Okuri-ashi-barai ( The Oomph throw)

Judo has had to take a bit of a back seat for the last couple of weeks due to the early arrival of my Daughter Florence, who decided she wanted to make an appearance 10 days earlier than expected and low and behold a future Ju-Dan was born.

So with the birth of Florence and with the continuing physiotherapy I am having on my shoulder, the result has been no Judo for almost a month.

Anyway I was back last night and although I wasn’t exactly raring to go, due to weeks of broken sleep, I was looking forward to seeing everyone again.
We warmed up with some pushing and pulling exercises and then we all took turns running up and down the mat before throwing each member of the club once, which meant we were all nicely warmed up.

The lesson focused mainly on two foot sweeps, De-ashi-barai and Okuri-ashi-barai , which is apparently known as the “oomph” sweep (the noise uke makes when he hits the floor and all the air is knocked out of him).
This was very similar to a lesson we had in November “foot sweeps” but whereas I struggled slightly with my timing, especially with Okuri-ashi-barai, tonight I was able to perform it fairly well. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that my Uke was Ynez who is considerably lighter than Black Belt Stuart, whom was my Uke previously, but I’d like to think that I’ve just got that little bit better since then.

Following this we did some Randori and for the first time ever I got to spar with Peter. Understandably I found Peter particularly difficult to control, of course when I say control what I really mean is that he controlled me and put me down with ease but again I attacked constantly and he complemented me on some of the entries to my throws, even though I wasn’t successful with them.

We changed partners and this time we were told that from a throw we were to go into ground work. I was paired with Ryan and managed to get him down with Osoto-otoshi but I ended up in his guard. I attempted to pass but was quickly reminded by Ryan that he has superior ground skills as he almost reversed me. Luckily for me you are only given a short amount of time on the ground in Judo and I managed to stay in his guard without being swept for the next 20-30 seconds before matte was called.

We then changed to Newaza and I got a chance to roll with Peter. I got side control and got a nice Yoko-shiho-gatame on him, to which he complemented me on. Not wanting to sit there with the pin for the whole of my roll I mounted which gave me Tate-shiho-gatame. I held this until matte was called. We then had a second roll and this time I decided to pull guard and try for a sweep but Peter gave me the opportunity to get my favourite San-gaku-jime and although it took a while I did eventually make him tap.

As I sit here writing this I’m trying to work out just how hard Peter was trying against me. I could never submit Ricardo, my BJJ instructor and he would never let me submit him, not because he has an ego but because he wants you to be able to gauge your progress by how long you can survive against him. When I did Randori against Peter he took it easy on me by not smashing me to the ground but he never let me throw him because that would have given me false confidence. So why then was I able to submit him? I know that when Big Stuart and Oli are really trying that they have too much for me and maybe if we rolled ten times I could submit them once or twice so surely I couldn’t submit a black belt. All this has fuelled my desire to go back to BJJ and do some more training but I know that until I have gotten the Marathon out of the way that I just don’t have the energy and also training BJJ increases my chances of getting injured so I will wait until after April 17th.

At the end of the class we were informed that Graeme had recently passed an advanced Dan grade theory test which meant that he was a black belt but unfortunately he could not wear the belt for another year as he had only been a 1st kyu for 4 years and the minimum time spent as 1st kyu is 5 years unless you earn your black belt in competition. This is good news as Graeme is very deserving of a Dan grade especially with all the time and effort he puts in to the club and with the coaching of the juniors so well done Graeme.

I really enjoyed last night and I was pleased that I didn’t show any signs of being rusty. Hopefully my shoulder can hold out and I can now start pushing towards my 4th kyu which I would like to get before the summer.

London Marathon

Just wanted to take this opportunity to put a link to my London Marathon “justgiving” page, which I am using to help raise money for charity.

Any contributions no matter how small would be appreciated.

Anniversary

Well it’s been 1 year since I started Judo at Dorking Judo club so I thought I’d reflect on what I had learnt and how my thoughts have changed since my first couple of posts in February 2010. In my first lesson only 3 people were present, Big Stuart, Peter and myself. Oli was absent for the first couple of lessons as was Ynes, Troy and Gill. Then Mark returned to Judo after a long absence and Black Belt Stuart came back to Judo, also after an absence. We have had a number of new people who have come and gone and this is quite typical with Martial Arts and can be a little frustrating for the Instructors who give their time and effort to teaching someone who then just disappears, usually without even saying goodbye or providing a reason. For bigger clubs who turn over a profit and pay the instructors this doesn’t matter so much but for most small, locally run clubs, they usually only break even and all the instructors teach for nothing other than for the joy of teaching.

