Peter and Graeme explained that this evening’s lesson would be totally geared towards me finishing off the Red belt grading that I started last week. As before the techniques that I had to know were done within the normal lesson and just ticked off as I went through them all.
There was a young guy who had joined us from the juniors this evening for the first time. He’s only 15 but quite tall so he’s probably too big for most of the juniors but was still way to light for the seniors. Still we all took it easy on him and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot from us all. All of the seniors apart from myself are parents anyway so he’ll be well looked after.
We started with some groundwork and I went over again the three holds and the three escapes from these holds. One thing I’ve noticed is that you need strong abs especially for the escape from Kazure-kesa-gatame using sit up and roll as you have to basically do a sit up whilst the other person is laying on you, not easy if you don’t have abs like giant Ravioli. I’ve started adding some Abs work in to my workouts again, I know they should have always been in there but no one likes doing sit ups.
On the subject of workouts I currently train every day of the week apart from the weekend, although sometimes I go for a long walk with the Wife. I usually do a couple of days of free weights, 1 five mile run, some circuit training, 1 Yoga class and then my Judo. I’ve entered next year’s London Marathon again, I’ve entered the last 3 but haven’t got in but I’m hopeful that next year I’ll get lucky, so I may have to start doing lots more running. I figure if I can be running 13 miles by the time the ballot results are out in October then I should be fine.
After the groundwork we went over some throws, specifically the ones I needed to do Osoto-otoshi, De-ashi-barai and Uki-goshi. The Uki-goshi throw that I did on Oli was particularly good for me and it felt effortless. After the throws we had to perform them and go straight in to a hold so we did Osoto-otoshi in to Kesa-gatame, de-ashi-barai in to mune-gatame and then Uki-goshi in to Kazure-kesa-gatame.
Apart from that I had to know several Japanese names like Matte and Hajime and once they ticked those off they told me I had passed.
Tonight’s lesson was cut short due to the election as both instructors were assisting in the counting so we finished 30 minutes early.
Next belt is Yellow and ideally I would like to be Orange by Christmas this year that would leave me 1 year to get Green, Blue and then Brown. I’ll probably look back at these predictions this time next year and laugh but you have to give yourself some tough goals.
The next day after training I looked online for a new Judo suit as the one I have currently is about 20 years old. I found a nice Blue Adidas one so hopefully I can wear that to my next lesson with my nice new Red belt.
