Friday 27 May 2011

Tai-Otoshi & Kata-gatame

Only four students tonight with Peter and Graeme instructing and after a very quick warm up we were told to partner up. We were then told to pull our partner across the mat and whilst doing so we were to get in to position to throw with Ippon-seoi-nage. We practiced this a few times up and down the mats with each of us taking turns being uke. There was a particular emphasis on turning in to our partners using just two steps. Being taller than everyone in my club this isn’t a favourite of mine and I doubt I would ever attempt it in Shiai but breaking the throw down like this definitely helps.


Following this we then went on to some groundwork and Pater had us go through various holds, and made us practice moving from one to the other, whilst ensuring that we had control at all times.


We started in Kesa-gatame, and then moved to Kata-gatame, then Tate-shiho-gatame, then into Yoko-shiho-gatame before finally finishing in Kesure-kesa-gatame. I was with Big Stuart for this and we practiced first with no resistance from Uke and then with Uke resisting each hold.

Finally Peter showed us the submission from Kata-gatame, which is basically an Arm Triangle in BJJ although the way Peter applied the submission it was more like a neck crank than a choke, which is technically illegal in Judo Shiai. Still the pain was so sudden that you had to tap straight away, which would very likely be missed by a potential referee.

You can see from the pic of Kata-gatame (this is not on the BJA website,) that this differs from your usual Arm Triangle strangle due mainly to the angle from which it is applied. An Arm Triangle puts more emphasis on pushing the arm across your opponent’s neck and using that to choke him with whereas with the high angle of Kata-gatame you can see why the neck is cranked.


We then went back to the throw we had started to break down at the beginning of the class and Peter got the crash mats out. We all took it in turns to throw everyone else and for some reason I just wasn’t on form tonight. In fact the best throw of the night went to Jamie, who threw Big Stuart right over his head with a near perfect Ippon-Seoi-nage. When I was throwing I seemed to be using too much effort, probably because I wasn’t getting down low enough, but like I said earlier this throw does not suit tall people.


Our next throw to practice was Tai-otoshi and again it just never felt quite right, probably because we haven’t practiced this throw in a while. Despite my throws not being the best I really enjoyed having the crash mats out and wish that we could have more lessons with the crash mats out so we could just practice all the throws we have learnt.


Looking back at the nights lesson I can see this was tailored towards someone taking their 5th grading, i.e. Ryan. Unfortunately Ryan wasn’t there tonight but it was good for me to go over these techniques again, although looking at the Orange Belt Syllabus I have a lot of throws that I haven’t done before or done in a long time and they are:

Ko-uchi-gari
Tsuri-komi-goshi
Ko-soto-gake

Ko-soto-gari
O-soto-gari
Seoi-otoshi

So as you can see I have my work cut out to learn all of these. Hopefully the next lesson will have some of these throws on the lesson plan.