In fact the only person to start after me and stick with it is Ryan. We do have Jamie who started in January of this year but he was absent from last night’s class so I hope he isn’t yet another name to add to the list of people who give up.



Looking back at my first post I wrote that I was able to hold down Big Stuart with a Mune-gatame and Kesa-gatame and that he was not able to escape therefore I must have learnt the technique perfectly. I also thought that I was able to best a big Brown belt Judoka in Newaza because I nearly caught him in a San-gaku-jime. Oh dear, I’m glad Big Stuart didn’t read my early posts otherwise he would have got the wrong impression of me and maybe of crushed me the next time we did Newaza. Of course none of the senior grades try much at all against the noob’s as they usually let us get submissions in Newaza and throw them in Randori. This is in complete contrast to my experience of BJJ where as a beginner you are crushed by everyone from the beginning. The only time you get any joy is when some other new person starts and you are then eager to crush them and welcome them to BJJ.


So which way is the best?


Well at least when I did BJJ I didn’t have delusions of grandeur, thinking that I was able to submit brown belts because I had watched a few UFC’s. Of course before I had my first BJJ class I did think that I might do ok but I did very quickly realise that I was way out of my depth.
With Judo on the other hand I am still not sure how I stack up against the more senior grades as I never know how much effort they are putting in when we do Tachiwaza randori or Newaza. Yes I have submitted nearly everyone in the club at some point and thrown everyone as well but would I be able to do so if they were really trying?

It would be nice if we did occasionally have a Randori only night where we didn’t learn any techniques and all we did was fight. I know my club is very recreational and we are all the wrong side of 30, so we are never going to make the Olympics, but surely even if we did this once a month it would be nice. Now I’m not saying we never spar, because we do in every class, but usually it’s only for about 25 minutes in total when you add the Tachiwaza and Newaza together.



One thing I have done that I mentioned in one of my first posts is train some BJJ. Although I did suggest I would try and attend a BJJ seminar held by Kevin Chan, who was my Wing Chun Instructor, which never happened, I did still manage to make it down to Nova Forca in Epsom for a couple of months in the Summer and had some seriously hard training sessions with the guys down there. Their attitude to training is very much that you learn on the job and by your mistakes. So as I have already said a complete beginner will get crushed by everyone in his first lesson and probably only be taught 2 techniques. But he would learn so much more from his first lesson and usually by about lesson 4 you can start to see a huge difference in his game and he would probably be able to control someone else who has just walked through the door for their first lesson.
Now I would imagine if my Judo club took this approach then they would seriously limit the type of students that would want to learn as only someone very fit and athletic and who can take a beating would want to attend Judo week after week if they were being dumped on their heads by the seniors. When I attended Westcroft Judo club their attitude to training was more in line with Nova Forca but I was a lot younger then and able to take the beating, or so I thought because I ended up getting seriously injured tearing both my Pec major and minor.


So to summarise I like the way my Judo club teach, it is right for our club but now and again it would be nice to be a little bit more like Westcroft or Nova Forca but only now and then as we don’t want to get everyone injured.


What else has happened in the last year?

I have gone up two belts having gained my red (6th kyu) in May 2010 and my yellow (5th kyu) in December 2010. This year I hope to go up two more belts by gaining first my orange and then green which would hopefully mean by the end of 2012 I would be near Brown belt level.


I injured by shoulder in May whilst doing front breakfalls incorrectly and have since injured it again whilst doing a rowing challenge in the gym at work. I do have a weakness in my left shoulder ever since I injured my chest doing Judo about 8-9 years ago. The injury basically restricts the movement I have in my left arm which means if the chest is tight one side of your body then the rear deltoids on the other side are probably not aligned correctly and thus are prone to injury. I am seeing a sports massage therapist at the moment who thinks that with plenty of stretching and some deep tissue massage it may solve this problem once and forever. If it doesn’t then I guess surgery is the alternative but it would be worth doing if it finally cured my shoulder problem and then allowed me to start doing shoulder exercises in the gym again.



I got accepted in to the London Marathon which is on April 17th of this year. This has obviously meant that I am doing a lot of running which has helped with my general fitness and has meant that I now weigh in at 90kg, having lost about 4kg or 8.8lb. Most of the weight I have lost is from around my stomach, which is good but I am already fantasising about getting back in the gym after the marathon so that I can start lifting some proper weights and getting lumpy again. Once the Marathon training started I quickly realised that I was going to struggle to keep up both the Judo and BJJ training so I had to give up BJJ but I do hope to revisit this sometime this year although finance may be a problem due to the most important thing which happened last year and probably the most important thing ever in my life which is that my Wife became pregnant, with the baby being due on the 9th March.


