The club has been closed for the past two weeks as the water has been contaminated with legionnaires or something like that but as I have been having treatment with a Chiropractor on my shoulder maybe it’s a good thing.
I met up with a friend of mine, Richie who I used to train freestyle Kung Fu with some years ago, at the weekend. Richie took up Judo about 6 weeks after I did but as he lives somewhere up north (Nr Liverpool I think) I don’t get to see too much of him. Anyway he came over to my place and we watched some UFC and checked out some BJJ DVD’s that Boris sent me and then we decided it would be a good idea to try a few things out.
As there isn’t really enough room for throws in my “Den” we decided to look at some groundwork techniques as I was interested to see what he had learned in his Judo lessons and compare that to what I had learnt.
Also as it was 30c outside I had no intention of wearing a gi so we just grappled in our t-shirts, no-gi style if you like.
We started off with me on my back and Richie in my guard. Straight away I noticed he was very compact and wasn’t leaving my much to go for but maybe not having a gi had something to do with it. Richie said his favourite technique was Ude garami (Kimura) and tried this on me even though he was in my guard. I’m not sure if it’s possible to pull this off when you are inside someone’s guard but he had a go. I hadn’t told him about my bad shoulder on my left side but I was ready to tap to protect it but luckily I didn’t have to as I managed to escape and then almost pulled of a nice reversal but the coffee table got in the way lol. Richie was still working and making himself heavy so I tried to isolate and arm and threw up an attempt at Juji-gatame (arm bar) but I was never really in the right position for this and Richie easily got out of this and almost got side control but luckily I was able to quickly retain full guard.
At this point I showed Richie the benefits of San-gaku-jime which is my “go to move” so we broke this down and both tried it on each other. When we used to train in freestyle we did some chokes and strangles and Richie was/is very hard to submit with a choke which is why he was nicknamed Richie “the Neck”.
“the Neck” was still evident as although I got the triangle on him pretty tight and he said it wasn’t comfortable there was no way I was ever gonna get him to submit.
Not a bad little workout really but it is such a shame he lives so far away otherwise we could both really improve our Judo dramatically.
Hopefully Judo will be open this week as I haven’t had a proper Judo lesson for 2 weeks now. I would normally go to another club to get some training in but when you have an injury like I do its hard turning up at a new club and asking them to take it easy on you.
Just to add, I’ve ordered myself a cheap white single weave gi as in this heat my double weave will be unbearable. Hopefully it will arrive before my next lesson.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Friday, 11 June 2010
Staying Frosty
A bit of strange of lesson this week as apart from Peter and Big Stuart only Oli and I turned up and then Peter had to leave early due to work commitments. To make matters worse my shoulder still isn’t right so I have to be careful.
Before Peter left he showed us a couple of interesting throws which I believe were Sumi-gaeshi & Hikikomi-gaeshi. I can’t find Hikikomi-gaeshi on the BJA website but I have a link to Sumi-gaeshi which is a Brown belt level throw. They put the crash mats out especially for me when we were practicing these throws so I had something nice to land on. Because of the nature of these throws, you have to sit down and pull uke to the floor before you throw them over you, I was a little hesitant to fully commit as I was very conscious of my shoulder. This meant that I was never really able to get this one properly but Big Stuart was able to do them both pretty well and was even able to continue rolling so that he ended up in the mount position afterwards which would enable him to go straight in to ground work.
When Peter left the three of us played with a few submissions.
First up was Ude-garami or a kimora as its known by BJJ’ers. As I explained previously an Ude-garami can be pulled off from the mount and side control. In BJJ I believe they call it an Americana if it’s done from the mount, they seem to give every variation of a technique its own name whereas with Judo each technique can be done a variety of ways. Being a Judo blog I’ll always try and use the Judo name for a technique but will try to also add the now more common (due to MMA and the UFC) BJJ name.
There was a technique I had seen in a Judo book that I wanted to try and that was Kakato-jime or heel strangle. Looking at a picture in a book I couldn’t tell how effective this would be but when you can do it against a live person it works very nicely. Again I cannot find this on the BJA website but basically from your back they are in your guard and you choke Uke by crossing your hands and grabbing both sides of his collar and pulling his head towards your left leg which stretched across their neck. If I find a link to this technique I might add it later.
