San-gaku-jime in to Ashi-garami - Yoshin Ryu

I got myself back to Yoshin Ryu last Thursday for their randori night which turned out to be a pretty tough session. Unusually there were only 12 of us on the mats, 7 dan grades and 5 kyu, which is about half of what I would normally expect to see.


Tim got us warmed up and then went on to show us Waki-gatami from turtle, something I have been shown before at DJC. Following this he showed us a variation where we bail on the Waki-gatame and end up taking Uke’s back instead. We got to drill them a number of times before we were told to start Newaza randori with the partner we were already with. I just so happened to be with Mark, a green belt whom I have chatted to before on E-Judo. It was a tough roll with Mark managed to pin with me with a Kesa-gatame before I was then able to catch him with a San-gaku-jime. Unfortunately I was not able to finish him with this despite try to shift my angle, pull his arm across to my right, hold his arm straight, and pull down on my leg, all the usual things you’d try before giving up. As I was fresh at this point I held position for a little longer than normal before trying to secure a Juji-gatame but matte was called. My legs were now a little tired from holding the san-gaku for such a long time and the rolls got harder and harder from there on in. I had good tussles with a brown and black belt, both of whom were considerably smaller than me. I probably used a little too much strength with some of my techniques as I was determined not to be subbed or pinned, which of course tired me even more. I did catch the black belt in another San-gaku-jime and again I was not able to finish him but this time instead of spending too much time and effort trying to get it I progressed in to Ashi-garami (that’s triangle to Omoplata for my BJJ/MMA readers). I then spent a while trying to get him to tap from this position but nothing I did seemed to work and eventually he made enough of a gap that he managed to squirm out. I’m going to try and work on finishing from the Omoplata position and go back to the drawing board again with my San-gaku-jime as I should be subbing a lot more people than I do.

Ashi-garami or Omoplata

This is a pretty cool entry in to Ashi-garami but not sure if this would be legal in Judo.

My last rolls were against two of the sensei’s and by this time I was knackered and really couldn’t put up much of a fight, not that I would have fared much better had I been fresh. Sensei Tim passed my guard at will rendering my legs totally useless. I may as well have tired them both together for all the good they did me. However, as I’ve said before in the past, I don’t find it demoralising to be crushed by the sensei’s I actually find it inspiring and gives me something to aim for. Now it’s unlikely at my age that I’ll ever get any higher than 1st dan but I think Newaza is something that you can probably be good at for longer as there is little to no impact like there is with tachi-waza.



I only managed two and a half rounds of standing randori. My first opponent, a yellow belt, was so tired that he had to leave the mat halfway through the 3 minutes to be sick. Up to that point I was able to throw him a couple of times with O-uchi-gari and Uchi-mata.

I then followed this up with two tough rounds against dan grades one of whom was constantly fighting for grips with me, which really tired my arms out. This fight actually went on for about 10 minutes as the Sensei’s were busy seeing to someone who had gotten injured and forgot to call matte. We were therefore both very tired at the end.