There’s been a delay in writing this as I went on holiday the day after my last lesson and as my memory isn’t great I doubt I’ll remember everything I was taught but here goes anyway.
My shoulder still isn’t right since injuring it the other week so I told all concerned that I was going to take it easy and would sit out any randori. Inez took the lesson in Peter’s absence and after the warm up we went in to some light Newazi ,basically just going over various pins and transitioning between each pin whilst ensuring you have control of uke at all times. So we went from Keza-gatame into Kuzure-kesa-gatame into Mune-gatame into Kami-shiho-gatame into Yoko-shiho-gatame.
Inez then showed us some very good escapes from each pin but this is where my memory deserts me as I cannot remember how they were done. They are not the usual ones that you might find on the BJA website under the grading syllabus so they are probably a little more advanced but I’ll be sure to ask her to show me again in the next lesson.
Ryan the BJJ guy was back for his third lesson and he seems to be enjoying himself. I found out that his BJJ club has a class on the same evening as Judo so I was curious to know why he didn’t go. Apparently Thursday nights is no-Gi night at his club and his doesn’t like rolling without the Gi so he figured he would take up Judo. I had a quick roll with Ryan and tried to pull him straight in to my guard but he was quick to pass to half guard and after several attempts he finally got in to side control where he applied Mune-gatame. I managed to reverse him using the classic escape from Mune-gatame that I had learnt for my recent grading and then I got full mount but he reversed me almost immediately, at this point matte was called. I would really like to roll for a good 5-10 minutes with Ryan just to see how quickly he can submit me but we only ever get a couple of minutes at the most with each partner when we do Newaza which can be a little frustrating but this is Judo and not BJJ.
We then went on to practice some entries in to throws and Inez has a great way of breaking down a throw so that we can practice the movement without a partner. As we have done previously she gets us to visualise that we are throwing someone and practice the movements a dozen or so times for each side and for each throw before we partner up and do it for real. As I wasn’t to be thrown my partner (Oli) would hold back on dropping me to the mat but I was able to practice throwing him. The main throw we practiced was Tai-otoshi but I seem to be getting this throw down pretty good by the end of the evening. This throw is part of the Yellow belt syllabus so I will need to perfect it before I can even think about grading again. I will add the Yellow belt techniques to the side tab some point in the future but not until at least a couple more months have passed.
I spoke to Oli after the lesson and asked him if he fancied checking out Ryan’s club sometime and doing a bit of BJJ. He seemed keen so hopefully when my shoulder is fully healed we can pop down there. Another good technical lesson from Inez