Finally we went over Sankaku-jime or triangle choke which is my favourite go to move. While we are on the subject of triangle chokes I saw possibly the best bit of fight choreography I have ever seen in a TV show called Generation Kill, which is similar to Band of Brothers but based on the Gulf war. Anyway these US marines were playing American Football and one the guys gets upset and rugby tackles this other guy from behind when the ball isn’t even in play and then starts wailing punches on him. The guy that was tackled throws up a wicked triangle choke on the wailer and locks it in pretty tight before reversing him so that the guy in the triangle is now on his back with only his head poking out between this guys leg and then he just starts pummelling him. It doesn’t sound much but it was pretty slick. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come where fight scenes are concerned in films although they have certainly come a long way since Roger Moore used a “Judo Chop” in one of his early James Bond outings to show what a highly trained killer he was.
Anyway back to the Sankaku-Jime technique and neither of us could quite get this right which is strange considering Graeme showed me the right way of doing this a little while ago. Since the lesson of course I have consulted a DVD that Boris from AV Forums sent me and realised the error of our ways. What I and the others were doing wrong was not creating a slight angle when throwing your legs up to get the triangle as we were directly parallel with each other.
We finished up shortly afterwards and as there were only three of us left we had plenty of mats to put away.
The next day I decided to finally get someone other than my GP to look at my shoulder so I booked an appointment with a Chiropractor. I’ve not had good experiences with Chiropractors and Osteopaths in the past so when I called up to make the appointment I asked to speak directly to the Chiropractor to explain my injury and ask what they would be able to do. I liked what I heard on the phone and when I got to the practice about 30 minutes later I was not disappointed with the treatment as it involved not only joint manipulation but also a deep tissue massage and all the time she explained what she was doing and why. While I was there I thought I would see if I could get my long standing shoulder injury which I know is Rotator cuff related, looked at and also a stiff left knee. Surprisingly she gave me treatment for these as well and thinks that I would probably only require a couple more treatments before all is back to normal. If this is the case I will be very happy as I will be able to lift some proper weights again as for the last few years I have avoided direct shoulder presses, although I am still able to bench which works the front delts. Anyway if the treatment does work and I’m hopeful it will, I’ll put a link to their website on my blog which should give them at least a few more hits a year lol.
Busy weekend for me as the World Cup starts and UFC 115 is on Sunday at 3.00am on ESPN. All I can say is thank god for SKY+ as my days of staying up all night to watch fights like the Mike Tyson Vs Evander Holyfield fight ,where Tyson bit off half his ear, are long over.
Before Peter left he showed us a couple of interesting throws which I believe were Sumi-gaeshi & Hikikomi-gaeshi. I can’t find Hikikomi-gaeshi on the BJA website but I have a link to Sumi-gaeshi which is a Brown belt level throw. They put the crash mats out especially for me when we were practicing these throws so I had something nice to land on. Because of the nature of these throws, you have to sit down and pull uke to the floor before you throw them over you, I was a little hesitant to fully commit as I was very conscious of my shoulder. This meant that I was never really able to get this one properly but Big Stuart was able to do them both pretty well and was even able to continue rolling so that he ended up in the mount position afterwards which would enable him to go straight in to ground work.
When Peter left the three of us played with a few submissions.
First up was Ude-garami or a kimora as its known by BJJ’ers. As I explained previously an Ude-garami can be pulled off from the mount and side control. In BJJ I believe they call it an Americana if it’s done from the mount, they seem to give every variation of a technique its own name whereas with Judo each technique can be done a variety of ways. Being a Judo blog I’ll always try and use the Judo name for a technique but will try to also add the now more common (due to MMA and the UFC) BJJ name.
