My first lesson as a green belt last night so I was kind of looking forward to it more than usual. Of course it didn’t change anything as I am still the lowest graded senior but the darker colored belt certainly looks better tied around my waist than the brightly colored Orange and Yellow ones.
As part of our warm up we did three rounds of Newaza before Big Stuart took over the class for tonight. On the agenda were techniques against high grips. Now I have recently adopted a high grip myself as I am nearly always taller than my opponent however it’s useful to know how someone might use that grip against me.
We started with Yoko-tomoe-nage, a sacrifice throw that I was told people rarely attempt in Shiai due to the risks of your opponent falling on top of you and thus being able to secure a pin easily if the throw is not successful. However it’s probably quite a good technique to use against those opponents who are bent over at the waist and are being very defensive, like the guy who beat my recently in the competition I entered.
Next up was a knee assisted Ura-nage, a throw I have never attempted before, probably because it’s in the brown belt syllabus. Due to the heavy nature of the fall got the crash mat out and all took turns throwing everyone else. Considering this was my first attempt it seemed to go ok.
The last throw Stuart showed us was a left handed Uki-goshi. The reason we did this left handed is because Uke’s high grip has left a nice big space from which we can easily put our left arm around their waist. It worked best as a counter against a right handed Harai-goshi.
Following some cross grip throws which I cannot remember fully this late in the day we did something that I had never done before and that was to practice throws from our knees. This sounds odd but in reality I think it’s a great way of teaching senior beginners how to throw without the fear of being hurt. None of us at my club are under 30 so it’s also nice to practice repetitiously without putting undue pressure on our aging joints. The throws we practiced were Sumi-gaeshi, O-uchi-gari and Seoi-otoshi. On throwing Stewart with Seoi-otoshi I was actually able to get him airborne.
Big Stuart very rarely takes the senior class, although he does regularly teach the juniors, but I was very impressed with his teaching style and the content of this class and I look forward to more classes being taught by him.
Friday, 9 March 2012
Friday, 2 March 2012
Green Belt
Like almost everyone else I work with, I hadn’t been feeling well for the last week, I couldn’t seem to shake of a nasty cough and as a consequence I was little short on energy. Of course me being me I still managed three gym sessions this week but I just concentrated on lifting weights and skipped my normal cardio sessions. I’m fairly lucky where I work as we have a proper fully kitted out gym, complete with two full time gym instructors on hand, onsite and at a cost of only £10 a month. This means that I go to the gym in my lunch hour every working day of the week. Normally I lift weights on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday I do a boxing workout with one of the gym instructors, who used to Box in the Navy and on Friday I either do a 4 mile run or I use all the cardio machines in the gym and work up a bit of a sweat.
Anyway whilst we were warming up last night Graeme asked me what size belt I took and then proceeded to rummage around the store cupboard looking for a belt that would fit me. This obviously meant that we would be finishing off my green belt grading so I was now a little excited.
As part of our warm up we broke down the components of Ippon-seoi-nage. With our partner we first worked on simply squatting down whilst Uke leant over us. Then as we stood back up we lifted Uke from the ground. Then we added in the entry and finally the breaking of the balance or kuzushi. Once we had practiced this several times we got the crash mats out and took turns throwing everyone else in the club.
Graeme then mixed things up a bit in a bid to improve our spatial awareness. We would now have to first leapfrog over Uke, then do a forward roll before turning to face Uke, who had, following being leapfrogged over, followed closely behind you and then throw Uke with Ippon-seoi-nage. I was unfortunate enough to catch a stray foot in the eye whilst Big Stuart was doing his forward roll but no real damage was done.
Once we had caught our breath I was informed we would finish off my grading and to start with I would have to do Newaza against Oli, Big Stuart and Peter for one and a half minutes each without pause. This went pretty well but I was starting to blow a little. Following the Newaza I was told to randori against Oli for 4 minutes and I would be expected to show combinations, counters, various grips and throws.
