The Kashiwazaki Turnover

I’ve been suffering with Man Flu for the last couple of days so it was touch and go whether I would actually make training last night. However with the prospect of grading for blue belt soon I knew I couldn’t afford to miss any lessons, so I dragged my tired, snot ridden body to Judo.

Graeme was present tonight, specifically to grade both Andrew and Chris for their red belts (6th kyu).
Whilst Graeme took Andrew and Chris to one side to start their grading, Stewart took the rest of the class for a Kashiwazaki masterclass in turnovers.

Kashiwazaki was well known for his obi tori gaeshi (belt-grab reversal) and used it to great effect on his way to becoming world champion in 1981. When I was practising this I always seemed to end up in Mune-gatame, rather than in Tate-shiho and I think it’s because I grabbed the belt palm up, which twisted my arm and forced me to let go of the belt before Uke was flat on their back.

The following are some videos of Kashiwazaki using his famous turnover.

A quick round of Newaza randori followed and this is when I realised I was still suffering the effects of Manflu as I gassed out after only a few minutes. I still managed to hold my own against Meho but was glad when matte was called.

The first throw we worked on tonight was Soto-ashi-dori-ouchi-gari, which was the final throw from the blue belt syllabus that I had yet to be shown. As it is a leg attack we were shown this as a counter against a failed Hiza-guruma. As it can be quite a heavy throw for Uke we were told to keep hold of their collar so as to support their fall.
We were then shown two sacrifice throws, both of which are very similar to the untrained eye. Yoko-tomoe-nage was the first and the crash mat was brought out to soften our fall. We all took turns being tori and throwing the rest of the club on to the crash mat and everyone seemed to have got the hang of this throw pretty quickly.

We went on to practise Sumi-gaeshi, as a counter to a Tai-otoshi and this proved a little harder for everyone to grasp. However I managed to get the hang of this throw quite well. Sumi-gaeshi is a throw that I try quite a lot in randori and rarely ever pull off but I think it’s due to the fact that I’m not planting my right foot first before going to ground.

We finished off with some standing randori and I had a really good back and forth tussle with Meho. Although we have done newaza randori previously, this was the first time that we had faced off in standing randori. Being similar in height, weight and grade we are a pretty good match for each other, similar to my friendly rivalry with Steve at Yoshin Ryu. Hopefully we can use this to our advantage and push us both to progress.

At the end of class we were informed that both Andrew and Chris had successfully passed their grading and were now Red belts, so I suggested a club photo.

Back row, from left to right - Chris, Me, Oli, Meho, Ivan, Andrew
Front Row, from left to right- Peter, Stewart, Graeme