There was a technique I had seen in a Judo book that I wanted to try and that was Kakato-jime or heel strangle. Looking at a picture in a book I couldn’t tell how effective this would be but when you can do it against a live person it works very nicely. Again I cannot find this on the BJA website but basically from your back they are in your guard and you choke Uke by crossing your hands and grabbing both sides of his collar and pulling his head towards your left leg which stretched across their neck. If I find a link to this technique I might add it later.
Finally we went over Sankaku-jime or triangle choke which is my favourite go to move. While we are on the subject of triangle chokes I saw possibly the best bit of fight choreography I have ever seen in a TV show called Generation Kill, which is similar to Band of Brothers but based on the Gulf war. Anyway these US marines were playing American Football and one the guys gets upset and rugby tackles this other guy from behind when the ball isn’t even in play and then starts wailing punches on him. The guy that was tackled throws up a wicked triangle choke on the wailer and locks it in pretty tight before reversing him so that the guy in the triangle is now on his back with only his head poking out between this guys leg and then he just starts pummelling him. It doesn’t sound much but it was pretty slick. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come where fight scenes are concerned in films although they have certainly come a long way since Roger Moore used a “Judo Chop” in one of his early James Bond outings to show what a highly trained killer he was.
Anyway back to the Sankaku-Jime technique and neither of us could quite get this right which is strange considering Graeme showed me the right way of doing this a little while ago. Since the lesson of course I have consulted a DVD that Boris from AV Forums sent me and realised the error of our ways. What I and the others were doing wrong was not creating a slight angle when throwing your legs up to get the triangle as we were directly parallel with each other.
We finished up shortly afterwards and as there were only three of us left we had plenty of mats to put away.
The next day I decided to finally get someone other than my GP to look at my shoulder so I booked an appointment with a Chiropractor. I’ve not had good experiences with Chiropractors and Osteopaths in the past so when I called up to make the appointment I asked to speak directly to the Chiropractor to explain my injury and ask what they would be able to do. I liked what I heard on the phone and when I got to the practice about 30 minutes later I was not disappointed with the treatment as it involved not only joint manipulation but also a deep tissue massage and all the time she explained what she was doing and why. While I was there I thought I would see if I could get my long standing shoulder injury which I know is Rotator cuff related, looked at and also a stiff left knee. Surprisingly she gave me treatment for these as well and thinks that I would probably only require a couple more treatments before all is back to normal. If this is the case I will be very happy as I will be able to lift some proper weights again as for the last few years I have avoided direct shoulder presses, although I am still able to bench which works the front delts. Anyway if the treatment does work and I’m hopeful it will, I’ll put a link to their website on my blog which should give them at least a few more hits a year lol.
Busy weekend for me as the World Cup starts and UFC 115 is on Sunday at 3.00am on ESPN. All I can say is thank god for SKY+ as my days of staying up all night to watch fights like the Mike Tyson Vs Evander Holyfield fight ,where Tyson bit off half his ear, are long over.
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Back from my Hols
There’s been a delay in writing this as I went on holiday the day after my last lesson and as my memory isn’t great I doubt I’ll remember everything I was taught but here goes anyway.
My shoulder still isn’t right since injuring it the other week so I told all concerned that I was going to take it easy and would sit out any randori. Inez took the lesson in Peter’s absence and after the warm up we went in to some light Newazi ,basically just going over various pins and transitioning between each pin whilst ensuring you have control of uke at all times. So we went from Keza-gatame into Kuzure-kesa-gatame into Mune-gatame into Kami-shiho-gatame into Yoko-shiho-gatame.
Inez then showed us some very good escapes from each pin but this is where my memory deserts me as I cannot remember how they were done. They are not the usual ones that you might find on the BJA website under the grading syllabus so they are probably a little more advanced but I’ll be sure to ask her to show me again in the next lesson.
Ryan the BJJ guy was back for his third lesson and he seems to be enjoying himself. I found out that his BJJ club has a class on the same evening as Judo so I was curious to know why he didn’t go. Apparently Thursday nights is no-Gi night at his club and his doesn’t like rolling without the Gi so he figured he would take up Judo. I had a quick roll with Ryan and tried to pull him straight in to my guard but he was quick to pass to half guard and after several attempts he finally got in to side control where he applied Mune-gatame. I managed to reverse him using the classic escape from Mune-gatame that I had learnt for my recent grading and then I got full mount but he reversed me almost immediately, at this point matte was called. I would really like to roll for a good 5-10 minutes with Ryan just to see how quickly he can submit me but we only ever get a couple of minutes at the most with each partner when we do Newaza which can be a little frustrating but this is Judo and not BJJ.
