First the news. Due to some building works being carried out at the Rugby club, whose premises we use for Judo, we will be moving to a new venue after the Easter break although rather fortunately it is only about 1 mile down the road. The building work is scheduled to last until September this year which means we will be away for at least 6 months but from what I have heard this new venue will actually offer us more space. The senior’s session will also change from a Thursday evening to a Tuesday and will finish at the slightly earlier time of 9.30pm.
Big Stuart took the class again tonight and after a quick warm up we practiced some foot sweeps. First up was Ko-uchi-gari and Stuart had us work this from a number of positions including one where we set Uke up by pulling his sleeve towards us whilst pushing his shoulder, thus forcing him to take a step towards me and giving me an easy opportunity to perform the throw. Apart from O-uchi-gari I never really try any foot sweeps as such apart from when I am trying to set up an entry to another throw but I am slowly gaining more confidence in these.
We moved on to De-ashi-barai shortly afterwards and again we practiced a slightly different way of entering in to this throw. Basically by treading on Uke’s foot he normally tries to move it out of the way and it’s at this precise moment that you sweep it with the same leg you used to do the treading. It takes a few goes to get the timing right but again it gave me a renewed confidence in the throw.
Next we got the small crash mats out and practiced Tomae-nage & Yoko-tomae-nage. It was nice as we got to do this quite a few times and we were all performing these pretty well due to that. At one point some Rugby players, who were at the end of the hall stopped to watched and grimaced in pain as we all took turns being thrown through the air. I often wonder none of the Rugby players have ever asked to join in as grabbing people and taking them to the ground is something both sports have in common.
We Finished up with Sumi-gaeshi and worked this both as a defense to a high grip, where Tori reaches over the top of Uke and grabs his belt and also as a counter to a failed Tai-otoshi where we step over Uke’s right leg and throw him with a sort of pendulum effect.
As I said earlier, it was nice to really drill a few throws and get to do multiple repetitions of them. Both Tomae-nage and Sumi-gaeshi are in the blue and brown belt syllabus and I already feel like I have these two throws in the bag.
Next week is the last lesson before the Easter break but Stuart, Oli and I have already decided to train at Yoshin Ryu.
