Staying Frosty

A bit of strange of lesson this week as apart from Peter and Big Stuart only Oli and I turned up and then Peter had to leave early due to work commitments. To make matters worse my shoulder still isn’t right so I have to be careful.


Before Peter left he showed us a couple of interesting throws which I believe were Sumi-gaeshi & Hikikomi-gaeshi. I can’t find Hikikomi-gaeshi on the BJA website but I have a link to Sumi-gaeshi which is a Brown belt level throw. They put the crash mats out especially for me when we were practicing these throws so I had something nice to land on. Because of the nature of these throws, you have to sit down and pull uke to the floor before you throw them over you, I was a little hesitant to fully commit as I was very conscious of my shoulder. This meant that I was never really able to get this one properly but Big Stuart was able to do them both pretty well and was even able to continue rolling so that he ended up in the mount position afterwards which would enable him to go straight in to ground work.


When Peter left the three of us played with a few submissions.
First up was Ude-garami or a kimora as its known by BJJ’ers. As I explained previously an Ude-garami can be pulled off from the mount and side control. In BJJ I believe they call it an Americana if it’s done from the mount, they seem to give every variation of a technique its own name whereas with Judo each technique can be done a variety of ways. Being a Judo blog I’ll always try and use the Judo name for a technique but will try to also add the now more common (due to MMA and the UFC) BJJ name.


There was a technique I had seen in a Judo book that I wanted to try and that was Kakato-jime or heel strangle. Looking at a picture in a book I couldn’t tell how effective this would be but when you can do it against a live person it works very nicely. Again I cannot find this on the BJA website but basically from your back they are in your guard and you choke Uke by crossing your hands and grabbing both sides of his collar and pulling his head towards your left leg which stretched across their neck. If I find a link to this technique I might add it later.


Finally we went over Sankaku-jime or triangle choke which is my favourite go to move. While we are on the subject of triangle chokes I saw possibly the best bit of fight choreography I have ever seen in a TV show called Generation Kill, which is similar to Band of Brothers but based on the Gulf war. Anyway these US marines were playing American Football and one the guys gets upset and rugby tackles this other guy from behind when the ball isn’t even in play and then starts wailing punches on him. The guy that was tackled throws up a wicked triangle choke on the wailer and locks it in pretty tight before reversing him so that the guy in the triangle is now on his back with only his head poking out between this guys leg and then he just starts pummelling him. It doesn’t sound much but it was pretty slick. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come where fight scenes are concerned in films although they have certainly come a long way since Roger Moore used a “Judo Chop” in one of his early James Bond outings to show what a highly trained killer he was.


Anyway back to the Sankaku-Jime technique and neither of us could quite get this right which is strange considering Graeme showed me the right way of doing this a little while ago. Since the lesson of course I have consulted a DVD that Boris from AV Forums sent me and realised the error of our ways. What I and the others were doing wrong was not creating a slight angle when throwing your legs up to get the triangle as we were directly parallel with each other.
We finished up shortly afterwards and as there were only three of us left we had plenty of mats to put away.



The next day I decided to finally get someone other than my GP to look at my shoulder so I booked an appointment with a Chiropractor. I’ve not had good experiences with Chiropractors and Osteopaths in the past so when I called up to make the appointment I asked to speak directly to the Chiropractor to explain my injury and ask what they would be able to do. I liked what I heard on the phone and when I got to the practice about 30 minutes later I was not disappointed with the treatment as it involved not only joint manipulation but also a deep tissue massage and all the time she explained what she was doing and why. While I was there I thought I would see if I could get my long standing shoulder injury which I know is Rotator cuff related, looked at and also a stiff left knee. Surprisingly she gave me treatment for these as well and thinks that I would probably only require a couple more treatments before all is back to normal. If this is the case I will be very happy as I will be able to lift some proper weights again as for the last few years I have avoided direct shoulder presses, although I am still able to bench which works the front delts. Anyway if the treatment does work and I’m hopeful it will, I’ll put a link to their website on my blog which should give them at least a few more hits a year lol.



Busy weekend for me as the World Cup starts and UFC 115 is on Sunday at 3.00am on ESPN. All I can say is thank god for SKY+ as my days of staying up all night to watch fights like the Mike Tyson Vs Evander Holyfield fight ,where Tyson bit off half his ear, are long over.