In my last post I wrote “Something I’m guilty of, and a lot of other kyu grades, is giving up on a throw if it’s not successful straight away. I’ve noticed that when I am watching the Randori at Yoshin Ryu the dan grades will attempt a throw and even if it doesn’t work straight away they will continue twisting and turning in to it until eventually their opponent flips over. “ I figured there was no better place to try and address this than at Yoshin Ryu’s randori night.
Last week there were several white belts and other lower kyu grades present whereas tonight there was one white belt and the next lowest kyu grade was myself and another green belt female.
After a quick warm up we went in to some grip fighting and then progressed in to Uchi-komi. I was paired with the only white belt in the club who displayed better than average skills for his grade. Fresh from Tuesday’s class at DJC the throw that I practised most in uchi-komi was Harai-goshi as I really wanted to add this throw to my repertoire of favourite techniques.
After 15 minutes of Uchi-komi we went in to Newaza and I stayed paired with the white belt guy I was already with. I managed a number of submissions against him including a couple of juji-gatame’s from the bottom, a Juji-gatame from turtle and of course a San-gaku-jime from the bottom.
Next up was Steve and I didn’t fair particularly well against him this week. He managed to pin me a couple of times and also cross collar choked me, again. When he caught me with a second cross collar choke I decided I wasn’t going to tap and despite him trying, for what was probably in excess of thirty seconds, I didn’t tap. I was however pretty glad when matte was called as I had used up a lot of energy. Unfortunately there are no easy rolls for me here for which I could possibly catch my breath and Sean (another brown belt) was next up.
I think this was the first time I have done newaza with Sean so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We had quite a technical roll with lots of submission attempts and movement. From memory he managed two pins against me and I managed 3 subs, two Juji-gatame and a san-gaku-jime.
Following a quick water break the two green belts and the white belt were called out by Sensei Neil. He then asked for three people to fight us and I was paired against one of the other Sensei’s. I was pleased that I managed a successful O-uchi-gari.
When matte was called 5 minutes later Sensei Neil told the three of us (two green belts and a white belt) to stay out and three new partners came out to face us. I was now paired against Steve. I attempted a Harai-goshi and although I wasn’t successful straight away with this I continued pulling and twisting but he eventually got away. I did then manage a Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi and right at the end I attempted an Ura-nage, which is a throw I have never attempted before but, after being thrown by Jaden with this on Tuesday, I recognised that I was in a good position to attempt it myself. Unfortunately, even though I threw Steve I did end up on my own back, so it could have been called against me were we in shiai.
Sensei Neil kept me out for another fight straight afterwards against Sensei Tim and I again attempted a Harai-goshi, which I was quite close to getting.
Following this fight I was finally allowed to take a breather, but only for one round.
Sensei Tim called me out again but this time I was thrown with several highlight throws. He commented after that I needed to make sure I had a dominant grip before attempting one of my forward throws as it was too easy to block me off.
My last randori was against the white belt that I was paired with at the beginning of the class. I managed a number of throws including O-uchi-gari, Uchi-mata and right at the end an O-guruma. I actually had it in my mind to try a Harai-goshi but for some reason it turned in to an O-guruma. It’s odd because this is another throw that I have never attempted before in randori so I was very pleased to have pulled it off even if it was against a white belt.
I really enjoyed tonight’s class even though the three rounds of randori without pause were very tough indeed. I was particularly pleased that I was able to use what I had learnt at Dorking on Tuesday to good effect so in all an excellent week of Judo.
