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
