Yes I must be cursed as I am injured again but hopefully not for too long, anyway more about that later.
Graeme was back coaching, after doing his best Phileas Fogg impression over the last 5-6 weeks if not 80 days. The warm up flowed in to uchi-komi and that flowed in to throwing our partner with the 3rd repetition. We started with tai-otoshi, changed partners and went on to Seoi-nage and then changed partners again before going on to o-uchi-gari. Graeme was using this as a way of grading a number of us for our next respective belts, myself included. I would then be asked to demonstrate a throw, for example sumi-gaeshi, to the class before we all went on to practise it. This was repeated for a number of the throws from the brown belt syllabus and carried on when we changed to newaza. Graeme asked me to demonstrate my favourite submission, San-gaku-jime, to the class and also the complex entry where you attack the turtle. Whilst the rest of the class were practising this Jadon showed me a nifty little escape which I’ve never seen before, demonstrated below.
We finished up with some light randori, with Jadon and I going throw for throw and getting plenty of nice techniques in. We changed partners a number of times until we had all been with each other. Then Graeme called two pairs out and said it was winner stays on randori. I got the better of Jadon to start with before I went through all the cadets and faced Jadon again. This time he threw me and he then went through most of the cadets before being nice to one of them and allowing them to throw him. Matte was called shortly after on what was an excellent class, full of high tempo randori and plenty of throwing practice and half my brown belt theory completed. Mojo restored:)
Now back to this injury. I woke up the nest morning and found a large cricket ball size lump on my left shin. At this point it wasn’t painful, however as the lump got smaller the pain increased so I went to my GP who diagnosed Superficial Thrombosis. I have been prescribed painkillers and antibiotics and have been told to rest for 3-5 days. However some websites state it can take 3-6 weeks before returning to normal which would be very frustrating and would mean waiting until next year before finally get my hands on that brown belt.