We then went on to practice some entries in to throws and Inez has a great way of breaking down a throw so that we can practice the movement without a partner. As we have done previously she gets us to visualise that we are throwing someone and practice the movements a dozen or so times for each side and for each throw before we partner up and do it for real. As I wasn’t to be thrown my partner (Oli) would hold back on dropping me to the mat but I was able to practice throwing him. The main throw we practiced was Tai-otoshi but I seem to be getting this throw down pretty good by the end of the evening. This throw is part of the Yellow belt syllabus so I will need to perfect it before I can even think about grading again. I will add the Yellow belt techniques to the side tab some point in the future but not until at least a couple more months have passed.
I spoke to Oli after the lesson and asked him if he fancied checking out Ryan’s club sometime and doing a bit of BJJ. He seemed keen so hopefully when my shoulder is fully healed we can pop down there. Another good technical lesson from Inez
My shoulder still isn’t right since injuring it the other week so I told all concerned that I was going to take it easy and would sit out any randori. Inez took the lesson in Peter’s absence and after the warm up we went in to some light Newazi ,basically just going over various pins and transitioning between each pin whilst ensuring you have control of uke at all times. So we went from Keza-gatame into Kuzure-kesa-gatame into Mune-gatame into Kami-shiho-gatame into Yoko-shiho-gatame.
Inez then showed us some very good escapes from each pin but this is where my memory deserts me as I cannot remember how they were done. They are not the usual ones that you might find on the BJA website under the grading syllabus so they are probably a little more advanced but I’ll be sure to ask her to show me again in the next lesson.
Ryan the BJJ guy was back for his third lesson and he seems to be enjoying himself. I found out that his BJJ club has a class on the same evening as Judo so I was curious to know why he didn’t go. Apparently Thursday nights is no-Gi night at his club and his doesn’t like rolling without the Gi so he figured he would take up Judo. I had a quick roll with Ryan and tried to pull him straight in to my guard but he was quick to pass to half guard and after several attempts he finally got in to side control where he applied Mune-gatame. I managed to reverse him using the classic escape from Mune-gatame that I had learnt for my recent grading and then I got full mount but he reversed me almost immediately, at this point matte was called. I would really like to roll for a good 5-10 minutes with Ryan just to see how quickly he can submit me but we only ever get a couple of minutes at the most with each partner when we do Newaza which can be a little frustrating but this is Judo and not BJJ.
We then went on to practice some entries in to throws and Inez has a great way of breaking down a throw so that we can practice the movement without a partner. As we have done previously she gets us to visualise that we are throwing someone and practice the movements a dozen or so times for each side and for each throw before we partner up and do it for real. As I wasn’t to be thrown my partner (Oli) would hold back on dropping me to the mat but I was able to practice throwing him. The main throw we practiced was Tai-otoshi but I seem to be getting this throw down pretty good by the end of the evening. This throw is part of the Yellow belt syllabus so I will need to perfect it before I can even think about grading again. I will add the Yellow belt techniques to the side tab some point in the future but not until at least a couple more months have passed.
I spoke to Oli after the lesson and asked him if he fancied checking out Ryan’s club sometime and doing a bit of BJJ. He seemed keen so hopefully when my shoulder is fully healed we can pop down there. Another good technical lesson from Inez
Friday, 21 May 2010
Injured
During last week’s lesson we practiced front break falls and I messed up slightly by falling on my left elbow which resulted in my left shoulder taking the full force of the fall. The morning after I could hardly lift my left arm above head height so I had obviously injured it in some way. Unfortunately as I was looking after my two nieces over the weekend who at age 6 and 2 like to use me as some sort of climbing frame I was not able to rest the shoulder and probably made it worse. The upshot of all this was that I had to miss training this week which is very frustrating.