That’s it, a quick summary of 1 years worth of Judo and how my thoughts have changed throughout. The club is closed next week due to the school holidays which isn’t a bad thing as it will give my shoulder another week to recover. In the meantime Ryan leant me a good book called Guerrilla Jiu jitsu by Dave Camarillo. Having had a quick look already this seems like a good fusion of both BJJ and Judo so I shall enjoy reading this over the next couple of weeks until I can hopefully try out the moves in Judo, until then enjoy.

Ko-Uchi-Gari into O-Uchi-Gari combination

A relatively small turn out last night, only 6 seniors including two instructors, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable session.

Black Belt Stuart took us threw a gentle warm up before going in to some O- Goshi Uchikomi. I was paired with Big Stuart and what we did was practice the entry to the throw 9 times before completing the throw on the 10th repetition. This was a great way to get a sweat on and really helped me with the technical aspects of what is an orange belt throw.

Following that Peter took over and had us work on Ko-uchi-gari, again breaking the throw down in to the entry before we completed the throw. Again this is an Orange belt throw so I feel like I am definitely slowly learning techniques from the Orange belt syllabus.
After a little while Peter then added O-uchi-gari to the Ko-uchi-gari. I was paired with Jamie by now so I would first attack him with Ko-uchi-gari and if he stepped back I would continue the attack with O-uchi-gari. As combinations go it’s a fairly simple one to pull off but nonetheless effective. Peter also slightly modified this attack so that after the initial Ko-uchi-gari instead of going straight for the O-uchi-gari you grab uki’s right leg first. This made the fall slightly harder for Uke but increased tori’s chances of getting an Ippon.

Peter then had Big Stuart and myself face off in Randori but after the 1 minute time limit Stuart would immediately fight Jamie and then Ryan before Ryan then fought everyone and so on until I did the same.

This effectively meant you were fighting for 4 minutes without a break against fresh opponents each minute. It doesn’t sound much but was a good workout.

There were too many throws to remember but the highlights for me were a Tani-otoshi against Big Stuart, an Osoto-otoshi & Sumi-gaeshi against Ryan and an O-uchi-gari and Osoto-otoshi against Jamie. I was particulary pleased with the Sumi-gaeshi that I threw Ryan with and both Peter and Stuart commented that I did well to even attempt it.

The Randori was definitely performed with a lot more aggression and was more akin to Shiai than the usual randori we perform in the club. This was probably largely due to the fact that everyone was watching and no one wanted to be thrown. I did abandon my usual attack attack attack philosophy for this very reason but I still made sure than I attacked more than I defended and was pleased that Big Stuart was the only person who managed to throw me.
What I did notice though was how stiff armed Jamie, the white belt was. I found it difficult to even get a grip on him as he was moving backwards the whole time. The only way I was able to throw him was to get quite physical and drag him off balance. The fact that he had stiff arms meant he was quite easy to off balance. We spoke briefly afterwards about how stiff armed he was and I commented that to the higher grades I still appear stiff armed and that with practice and confidence he will loosen up.

We finished up with some Newaza but it was quite light and we just went from hold to escape to hold. Peter showed us an escape from the guard into Yoko-shiho-gatame which was quite nice and yet again I notice this is an Orange belt technique.

At the end of the lesson Peter remarked that he was already starting our grading and would test us in the coming weeks and months until we had ticked off everything we needed for our next belts. Looking back at the techniques we learnt in the lesson I assume he was talking to me and probably also Ryan. When I get time I’ll post a link to all the Orange belt techniques I need to master.

As I said at the beginning of my post I really enjoyed tonight’s lesson despite my shoulder feeling worse than ever. I’m just a little gutted that I won’t be able to enter of the upcoming tournaments due to my Marathon commitments.

More Goshi's

I managed 12 miles last Sunday which took me 2 hours and 3 minutes of pure hell. From about the 10 mile mark the muscles in my legs were in pain and my joints were aching a lot. I’m glad I did it though and will again this weekend run another 12 miles before lowering the mileage for 1 week to aid recovery before upping the mileage to following week to 15.


