Thursday 12 July 2012

Everything ends in Juji

As tonight was the last lesson before DJC closes for the summer months we had a rather relaxed class. Once we were warmed up Ivan, Stewart and Peter went off to grade Ivan for his red belt. The rest of us were shown some self defence techniques by Big Stuart.


Stuart then went on to show us some nogi throws like Osoto-gari and Harai-goshi, although we kept our gi’s on we just didn’t take grips. The throws themselves worked fine, although when I was Tori I felt inclined to follow uke to the ground. What did feel weird though was when I was Uke, as being thrown without a gi to hang on to certainly makes for a harder landing.

We played around with the nogi throws and self defence moves until Ivan had passed his grading. Stuart then said that we should all pair up and practise various throws but whatever technique we used we had to follow up with a Juji-gatame. This came about largely due to Ronda Rousey (who is quickly obtaining cult status at our club) finishing all of her MMA fights with a Juji-gatame.

I was paired with Stuart and just to make things interesting, I suggested that we should tell each other which throw to use. That way we would be forced to perform throws that we wouldn’t normally pick. It also posed some interesting problems going from an O-uchi-gari in to a Juji-gatame but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.

As the club is now closed until September I will be training more at Yoshin Ryu. I think I’ve also persuaded Ivan to join me next week.