I went to the club anyway last night to pay my term fees and had a quick chat with everyone there to let them know that I was injured. It was a good turnout last night so it frustrated me even more that I wasn’t able to train and a sleepless night followed.
Hopefully another week of rest will be enough so that I can return to normal next week otherwise I will be like a bear with a sore head.
What made not training yesterday even more frustrating was the fact that I had bought myself a new Gi. It’s a Blitz Olympian Double weave and my god is it heavy and big. I’m not quite sure that I’ve made a good choice with this yet but chatting to various Judo people on martial arts forums like Bullshido and the Judo Forum website they all say you need a good double weave for competition so maybe I will just wear it in in training and then save it for competitions. I will of course still need a new everyday single weave Gi for training so I will do some more investigations before I part with my hard earned cash.
I went to the club anyway last night to pay my term fees and had a quick chat with everyone there to let them know that I was injured. It was a good turnout last night so it frustrated me even more that I wasn’t able to train and a sleepless night followed.
Hopefully another week of rest will be enough so that I can return to normal next week otherwise I will be like a bear with a sore head.
What made not training yesterday even more frustrating was the fact that I had bought myself a new Gi. It’s a Blitz Olympian Double weave and my god is it heavy and big. I’m not quite sure that I’ve made a good choice with this yet but chatting to various Judo people on martial arts forums like Bullshido and the Judo Forum website they all say you need a good double weave for competition so maybe I will just wear it in in training and then save it for competitions. I will of course still need a new everyday single weave Gi for training so I will do some more investigations before I part with my hard earned cash.
Friday, 14 May 2010
BJJ comes to Dorking
Whilst waiting for the juniors to leave the matted area so we could start our lesson I noticed someone wearing a strange faded black gi top with white trousers. I quickly realised that the gi was a BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) gi so I approached him and asked his name. Ryan trains BJJ at Nova Forca in Epsom which funnily enough is a place I have trained at before many years ago but due to work commitments I had to give it up after only two lessons. Anyway Ryan said he had trained there for 3 years so I couldn’t wait to Newaza with him.
Ryan was introduced to the rest of the class and apparently his daughter has just enrolled in the junior’s which is why he has decided to give Judo a go as he liked the look of it.
After a quick warm up we went straight to Newaza and I was paired with Ryan. He quickly pulled guard but before I could settle he reversed and almost got full mount but I managed to hip escape in to half guard, he then passed to side control and was setting up a submission when he was interrupted by Gill who told him that as he had side control he should go for the pin or hold known as Mune-gatame. I can imagine that for a BJJ guy this would seem quite an alien thing for him to do as even for me, an avid watcher of all things MMA I still give up holds to go for subs.
Regardless I had seen enough of Ryan to know that his ground game was streets ahead of mine and I can definitely learn something from him as I’m sure even the more senior grades can. After reading some Judo forums I sense some animosity from some Judoka towards BJJ guys but that couldn’t be further from the truth as far as I was concerned. Firstly Ryan represented someone new and different to train with and secondly he has some skills from which I can learn from.
We changed partners shortly after Gill’s interruption and I paired up with Oli and then eventually big Stuart. I had a good tussle with big Stuart and nearly caught him twice, first in a San-Gaku-jime and then with Juji-gatame but he eventually escaped and after several attempts at passing my guard he got full mount and was I’m sure just about to go for a sub when Graeme called matte.
We spent some time going over Kesa-gatame and Mune-gatame and the various escapes and I was paired again with Ryan. Kesa-gatame was new to Ryan which really surprised me. I know they don’t use pins per say in BJJ but I thought they would use them to transition. He was having some difficulty with the escape from Mune-gatame so we broke down the escape without the use of a partner by lying on our backs and bridging to each shoulder, then adding the pushing movements with our arms followed by turning on and over our shoulder so that we are laying on our fronts. Done with a partner you end up lying on their chest, hopefully performing Mune-gatame on them.