Following my recent success with uchi-mata I decided quickly that this would be my go to throw and again it proved successful as I was able to throw Oli with. Graeme then shouted out to take follow the next throw to the ground so when I next managed an O-soto-gari I followed Oli to the mat where I held him in Kesa-gatame. We continued again and I think I managed another Uchi-mata and a Tano-otoshi. Graeme then told me to not use Uchi-mata or Tani-otoshi but to continue to attack using other throws. A Ko into O-uchi-gari followed and down went Oli again. Matte was called but then Big Stuart was sent on against me. At this point I was really blowing hard but Big Stuart was fresh and started moving me all over the mat which forced me to be a little defensive. Graeme shouted that I needed to attack more which I did but in the heat of the battle I was struggling to remember any other throws. Then I thought I would try Okuri-ashi-barai, even though I had never had success with this in randori. I closed the gap between Stuart and myself and was preparing to move him sideways so that I could sweep his feet and then all of sudden whoosh he was down but I had actually thrown him with Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi instead, which is even more odd as I’ve never even liked this throw in practice let alone tried it in randori before.
I did manage a couple more throws on Stuart before matte was called but I was very tired at the end. We lined up as the class had ended and Peter called me out and told me to remove my orange belt and presented me with a nice stiff green belt. I certainly felt that I had earned this belt after weeks of technical grading and today’s randori.
Anyway whilst we were warming up last night Graeme asked me what size belt I took and then proceeded to rummage around the store cupboard looking for a belt that would fit me. This obviously meant that we would be finishing off my green belt grading so I was now a little excited.
As part of our warm up we broke down the components of Ippon-seoi-nage. With our partner we first worked on simply squatting down whilst Uke leant over us. Then as we stood back up we lifted Uke from the ground. Then we added in the entry and finally the breaking of the balance or kuzushi. Once we had practiced this several times we got the crash mats out and took turns throwing everyone else in the club.
Graeme then mixed things up a bit in a bid to improve our spatial awareness. We would now have to first leapfrog over Uke, then do a forward roll before turning to face Uke, who had, following being leapfrogged over, followed closely behind you and then throw Uke with Ippon-seoi-nage. I was unfortunate enough to catch a stray foot in the eye whilst Big Stuart was doing his forward roll but no real damage was done.
Once we had caught our breath I was informed we would finish off my grading and to start with I would have to do Newaza against Oli, Big Stuart and Peter for one and a half minutes each without pause. This went pretty well but I was starting to blow a little. Following the Newaza I was told to randori against Oli for 4 minutes and I would be expected to show combinations, counters, various grips and throws.
Following my recent success with uchi-mata I decided quickly that this would be my go to throw and again it proved successful as I was able to throw Oli with. Graeme then shouted out to take follow the next throw to the ground so when I next managed an O-soto-gari I followed Oli to the mat where I held him in Kesa-gatame. We continued again and I think I managed another Uchi-mata and a Tano-otoshi. Graeme then told me to not use Uchi-mata or Tani-otoshi but to continue to attack using other throws. A Ko into O-uchi-gari followed and down went Oli again. Matte was called but then Big Stuart was sent on against me. At this point I was really blowing hard but Big Stuart was fresh and started moving me all over the mat which forced me to be a little defensive. Graeme shouted that I needed to attack more which I did but in the heat of the battle I was struggling to remember any other throws. Then I thought I would try Okuri-ashi-barai, even though I had never had success with this in randori. I closed the gap between Stuart and myself and was preparing to move him sideways so that I could sweep his feet and then all of sudden whoosh he was down but I had actually thrown him with Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi instead, which is even more odd as I’ve never even liked this throw in practice let alone tried it in randori before.
I did manage a couple more throws on Stuart before matte was called but I was very tired at the end. We lined up as the class had ended and Peter called me out and told me to remove my orange belt and presented me with a nice stiff green belt. I certainly felt that I had earned this belt after weeks of technical grading and today’s randori.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
My first fight
I finally worked out how to rotate the video's of my fights on Sunday but unfortunately this seems to have reduced the picture quality. Anyway here is fight number 1
Monday, 20 February 2012
Surrey Senior Open Blue Belt and Below
Despite being virtually bedridden for 3 days with Migraine and only having 1 full day to recover I still managed to take part in my first proper Judo tournament on Sunday the 19th February, which was held quite local to me in Redhill, Surrey.
