I had one of those nights last night where I forgot everything. We were told to do some uchikomi Tai-otoshi and I couldn’t even think how to break Uke’s balance and to make matters worse the rest of my Tai-otoshi was sloppy to say the best. When we were then given free reign to perform any throw uchikomi, all I could think of was Tai-otoshi and O-uchi-gari. This was very frustrating as I wanted to use this opportunity to practice the throws in my green belt syllabus but I couldn’t think of a single entry to any of them.
Things didn’t get any better when we progressed on to Randori apart from a Tani-otoshi which presented itself to me. I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe missing last week’s training due to Flu has something to do with it.
Something that I have been thinking about recently is that I need to train more than just once a week. I think I’ve come to a point in my Judo journey where once a week just isn’t enough to progress anymore so I will be looking at Yoshin Ryu and Westcroft for some additional training and will see which club offers the best days and times to fit in with my other commitments.
Other than the mind blank I had with my tachiwaza we had about half of the class dedicated to just chokes and strangles. Some of these I have seen before but a couple I hadn’t. I particularly liked the “hell strangle” which meant you ended up putting Uke in what BJJ’ers would call the “crucifix” position, and then you strangle them with the collar of their gi whilst they are totally helpless. This technique was performed against Uke from the turtle position and its one I will try and remember and maybe use sometime in the future.
