Full House

A much better turn out this week and another white belt so I’m no longer the FNG. There was also a Husband and Wife, she is a Black Belt and GB squad member and he is a brown belt. So there are 3 black belts, 4 brown belts and two white belts.
After the warm up we practiced our break falls and then shortly afterwards we go straight in to Newaza or groundwork. As I said before this is my favourite part of Judo and also what I am best at partly due to a few BJJ lessons and many years of watching the UFC.
I’m not sure how hard they were trying on me but I managed to submit some of them. I think I probably surprised them as I’m sure they were not expecting a white belt to Triangle choke( Sankaku-jime) them. They all seemed to find it hard to pass my guard, again not sure if they were really trying or if I just have good hips. Funny thing is I have been doing Yoga for the last few months to try and improve my flexibility and prevent injuries but I can still barely touch my toes, however I seem to be able to pull off body triangle’s at ease which is strange considering I’m not that flexible.
Apparently a body triangle or Dojime is illegal in Randori or competition, which I only found out when I looked through my “A-Z of Judo” book when I got home, because it can cause damage to the internal organs.

On to the throws and I practiced De-Ashi-Barai and then the counter to this throw which is called Tsubame Gaeshi.
This looks a very simple throw but is very effective and I could imagine pulling this off in the real world.

I then did Osoto-otoshi and then we added a second throw as if the first was stopped and I decided on Tobi-Goshi which due to the excellent instruction from my partner I managed to pull off quite well.
Again I can’t say enough how friendly everyone at this club is, even the new people who I hadn’t seen before were very approachable and had absolutely no ego’s.

According to the head instructor these throws with the counters were Dan grade moves, done for the benefit of a couple of the Brown belts who are due to grade sometime soon so I was really pleased that I was able to pull these off to a reasonable standard.

We finished with some light Randori.

So far this was easily my best lesson and I look forward to next week.