Although my stomach was doing cartwheels in the morning I knew I had to eat a hearty breakfast as my weigh in was not until 12.30pm, which meant I wouldn’t be fighting until sometime after. So I forced down a big bowl of porridge with sliced Banana and dried apricots and followed that up with a couple of slices of toast and jam.
A friend of mine, Nev and his girlfriend Lisa very kindly came to support me and Nev also agreed to film my fights on the video camera my wife had bought me for Christmas.
We arrived in good time and stood watching the children’s tournament which preceded the seniors. As Dorking JC had some juniors entered two of my coaches were present so I quickly made myself known to them. Also present was Pete Swettenham from Witley Yamabishi as he had both Juniors and seniors competing.
As is normal at contests I looked around the hall for potential opponents. Luckily enough all the big scary looking guys were coaches so that at least eased my nerves.
As mentioned in previous posts I am lifting weights at the moment in an attempt to bulk up a little so I had no intention of trying to make the under 90kg category. The last time I weighed myself, at the gym where I work, was Tuesday where I was almost 93kg but when I stepped on the scales here I weighed in at 90.25KG, which meant I had lost over 2.5kg since then. Soon after I weighed in, Graeme told me that there were not many seniors present and that they were going to merge the under 100kg and under 90kg weight categories but that still left only four people in my division. A little disappointing but it still meant 3 fights each and an almost guarantee of a medal.
My first fight was against a rather stocky looking guy whose coach was wearing a Royal Navy Judo club hoodie. We entered the matted area and bowed off and the referee coach hajime. He charged into me, with his head down and immediately took his grip. I struggled a bit to grip him back as he was wearing a rather thick double weave gi. Eventually I managed to take a high collar grip and then began a series of him pushing me and me pushing him with not a lot of Judo taking place. The referee stopped us a couple of time due to inactivity and we both attempted various foot sweeps on each other but none of us were prepared to over commit with anything. I was looking for an O-uchi-gari but he was bent over a lot at the waist which made it difficult to get close enough. At one point I thought I had him with an Uchi-mata but he managed to hop to safety and then proceeded to attempt an illegal leg grab. The ref restarted us again and as he was constantly pushing me I tried a Sumi-gaeshi. I had him lifted in the air but didn’t manage to flip him over and instead he ended up in my guard where he stayed until the ref called matte. Then with only seconds left in our 5 minute match he threw me with an Osoto-gari and got an Ippon. I was disappointed to lose my first match especially as this meant it was now very unlikely that I would win gold.
My second fight was against a guy who was a 2nd kyu Blue belt as a junior and had only recently returned to Judo as a senior. He was wearing a white belt but I knew from experience that he was likely to be better than his belt suggested he was. This was to be a rather quick fight as I was able to take my grips (high collar again) and control him for an Uchi-mata Ippon only 1 minute in to the fight.
My last fight was against someone who I later found out was only 15 years old. He certainly didn’t look it as he was pretty stocky and quite strong. I nearly had him a couple of times as I countered some of his attempts at throwing me and eventually I managed an Osoto-gari, which didn’t score so I followed him to the ground with Kesa-gatame and held him for the full 25 seconds getting my second Ippon win and earning myself a silver medal in the process.
Looking back at the video footage, which will follow when I have worked out how to rotate the image 90 degrees, the Judo on display is a far cry from the YouTube clips you see of Olympic level Judoka. But that’s ok; I’m not expecting to look like Neil Adams just yet, I was just glad to get my first proper contest out of the way. I notice that High Wycombe’s Newaza contest is in May this year, so hopefully I can try to go one better than the two bronze medal’s I’ve got on my recent visits.
Back to normal training this week and hopefully the completion of my green belt grading.
Although my stomach was doing cartwheels in the morning I knew I had to eat a hearty breakfast as my weigh in was not until 12.30pm, which meant I wouldn’t be fighting until sometime after. So I forced down a big bowl of porridge with sliced Banana and dried apricots and followed that up with a couple of slices of toast and jam.
A friend of mine, Nev and his girlfriend Lisa very kindly came to support me and Nev also agreed to film my fights on the video camera my wife had bought me for Christmas.
