Ippon seoi nage

Joining Peter and Graeme on the mat tonight was another black belt, a 2nd dan called Duncan. I learned later that he has spent many years living in Japan and has even taught Judo over there so he is a welcome addition to the club.

Following our warm up I partnered up with Oli for some Ippon seoi nage uchi-komi. Graeme broke down this throw in to detail tonight and by the end of the class I was probably performing this throw better than I had ever done before. Now, this throw does favour the shorter person so it’s never going to be a favourite of mine but there are now a couple of taller guys in the club whom I could try this on next time we do randori.

Duncan was able to add some additional details of this throw which I found very useful. One was that you don’t want to be too close to Uke after you have turned in as when you pull uke on to your back, you want them to be off balance and this won’t happen if you are already touching them. I found this Koga video, which I think shows this perfectly. He does of course make this throw look ridiculously easy, even with one hand.

The full throw

We got the crash mats out afterwards so that we could practise a fully committed version of the throw, one where you get really low under uke and then drive upward, doing a forward roll yourself in the process.

We finished up with about 5 rounds of light randori and to be honest I am still feeling a little rusty after the Christmas break. My attempts at Harai-goshi and O-guruma were woeful as I wasn’t breaking their balance or getting low enough. I therefore reverted to my trusty Uchi-mata and O-uchi-gari combination, which due to my long legs I always have success with. When paired against Oli he tried and almost succeeded in getting a flying San-gaku-jime on me. I sometimes forget just how good Oli is at Judo and how much knowledge he has. These occasional acts of brilliance remind me and I hope that he can remain injury free long enough this year to finally get his well deserved black belt.