Hard Training - Yoshin Ryu

With DJC closed due to the half term I was determined to train at least once last week with Yoshin Ryu my preferred destination. Both Oli and Jadon were also looking for somewhere to train on Thursday so we all made the trip up to Coulsdon. I would have also liked to have trained elsewhere but with my wife in “nesting mode,” due to the impending arrival of our wee bairn, I have been kept busy painting and decorating nearly every room downstairs, although one of those rooms is to be our home cinema/TV room, so not all bad.


I have been hyping up Yoshin Ryu to Jadon for a while now, talking about how there are sometimes 30+ guys on the mat with at least half of those dan grades. Unfortunately there were only 10 people on the mat last week but if I thought that meant we were in for an easier session I was to be hugely mistaken.

Before we did any randori we did plenty of grip fighting, uchi-komi & throw for throw, all the time interspersed with sets of sit ups, press ups and squat thrusts. I must admit, doing Squat Thrusts at a club where Brian Jacks is the president always gives me an incentive to do them correctly and as fast as I can. It’s just a shame that they don’t have any parallel bars for some dips.

It wasn’t long before we were told to kneel up and rei for some Newaza randori and first up for me was a small orange belt. This was a nice warm up roll for me as I was able to move from Kesa to Mune to tate-shiho and get the odd submission. I mostly worked on my top game but did pull guard a couple of times to work on my sweeps and also get what was to be my only successful submission by san-gaku-jime.

My next couple of rolls were against the sensei’s where I got to practice being crushed, feeling helpless and tapping. One of the problems that Neil pointed out to me was that when I pulled guard against him I didn’t bring him in close enough to me, which then allowed him time and space to control my legs and pass my guard. I’m also, apparently, telegraphing my san-gaku-jime which allows them time to posture and move.

One thing I have noticed in general about my Newaza is that I tend to hunt for submissions, maybe a little too quickly. I probably need to work a little on “position before submission” as when my sub attempts are stuffed it often results in me being pinned.

Following a quick water break it was tachi-waza randori and first up for me was the orange belt that I had already done newaza with. I was quite surprised at how difficult I found throwing this guy and in fact he got the first throw on me, countering my uchi-mata with a ko-uchi-gari which left me on my arse. I upped the tempo a bit afterwards to try and force him in to a mistake and eventually managed an O-uchi-gari and then right at the end I faked a Tai-otoshi and got him with a Tani-otoshi.

With only a few of us present tonight we didn’t get the chance to sit out and watch others so I went straight in to my next two rounds without a break and both of these were against black belts. I did get close to throwing one of the sensei with an O-uchi-gari but I mainly got to work on my breakfalls.

Eventually matte was called and everyone looked extremely tired. However Sensei Neil decided we still had more to give so he made us pair up and take turns doing 10 second sprints on the spot followed by 10 uchi-komi Ippon-seoi-nage’s, both sides. We both had to do this twice before we finally kneeled up for the end of the class.