Neck issues and the return of Ynez.

Due to the half term holidays, DJC was closed last week. Normally I would visit Yoshin Ryu but I’ve been suffering from a stiff neck for the last couple of weeks so instead of Judo I went to see a sports physio. The neck has still been locking up on me from time to time, especially when I’m in the gym but its slowly getting better. I’ve been given a series of stretches to do when I’m sitting at my desk at work as per the below.

I’m trying to do a few reps every hour and making a conscious effort to sit up straight as I do have a tendency to stoop forward towards my monitors.


Ynez took the class last night, which was a nice surprise as we haven’t seen much of her since breaking her elbow in a competition almost a year ago. It was also nice to see all the seniors present which meant we had a full mat. I was sporting my new Toraki gi and I must say it feels really nice and comfortable and fits pretty well to. I will attempt a Meerkatsu style review in a couple of week’s time, after some further washing and shrinkage.

Ynez warmed us up with some circuits of press-ups, sit ups, star jumps & squats etc which meant we were all nice and warm for the Newaza randori which followed.

Ivan’s newaza seems to have improved a lot recently as, despite me having a considerable weight advantage, he is quite difficult to hold down and submit now although I did finally submit him with a Juji-gatame from the top.

Next up was Andrew, one of the white belts, and we were told to start in the guard of the lower ranked person. My top game is definitely a weakness I need to work on with my Newaza so I was thankful for the chance to work on passing the guard of Andrew, who to be fair has also shown an improvement. Once I passed his guard I moved from hold to hold as much as I could before he eventually rolled on to his stomach, to escape a pin, and was submitted by me with a gi choke. I know rolling on to ones stomach is encouraged in Judo as a legitimate escape from a hold but I still can’t bring myself to do it.

My last roll was with Peter who I managed to submit first with a kata-gatame and then with another Juji-gatame form the top.

Ynez then showed us some nice variations of the Yoko-shiho-gatame and we also got to work on Ude-garami from this position.

We finished off with some uchi-komi before Ynez showed us a right handed Ippon-seoi-nage from a left handed grip, which due to the fact my left hand had a hold of Uke’s right sided collar, felt like a stronger throw. Oli, who was my Uke, said that swapping grips is actually quite common for this throw which I wasn’t aware of. I remember that Graeme used to show us quite a few left handed grip versions of various throws, for example Tai-otoshi, which I will start looking at again as I think as one gets higher up in rank it gets harder to throw one’s peers and a few tricks are probably necessary.