With all the injuries I’ve had this year I’ve avoided
training anywhere other than my own club as its not fair expecting every new
person you train with to “mind the left elbow” and “watch my left leg”. However I
have been feeling a lot better recently and although the elbow still isn’t
healed it’s certainly manageable at the moment. So with this in mind I decided
to make my way to Yoshin Ryu and was duly accompanied by Andrew from Dorking
Judo Club.
After a thorough warm up sensei Neil got us to partner up
for a Tomae-nage drill. The point of this drill wasn’t so much the throw as the
breakfall out of it. We drilled this for quite a while adding in variations of
the Tomae-nage, for example using two feet, all the while trying to perfect a
nice fluid roll out of the throw. We followed this by drilling Sumi-gaeshi from
an over the shoulder belt grip. The foot which would normally be placed on the
inside of ukes thigh was instead placed between their legs as though we were trying
to kick them up the arse. This seems to be Sensei Neil’s most favoured entry in
to Sumi-gaeshi and it is one that he has shown me previously.
Newaza randori followed and I was paired up with Steve. I
managed a quick flower sweep in to ude-garami from mount and got the tap
quickly. I was then able to fend off most of his attacks and attempts at passing
my guard whilst remaining active on the bottom and nearly catching him with juji-gatame
a couple of times, although no more taps were forthcoming.
I then paired with a young brown belt who I managed to
tap with a variety of submissions including ude-garami, Juji-gatame (twice),
san-gaku-jime, and Okuri-eri-jime. A most enjoyable roll.
Next was one of the dan grades with whom I had a tough
time trying to control. He managed to pin me with ushiro-kesa-gatame quite
early on but the rest of the roll was a bit like a chess game as we both tried
to find each other’s weaknesses. It was a nice technical roll.
Last up was another dan grade, this time a small female. I
attacked her quickly and took her back and was then able to make her tap with
Juji-gatame. The rest of the roll I decided to turn down the intensity a little
and tried to concentrate on technique only. I managed to take her back on a
number of occasions but my attempts at finishing with a choke were futile and
again I really need to work on this as it is a glaring weakness in my
submissions.
A quick water break followed before we moved on to
Tachiwaza randori. I paired up with fellow brown belt Sean whom I did manage
one successful O-uchi-gari on. Other than that it was a fairly cagey affair with
neither of us really fully committing and both fighting for the superior grip.
This theme followed in to my next spar with one of the
dan grades, although he was able to throw me a number of times we largely
fought for grips and I came off the worse. My problem is that I’m not used to
fighting guys my height at Dorking but at Yoshin Ryu there are a number of six
footers. So when they take a high grip on me I struggle a little as I’m used to
being the bully where gripping is concerned.
Last up was Steve and we were even cagier than Sean and I
was. Again there was lots of grip fighting and sloppy attempts at throws but
not a lot of Judo. I think we were the catalyst for Sensei Neil calling matte
and making us all do light randori using only one finger and thumb. This was
right at the end of a hard session and as such I was close to just falling
over. However I could see the point of this exercise as we were all too tired
to use any strength and therefore had to rely on technique alone. I realised I need
to work on my technique after this.
This was another excellent hard session at Yoshin Ryu. I
really enjoy the fact that we get 5 minutes of sparring with each person in
Newaza randori as it means you can try out a lot of things and just figure out
what works and what doesn’t. Apparently Wednesday night is Newaza only night at
Yoshin Ryu so I might have to check that out soon. I also like the fact that
there are a number of large brown belts for me to spar with as its vital I get
used to this if I ever want to score points in dan grading competitions.