We then went on to some stand up and practiced Osoto-otoshi and Osoto-gari. To the untrained eye both throws are very similar, the only difference being that with otoshi you place your sweeping leg on the floor behind uke and straighten it up whereas with gari you totally sweep uke’s leg which generally makes for a harder through for uke. This is where Ryan’s general lack of throwing experience showed but he was getting to grips with them by the end.
I hope Ryan comes back next week as he seems like a nice guy and he will offer something different to the club. Who knows, maybe some of us can pay a visit to his BJJ club some time to polish up our ground work and maybe extend an invitation to them to come train some Judo to help with their standup.
Ryan was introduced to the rest of the class and apparently his daughter has just enrolled in the junior’s which is why he has decided to give Judo a go as he liked the look of it.
After a quick warm up we went straight to Newaza and I was paired with Ryan. He quickly pulled guard but before I could settle he reversed and almost got full mount but I managed to hip escape in to half guard, he then passed to side control and was setting up a submission when he was interrupted by Gill who told him that as he had side control he should go for the pin or hold known as Mune-gatame. I can imagine that for a BJJ guy this would seem quite an alien thing for him to do as even for me, an avid watcher of all things MMA I still give up holds to go for subs.
Regardless I had seen enough of Ryan to know that his ground game was streets ahead of mine and I can definitely learn something from him as I’m sure even the more senior grades can. After reading some Judo forums I sense some animosity from some Judoka towards BJJ guys but that couldn’t be further from the truth as far as I was concerned. Firstly Ryan represented someone new and different to train with and secondly he has some skills from which I can learn from.
We changed partners shortly after Gill’s interruption and I paired up with Oli and then eventually big Stuart. I had a good tussle with big Stuart and nearly caught him twice, first in a San-Gaku-jime and then with Juji-gatame but he eventually escaped and after several attempts at passing my guard he got full mount and was I’m sure just about to go for a sub when Graeme called matte.
We spent some time going over Kesa-gatame and Mune-gatame and the various escapes and I was paired again with Ryan. Kesa-gatame was new to Ryan which really surprised me. I know they don’t use pins per say in BJJ but I thought they would use them to transition. He was having some difficulty with the escape from Mune-gatame so we broke down the escape without the use of a partner by lying on our backs and bridging to each shoulder, then adding the pushing movements with our arms followed by turning on and over our shoulder so that we are laying on our fronts. Done with a partner you end up lying on their chest, hopefully performing Mune-gatame on them.
We then went on to some stand up and practiced Osoto-otoshi and Osoto-gari. To the untrained eye both throws are very similar, the only difference being that with otoshi you place your sweeping leg on the floor behind uke and straighten it up whereas with gari you totally sweep uke’s leg which generally makes for a harder through for uke. This is where Ryan’s general lack of throwing experience showed but he was getting to grips with them by the end.
I hope Ryan comes back next week as he seems like a nice guy and he will offer something different to the club. Who knows, maybe some of us can pay a visit to his BJJ club some time to polish up our ground work and maybe extend an invitation to them to come train some Judo to help with their standup.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Red is in the bag
Peter and Graeme explained that this evening’s lesson would be totally geared towards me finishing off the Red belt grading that I started last week. As before the techniques that I had to know were done within the normal lesson and just ticked off as I went through them all.
There was a young guy who had joined us from the juniors this evening for the first time. He’s only 15 but quite tall so he’s probably too big for most of the juniors but was still way to light for the seniors. Still we all took it easy on him and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot from us all. All of the seniors apart from myself are parents anyway so he’ll be well looked after.
We started with some groundwork and I went over again the three holds and the three escapes from these holds. One thing I’ve noticed is that you need strong abs especially for the escape from Kazure-kesa-gatame using sit up and roll as you have to basically do a sit up whilst the other person is laying on you, not easy if you don’t have abs like giant Ravioli. I’ve started adding some Abs work in to my workouts again, I know they should have always been in there but no one likes doing sit ups.
