Following last week’s rant at buying a Judo gi I’ve been in conversation with a certain company who have so far provided excellent customer service and have taken my measurements to ensure I get the best fitting gi possible. I will hopefully post a favourable review of this gi when I receive it a couple of weeks time, so watch this space.
I got to class a little bit earlier last night and was pleased to see that both Chris and Andrew had returned for the third successive week. There was also a new guy, whose name escapes me, who was previously a blue belt when he was a teenager. Also present tonight were Graeme and David so in total we had 10 seniors on the mat, which is as many as I can remember. Anyway the future is looking good for the seniors at DJC at the moment.
Big Stuart took the class tonight and after the warm up which also consisted of many breakfalls we moved on to Tai-otoshi. We first practised this in pairs; I was with Ivan at this point. Stuart pointed out to me that I was bending over a little too much and that I should be more upright. Once I made that adjustment Ivan commented that the throw felt stronger. We continued to practise this for many repetitions before Stuart split us into groups of three’s. Each group stood in a line with the guy in the middle running up to each guy and throwing them. We did this again for multiple repetitions and all took turns being tori. This was a very useful exercise as not only do you get to practise the throw multiple times but you also get to throw two different people in quick succession.
We moved on to some groundwork afterwards and worked on Kesa-gatame and Kezure-kesa-gatame, mainly for the benefit of the white belts. We also did a turnover from turtle in to kezure-kesa-gatame and finally ude-garami. I got to work with one of the new guys and passed on some advice that was given to me by Peter when I first started and that was: When doing Newaza try to only move one thing at a time, otherwise you leave big gaps. I think he took my advice on board as when we progressed in to Newaza randori at the end of the class as he was able to hold me down with the Kesa-gatame that I let him put on me.
I managed two other rounds of newaza with David and finally Big Stuart, with whom I had a pretty good back and forth tussle before the class ended.
Another good session taken by Stuart whose teaching methods I find very agreeable.