We arrived in good time and stood watching the children’s tournament which preceded the seniors. As Dorking JC had some juniors entered two of my coaches were present so I quickly made myself known to them. Also present was Pete Swettenham from Witley Yamabishi as he had both Juniors and seniors competing.
As is normal at contests I looked around the hall for potential opponents. Luckily enough all the big scary looking guys were coaches so that at least eased my nerves.
As mentioned in previous posts I am lifting weights at the moment in an attempt to bulk up a little so I had no intention of trying to make the under 90kg category. The last time I weighed myself, at the gym where I work, was Tuesday where I was almost 93kg but when I stepped on the scales here I weighed in at 90.25KG, which meant I had lost over 2.5kg since then. Soon after I weighed in, Graeme told me that there were not many seniors present and that they were going to merge the under 100kg and under 90kg weight categories but that still left only four people in my division. A little disappointing but it still meant 3 fights each and an almost guarantee of a medal.
My first fight was against a rather stocky looking guy whose coach was wearing a Royal Navy Judo club hoodie. We entered the matted area and bowed off and the referee coach hajime. He charged into me, with his head down and immediately took his grip. I struggled a bit to grip him back as he was wearing a rather thick double weave gi. Eventually I managed to take a high collar grip and then began a series of him pushing me and me pushing him with not a lot of Judo taking place. The referee stopped us a couple of time due to inactivity and we both attempted various foot sweeps on each other but none of us were prepared to over commit with anything. I was looking for an O-uchi-gari but he was bent over a lot at the waist which made it difficult to get close enough. At one point I thought I had him with an Uchi-mata but he managed to hop to safety and then proceeded to attempt an illegal leg grab. The ref restarted us again and as he was constantly pushing me I tried a Sumi-gaeshi. I had him lifted in the air but didn’t manage to flip him over and instead he ended up in my guard where he stayed until the ref called matte. Then with only seconds left in our 5 minute match he threw me with an Osoto-gari and got an Ippon. I was disappointed to lose my first match especially as this meant it was now very unlikely that I would win gold.
My second fight was against a guy who was a 2nd kyu Blue belt as a junior and had only recently returned to Judo as a senior. He was wearing a white belt but I knew from experience that he was likely to be better than his belt suggested he was. This was to be a rather quick fight as I was able to take my grips (high collar again) and control him for an Uchi-mata Ippon only 1 minute in to the fight.
My last fight was against someone who I later found out was only 15 years old. He certainly didn’t look it as he was pretty stocky and quite strong. I nearly had him a couple of times as I countered some of his attempts at throwing me and eventually I managed an Osoto-gari, which didn’t score so I followed him to the ground with Kesa-gatame and held him for the full 25 seconds getting my second Ippon win and earning myself a silver medal in the process.
Looking back at the video footage, which will follow when I have worked out how to rotate the image 90 degrees, the Judo on display is a far cry from the YouTube clips you see of Olympic level Judoka. But that’s ok; I’m not expecting to look like Neil Adams just yet, I was just glad to get my first proper contest out of the way. I notice that High Wycombe’s Newaza contest is in May this year, so hopefully I can try to go one better than the two bronze medal’s I’ve got on my recent visits.
Back to normal training this week and hopefully the completion of my green belt grading.
Monday, 13 February 2012
2 Years
Seeing as it’s been 2 years since I started Judo I thought I’d repost my first blog entry.
I thought I’d start my blog with the title “Back to Judo” as Judo was the first Martial Art I ever did when I was about 6 or 7 years old.
Unfortunately the hall where I practiced Judo was burnt down In an act of vandalism and was moved further from my house than my parents were willing to travel to so my first foray in to Judo only lasted a couple of months.
Wado Ryu Karate was my next venture when I was 10 years old and I practiced this for about 3 years where I reached the grade of Purple belt or 4th Kyu. At the age of thirteen both football and Table Tennis were much more important to me than Karate and also the A-Team was on TV on a Friday evening (the same time as my Karate class). In 1985 there was no Sky+ and relying on your mum to hit the record button on the video was a very hit and miss affair, so I gave up on Karate (Crazy fool)
Then at the age of 19 I got the bug again so I looked around for something different and found Wing Chun Kung Fu.