Graeme took last night’s Judo and I must say it was an excellent lesson. Our warm-up started with various commando crawls across the mats and also lots of dragging another person across the mat using nothing but the belt to hold on to. We ended the warm up with various breakfalls and then Ynez took us through some stretching. I must say the warms up are more and more starting to resemble the type of workouts I was doing in BJJ, although not tiring the intensity is definitely slowly being raised week on week. It’s hard to say if this is a conscious effort on behalf of the instructors to improve everyone’s cardio but it’s very enjoyable non the less.


As we were all nicely warmed up we went in to some Newaza and I first paired up with Oli. Oli was being slightly defensive so I attacked and Oli willingly gave up his back so I got my hooks in and tunred him on his side and looked for a choke. Oli was defending his neck well so I decided to try and pull one of his arms away from his neck and try for a Hiza-gatame. Oli managed to posture up and somehow ended up in my guard but had his left arm outside so I quickly went for a San-gaku-jime. I think Oli had recognised the danger he was in had already started to posture up so I never really had full control of his head. Nonetheless I tried in vain to get him to tap but Graeme called matte before I could do so.



Next up was Jamie and as he has only had 3 lessons I just pulled guard and talked him through passing my guard using his elbows and then getting him to use Mune-gatame once he has passed. This is the first time I have rolled with Jamie and he feels pretty strong so once he starts progressing more and learning the techniques he could be quite a handful.


My last roll was with Big Stuart but this time we took turns in starting on all fours. I quickly jumped on his back and tried in vain to get a choke. I must say it’s really difficult for me to get any sort of choke on and I can’t remember a time in Judo when I have. In an attempt to get some sort of submission I tried the same move that I did against Oli earlier, i.e. the Hiza-gatame and again it didn’t work but this time Stuart ended up with Mune Gatame on me. Graeme called matte and we swapped over with me on all fours. When we started I tried to roll in to guard but I messed this up slightly and Stuart got Mune Gatame and then he got full mount. I tried the trap and roll technique and almost had him but he managed to get me back down again. The rest of our roll then consisted of me struggling underneath him but with no success.



Graeme then stood us all up and said he would be showing us some Goshi’s or hip throws. We stayed with the partners we were already with which meant I would have to throw Big Stuart, which I’ve always struggled with because he is a lot heavier than I am. However for some reason I was able to throw him with quiteeasily with O-goshi. Even when Graeme then showed us Tsurikomi-goshi, which I had previously found difficult due to the grip, I was still able to throw him well. This really pleased me as with me being the tallest in the club, hip throws are not particularly easy for me to do. The last hip throw we learnt was Sode-tsuri-komi-goshi and with the help of Ynez I was even able to pull this one off quite well. I’ve since realised that two of these throws are in the Orange belt syllabus., my next grading.



Before we started Randori Graeme had us pair up but instead of actually throwing we would stop just short of doing so. There is a Japanese name for this but at the moment it escapes me. We would take turns in attacking and Graeme then said we had to do 2 throws and then finally a 3 throw combination. I found this really helpful as I was able to try a throw, of which Stuart would resist or move out of and then I could physically see what throw was then available or best to use from that position.


On to Randori then and I was paired up first with Oli. Oli seemed to be attacking slightly more than he usually would against me which was good as sometimes I need to be brought back down to earth. However I did manage a Sumi-gaeshi against him right at the end which is a technique I have been successful with recently.


Next up was Mark and this was a good tussle as Mark is quite strong and more senior but not enough that he has to go easy on me. I was thrown a couple of times, as I continued my “attack attack attack” resolution, but I almost got Mark with a Tani-otoshi, well he did fall over but not flat on his back for an ippon.



My penultimate Randori was against Ynez and I was conscious not to stiff arm her and try to much strength as she has told me in the past that I am too stiff. So I lightly took hold and she let me try a couple of throws before I finally threw her with Osoto-otoshi. Ynez commented that I needed to pull harder when doing the throw. This was very frustrating to hear as I had made the conscious effort to be light and elusive. Not that I doubt what she is saying and I know I have lots to learn but I felt I had made improvements this week in my Randori and it kinda took the edge off a good nights training.



My last Randori was with BB Stuart and throws me about 5-6 times with relative ease. This didn’t bother me so I still attacked and every time I was thrown I bounced straight back up to my feet. Finally in the last seconds he let me throw him with Osoto-otoshi and he thanked me for a good fight. I hopefully impressed him with my tenacity if not my skill but I was thankful that he threw me all over the place as it’s nice to see the difference in class between a Black Belt and a 5th Kyu.