On the subject of workouts I currently train every day of the week apart from the weekend, although sometimes I go for a long walk with the Wife. I usually do a couple of days of free weights, 1 five mile run, some circuit training, 1 Yoga class and then my Judo. I’ve entered next year’s London Marathon again, I’ve entered the last 3 but haven’t got in but I’m hopeful that next year I’ll get lucky, so I may have to start doing lots more running. I figure if I can be running 13 miles by the time the ballot results are out in October then I should be fine.
After the groundwork we went over some throws, specifically the ones I needed to do Osoto-otoshi, De-ashi-barai and Uki-goshi. The Uki-goshi throw that I did on Oli was particularly good for me and it felt effortless. After the throws we had to perform them and go straight in to a hold so we did Osoto-otoshi in to Kesa-gatame, de-ashi-barai in to mune-gatame and then Uki-goshi in to Kazure-kesa-gatame.
Apart from that I had to know several Japanese names like Matte and Hajime and once they ticked those off they told me I had passed.
Tonight’s lesson was cut short due to the election as both instructors were assisting in the counting so we finished 30 minutes early.
Next belt is Yellow and ideally I would like to be Orange by Christmas this year that would leave me 1 year to get Green, Blue and then Brown. I’ll probably look back at these predictions this time next year and laugh but you have to give yourself some tough goals.
The next day after training I looked online for a new Judo suit as the one I have currently is about 20 years old. I found a nice Blue Adidas one so hopefully I can wear that to my next lesson with my nice new Red belt.
There was a young guy who had joined us from the juniors this evening for the first time. He’s only 15 but quite tall so he’s probably too big for most of the juniors but was still way to light for the seniors. Still we all took it easy on him and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot from us all. All of the seniors apart from myself are parents anyway so he’ll be well looked after.
We started with some groundwork and I went over again the three holds and the three escapes from these holds. One thing I’ve noticed is that you need strong abs especially for the escape from Kazure-kesa-gatame using sit up and roll as you have to basically do a sit up whilst the other person is laying on you, not easy if you don’t have abs like giant Ravioli. I’ve started adding some Abs work in to my workouts again, I know they should have always been in there but no one likes doing sit ups.
On the subject of workouts I currently train every day of the week apart from the weekend, although sometimes I go for a long walk with the Wife. I usually do a couple of days of free weights, 1 five mile run, some circuit training, 1 Yoga class and then my Judo. I’ve entered next year’s London Marathon again, I’ve entered the last 3 but haven’t got in but I’m hopeful that next year I’ll get lucky, so I may have to start doing lots more running. I figure if I can be running 13 miles by the time the ballot results are out in October then I should be fine.
After the groundwork we went over some throws, specifically the ones I needed to do Osoto-otoshi, De-ashi-barai and Uki-goshi. The Uki-goshi throw that I did on Oli was particularly good for me and it felt effortless. After the throws we had to perform them and go straight in to a hold so we did Osoto-otoshi in to Kesa-gatame, de-ashi-barai in to mune-gatame and then Uki-goshi in to Kazure-kesa-gatame.
Apart from that I had to know several Japanese names like Matte and Hajime and once they ticked those off they told me I had passed.
Tonight’s lesson was cut short due to the election as both instructors were assisting in the counting so we finished 30 minutes early.
Next belt is Yellow and ideally I would like to be Orange by Christmas this year that would leave me 1 year to get Green, Blue and then Brown. I’ll probably look back at these predictions this time next year and laugh but you have to give yourself some tough goals.
The next day after training I looked online for a new Judo suit as the one I have currently is about 20 years old. I found a nice Blue Adidas one so hopefully I can wear that to my next lesson with my nice new Red belt.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Achilles
Peter mentioned to me that they would start my Red belt grading this evening and that they would probably use Clive as Uke or the receiver of the technique as he was the closest size wise to myself. Although Clive was a Brown belt he was new to me as apparently he hadn’t been to the club for about 4 years due to other commitments.
Inez was taking the class this evening for the first time and her warm up was a little different to that of Peter’s. Ten minutes in to the warm up we all heard this noise like a pencil breaking and Clive, who was right next to me, asked who had just kicked him. At first I thought he was messing about but then he suddenly grabbed the back of his right ankle and collapsed to the floor in pain. He had snapped his Achilles tendon in his right leg and this unfortunately would put a premature end to his return to Judo.
