gatame) http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/mune-gatame/
Which is used as a pin, quickly followed by (Kesa-gatame) http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/kesa-gatame/
And then (Kuzure-kesa-gatame)
http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/kuzure-kesa-gatame/

I was then asked to test these out on the Brown Belt instructor to see if I could hold him down. Now I’m a fairly big guy at just over 6ft 3 and 15 stone but this guy must have outweighed me by about 4 stone so I didn’t think holding him down would be easy but I seem to have got the technique down good as I was able to hold him down pretty well.

After trying out all the holds I got to do a little bit of ground sparring with the big fella but was told this was to be a gentle back and forth exercise rather than a life or death grapple which is how I would have taken it several years back.
As I had done a little Judo before and a couple of BJJ lessons the ground work is my favourite and at the moment the strongest part of my Judo game. I think I surprised them both when I managed to get a pretty good triangle choke (not sure of Japanese name for this just yet)

After the ground work I was shown some throws and for ease I have put links to these below.

First off was Osoto-otoshi
http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/o-soto-otoshi/

Then De-ashi-barai
http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/de-ashi-barai/

And lastly Uki-goshi
http://britishjudoeducation.org.uk/red/uki-goshi/

The throws are not coming easy to me compared to the holds I was shown but maybe I am being a little hard on myself especially as this was my first lesson in 7 years.

The warm down consisted of putting the mats away which when there is only three of you took us about 20 minutes which was a pretty good work out on its own.
Overall a really enjoyable first lesson