Overall a great lesson tonight despite my shoulder hurting more than it

Random stuff

Ude-garami

I recently wrote on my Facebook page that it’s not normal for a person to run more than 10 miles, well not for me anyway and I still stick by that. Although the 10 miles of running was, from a cardio vascular point of view fairly comfortable, the strain it puts on my leg joints and muscles is not normal and is why no matter how fit a person is you have to put the miles in to run a marathon so that your body can adjust to the extraordinary strains running a Marathon puts on the human body. Unfortunately before my body can fully adjust to running 10 miles I will be upping the mileage to 12 miles this Sunday which should take me roughly 2 hours to complete, providing I stick to the very comfortable 10 minute a mile pace that I intend to run the while marathon in.


In between all the running I have been doing I still manage to get a couple of free weights sessions in and also the Judo, which is only once a week. The gym that I train in is located in my office and they are currently running a challenge to help promote the Gym and gain new members who may be thinking of losing weight for their new year’s resolution. One of these challenges is a 1000m rowing time trail which I thought I’d have a go at. Without any prior training of ever using the rower for anything other than a quick warm up I managed to clock a time of 3.21 which, until yesterday was the quickest time set and was only beaten by the gym instructor himself, who clocked 3.20 and a new guy who has just started work at my place who managed to clock an impressive 3.18. I later found out that this new guy has cycled professionally and is at least 10 years younger than I am so no shame in losing to him.
Anyway the upshot of my rowing challenge is that my shoulder has been hurting to buggery since I did it, which is a shame as it had been ok for 6 months or so.


On to last night’s class and we did a slightly more active warm up than usual with some shuttle runs, press ups, sit ups and squat thrusts which got us all sufficiently warmed before we went in to some light Newaza where we just went from hold to escape to hold etc. Technique wise we were shown Ude-garami or the infamous “Kimura”, which the Gracie family called the submission after the Japanese Judoka, Kimura, defeated Helio Gracie with it many years ago. It’s a fairly simple technique to pull off and one that I have personally used to great success in BJJ and Judo and yet Graeme was still able to point out something that I didn’t know about this technique which is that before you crank it up you should turn your wrist, like you are closing the throttle on a motorbike, this makes Uke tap a lot quicker. The link I have attached on the BJA website does now show Fallon doing this but it definitely makes the technique better so I will use this going forward.


On to the tachi-waza and we first practised tai-otoshi and then a Ko-soto-gari counter to tai-otoshi and finally an O-goshi or uke-goshi and even a Tai-otoshi counter to Tai-otoshi. Some of these counters were easier than others to perform but it’s really nice to get some decent counters under my belt as I need to be able to pull these off if I’m to progress. Graeme did show us all Brain Jack’s version of Tai-otoshi which has a different entry to most. If he is performing a right handed throw he would step across with his left foot almost pass the left foot of his opponent before swivelling and turning in to the throw. I have tried to find a Youtube video of Brian Jacks performing this throw but I’m unable to find anything. As Brian Jacks was my Judo Instructor when I first dabbled with Judo as a small child and then with his great success in Superstars, he became one of my first sporting idols so any information about him is of great interest to me.


We finished up with some Randori and again I went in to all out attack mode. First up was Mark and although I managed a sloppy Tani-otoshi I was told by Graeme that I was stiff arming and not relaxed enough. It’s strange because I am making a conscious effort to be relaxed and I’m not bothered if I get thrown. Also with my experience in Wing Chun and chi-sau, where relaxation is key I thought It would be something I would naturally do.


Next up was Ryan and he was stiff arming me and Graeme stopped him once for being too passive as he tends to stick his arse out, which you are not allowed to do for a certain length of time and again for grabbing the same side of my lapel with both of his hands. I think the latter is a natural thing for a BJJ’er to do as it gives them more control on the ground but again you can only do that in Judo if you immediately attack, which he wasn’t doing. However I attempted a Osoto-otoshi and Ryan countered my throw with the same technique and would have got an ippon. I could see he was pleased with this especially as he has said that he really hasn’t been able to perform many of the throws in Randori. Hopefully this will have given him more confidence going forward.


I finished up against the new guy Jamie, and he was very stiff so I told him to relax and to just try and throw me with whatever he knew. He did try three of four throws but I was never in any danger of falling over but still I congratulated him on attacking and said he should do it more.


After the lesson Graeme mentioned that there were several senior tournaments coming up but unfortunately the High Wycombe Newaza is on the same day as the London Marathon so that’s one I definitely won’t be entering. Also I am even a little hesitant about entering the others but only because I am worried about getting injured this close to the marathon. Maybe I’ll just end up watching a couple until after April 17th, I’ll think about it........