After I updated my blog last week I also decided to post an excerpt from my blog entry on the judo forum as I was looking for some feedback specifically around how I was dominated by another orange belt and how it made me feel. Rather oddly I was contacted, through the Judo forum by the orange belt guy from Yoshin Ryu who had crushed me, as he was concerned that I should feel so demoralized after what was after all just randori. It turns out that he did have previous experience at a junior level and had graded to Blue belt and even though he had only been training for 8 months since his return he was training 3-4 times a week. This did make me feel a bit better about how easily I was dominated by his grips and again how easily he was able to throw me. We have exchanged a couple of emails since then and I look forward to returning to Yoshin Ryu sometime soon and maybe learning a thing or two from him.
On to last night’s lesson and Graeme had returned from his world tour but he was only joined by Peter and Oli, which meant there were only 4 of us on the mat. We discussed briefly before we started, about what had happened to me a week previously and Graeme commented that it was quite common when people returned to Judo after training as a junior that they would be a lot better than their senior grade, particularly as juniors usually have a lot of competition experience which makes them rather good at randori.
Graeme and Peter then said we would again go over some of my green belt syllabus and that I would probably get my green belt within a few weeks. When you consider how I was feeling after last week’s lesson this didn’t seem right, I mean being thrown around by someone your own grade is bad enough but being thrown around by a lower grade would be a lot worse. When I’ve graded previously I’ve always felt I was ready to grade and that I was deserving of my new belt but now there is a degree of self doubt creeping in over whether I am good enough to wear a green belt. I guess this will only get worse as I get closer to the elusive black belt.
First of all we went over some of the Newaza techniques from the syllabus and they were Ude-gatame, Waki-gatame and finally Hiza-gatame. I had a bit of trouble finding the space to get my knee on to uke’s arm whilst doing the Hiza-gatame, which is odd as I’ve not had any trouble with this in the past.
On to the Tahi-waza and I was fairly comfortable with both Harai-goshi and Uchi-mata, although I totally forgot about the higher grip that Ynez had shown me previously and also the nice entry techniques.
Morote-eri-seoi-nage was easier this week as Oli was not wearing a stiff double weave like Stuart was when I was shown this last time which caused me to struggle to get a strong grip. Graeme showed me another way of doing this throw and that was two hands on the same side lapel as opposed to opposite lapels, which if you look at the link is actually the same way Fallon is demonstrating this. I also think this way of doing the throw would be a lot easier against someone wearing a double weave.
Now I really struggled with Sase-tsurikomi-ashi and Hiza-guruma, which are quite similar throws. I had a habit of pulling Oli down instead of lifting him up and breaking his balance properly. I will try and practice some uchi-komi in the week to correct this.
At the end of the lesson Graeme asked for ideas on how to get new seniors interested in joining the club. My immediate response was to try and tempt some of the parents who bring their kids to the junior sessions to try it out; we shall see how this develops.
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