Peter helped Clive off to casualty and we continued with our warm up. Inez’s style of coaching is different to Peter’s and she said that we would have a light session with little sparring. I hope she didn’t see the face I pulled as I love sparring. However my face pulling was to be short lived as this lesson really helped with my throws. Basically she broke down each throw in to 3 sections which we would first drill with an imaginary partner. For example if we were doing Tai-toshi, part one would be to step forward with my right foot. Part two would be to step across to my right with my left foot behind my right foot and part 3 would be the arm movements with the right foot moving across to my left whilst turning my back. It’s difficult to explain without showing but if you know the throw then you’ll understand. Anyway we did this for three or four throws and then we partnered up and did them with a partner and then eventually we moved on to some light Randori where we practised the throws we had just done. All the while this was going on Graeme was walking around marking me for my Red belt grading, so when we did Deashi-barai he ticked that off the list of techniques I had to perform. None of the other styles I have done have gradings like this so it was refreshing and meant there were no nerves.
After Randori we went to some groundwork where we worked on 5 holds and moved from one to the other whilst at all times trying to keep control of Uke. I was thus able to perform all 3 of the holds that are in the Red belt syllabus plus refine Yoko-shiho-gatame and Kazure-kami-shiho-gatame and then took turns with our partner, first doing the holds whilst the other tried to break free of the hold and then we swapped over. When I was being held down I managed to pull off the Escape from Kazure-kesa-gatame, that I needed for my grading so again I had ticked off another technique.
YOKO-SHIHO-GATAME
KAMI-SHIHO-GATAME
Overall apart from poor Clive this was a really good technical lesson which I really got a lot out of.
Graeme confirmed they would finish my Red belt grading next week so hopefully my next post will have the word “red” in the title.
Inez was taking the class this evening for the first time and her warm up was a little different to that of Peter’s. Ten minutes in to the warm up we all heard this noise like a pencil breaking and Clive, who was right next to me, asked who had just kicked him. At first I thought he was messing about but then he suddenly grabbed the back of his right ankle and collapsed to the floor in pain. He had snapped his Achilles tendon in his right leg and this unfortunately would put a premature end to his return to Judo.
Peter helped Clive off to casualty and we continued with our warm up. Inez’s style of coaching is different to Peter’s and she said that we would have a light session with little sparring. I hope she didn’t see the face I pulled as I love sparring. However my face pulling was to be short lived as this lesson really helped with my throws. Basically she broke down each throw in to 3 sections which we would first drill with an imaginary partner. For example if we were doing Tai-toshi, part one would be to step forward with my right foot. Part two would be to step across to my right with my left foot behind my right foot and part 3 would be the arm movements with the right foot moving across to my left whilst turning my back. It’s difficult to explain without showing but if you know the throw then you’ll understand. Anyway we did this for three or four throws and then we partnered up and did them with a partner and then eventually we moved on to some light Randori where we practised the throws we had just done. All the while this was going on Graeme was walking around marking me for my Red belt grading, so when we did Deashi-barai he ticked that off the list of techniques I had to perform. None of the other styles I have done have gradings like this so it was refreshing and meant there were no nerves.
After Randori we went to some groundwork where we worked on 5 holds and moved from one to the other whilst at all times trying to keep control of Uke. I was thus able to perform all 3 of the holds that are in the Red belt syllabus plus refine Yoko-shiho-gatame and Kazure-kami-shiho-gatame and then took turns with our partner, first doing the holds whilst the other tried to break free of the hold and then we swapped over. When I was being held down I managed to pull off the Escape from Kazure-kesa-gatame, that I needed for my grading so again I had ticked off another technique.
YOKO-SHIHO-GATAME
KAMI-SHIHO-GATAME
Overall apart from poor Clive this was a really good technical lesson which I really got a lot out of.
Graeme confirmed they would finish my Red belt grading next week so hopefully my next post will have the word “red” in the title.
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