Tuesday 30 April 2013

2nd Kyu

I was up all night Saturday with some sort of stomach bug and bed ridden most of Sunday. I managed a mouth full of toast on Monday morning which was the first bit of food I had eaten since Saturday, and another piece of toast on Monday night. I was much the same on Tuesday with a bloated stomach and severe lack of appetite so my wife was a little confused that I chose to go to Judo on Tuesday night.


We did a light warm up but I was already blowing out my arse and questioning my sanity for training when all I had eaten to sustain myself were a few dry pieces of toast.

Following the warm up we went straight in to some newaza randori and oddly enough, despite my lack of cardio I decided to attack from the off and make sure I got and maintained top position. I even managed to submit Oli with the bow and arrow choke that I attempted but failed with last week.

Graeme then told me that we would be finishing off my blue belt grading tonight. I was told that I had to pick four techniques not on the blue belt syllabus and perform them so I first chose San-gaku-jime. I had to perform this technique on my uke and explain the important parts of it. I then had to also perform the version of this where you attack the turtle. Graeme said that the next three techniques had to be tachiwaza so I went a bit safe with O-uchi-gari. I also had to show counters and combinations to this throw, Ko-uchi-gari and Tai-otoshi being the obvious choice.

My next throw was Uchi-mata. Again this was a little safe for me as it’s my 2nd favourite show, next to O-uchi-gari. For my final throw I chose something from the brown belt syllabus, Sumi-gaeshi and just about managed to pull it off to a satisfactory level.

The last part of the grading was some randori where I was told to use lots of different attacks, counters, combinations etc and despite being very tired I did enough. I was presented with my blue belt by Graeme at the end of the class.

I was told that I could grade for brown belt by the end of this year which would mean that by the start of next I would begin my dan grading….Yikes

7 comments:

  1. Howcome you cant grade till then? seems quite a while.

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    1. To me unless you are a extraordinary competition player earning loads of points, going from blue to brown in 7 months is very fast. In my club people tend to stay on blue & brown belts for a number of years. Come to think of it even those earning lots of competition points stay a few years on upper Kyu belts.

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    2. In the BJA you can't start earning points until you are brown belt (1st kyu), when you need to get 100 to get your black belt (as well as passing you Dan grade theory test)
      I started grading for blue belt back in October last year and the only reason that its taken this long is due to the club not having the time or resources to grade me in 1 night. Assuming I had passed in October, grading for brown in December of this year would mean 14 months between grading, so really its not that quick.

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  2. They didn’t say I couldn’t grade until the end of the year it was more a case of I could be ready to grade by the end of year. To be honest, I’d rather be a good blue belt than a poor brown belt, especially if you visit another club where the dan grades won’t be so forgiving against brown belts.
    How's your training going btw, are you still doing BJJ?

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  3. Congratulations on getting your Blue belt.

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  4. When I can. Did a session recently. Training at guildford judo, very much enjoyed a session a Witley so want to return there. Am moving to Dorking temporarily so will get in some Dorking sessions!.

    Currently enjoying triangle/armbar combo's and the pendelum sweep, all from bottom. Have not decided whether working on maintaining a hold down rather than working towards submission will be good for my grappling or not.

    Congrats again on the blue. Am hoping to grade soon.

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    1. Staying in Kesa or Tate-shiho gatame and not going for the sub must seem very foreign for a BJJ player. I found it hard to do when I first started Judo simply because I had watched so much MMA.

      Glad you enjoyed Witley, Pete is an excellent coach and i'm going to try and get some more sessions in there myself soon. When you move to Dorking maybe we can hit Yoshin Ryu for some hard randori?

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