Wing Chun was very different to Karate, less physical but more technical. It also seemed to flow better. Then I discovered that Wing Chun was the system that Bruce Lee had first learnt before he developed JKD which made me think that Wing Chun was the best Martial Art to study.
Whilst learning Wing Chun I met some very interesting people, one of those people was one of the Junior Instructors called Marc who I later found out was teaching his own style of Martial Arts from his Garage with a select few students. This new style incorporated high kicks, locks and throws that he had picked up from learning various other Martial Arts and even some grappling. I’ve highlighted grappling because at around this time I had read an article in a Martial arts magazine about a tournament in America which pitted Martial Artists from different styles against each other in a cage with no rules and this was called the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)
I managed to locate a video of this in HMV and watched with fascination as Royce Gracie, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Black Belt defeated everyone by tripping them up and submitting them on the ground.
BJJ to me looked very similar to the Judo I did as a child so the fact that someone in my Wing Chun Club was teaching his own style which incorporated grappling, very much appealed to me.
So at the age of 24 I left Wing Chun and trained with Marc twice a week in a hall near Croydon. The style was just called Freestyle but it was very similar in concept to Jeet Kune Do (JKD).
It was whilst training with Marc that a friend approached me and asked me to teach him Martial Arts. So along with training twice a week I was now teaching twice a week privately for free (as he was a guinea pig for my teaching).
Marc decided to branch out and open another school nearby and wanted his students to turn up for support, so I decided to take my own Student (also called Mark but spelt differently, pay attention) Mark along to see what Marc thought of him. It was whilst at this new club that I befriended Richie who would become my training partner for both freestyle and some seriously heavy Gym sessions. Richie is now training MMA.
Marc was very impressed with the work I had done with my student and I think this eventually led to Marc taking me under his wing and giving my PVT lessons with a vision of me teaching in one of his clubs as part of my ongoing progression.
I did eventually start teaching for Marc in one of his clubs in Streatham but I seemed to suffer from one injury to another, and eventually I lost the buzz that training gave me so I decided to quit.
I wasn’t that long after I quit freestyle that I started to miss the buzz so I dabbled with BJJ but as the gym was a long drive from my house it was a short lived affair.
Then when I was 31 I decided to give Judo a try again and went to Westcroft Judo club and loved it, especially the ground work as I felt like I was Royce Gracie and would quite often try things I had seen in the UFC. Unfortunately after only a couple of months training I tore my Pec Major and damaged my rotator cuff trying to avoid a throw, i.e. not being thrown on my back. Looking back at this now it seems ridiculous that I would worry that much about being thrown for ippon in a randori session but that was how I used to train, full of testosterone and not wanting to get beaten by anyone. Now my ego is left outside the dojo and I’ll happily practice my breakfalls when I am thrown in randori
Anyway the injury kept me out of anything physical at all for almost a year so I gave Judo a wide berth but now at 37 years and 6 months I have decided to go back to Judo, this time at my local Dorking Judo Club.
I have so far had 2 lessons and will shortly start logging all the techniques I have learnt so far.
The instructors at the club all seem friendly and there certainly doesn’t seem to be any ego’s in the dojo.
Anyway that’s my Martial Arts history so far, hopefully this blog will continue until I reach Black Belt and beyond.
Well I’m not quite at Black Belt level yet but I still have the same enthusiasm for Judo. The style of my blog hasn’t changed that much over the last two years but if anyone has any ideas of how to change it or what they would like to see then I’m open to suggestions.
I thought I’d start my blog with the title “Back to Judo” as Judo was the first Martial Art I ever did when I was about 6 or 7 years old.
Unfortunately the hall where I practiced Judo was burnt down In an act of vandalism and was moved further from my house than my parents were willing to travel to so my first foray in to Judo only lasted a couple of months.
Wado Ryu Karate was my next venture when I was 10 years old and I practiced this for about 3 years where I reached the grade of Purple belt or 4th Kyu. At the age of thirteen both football and Table Tennis were much more important to me than Karate and also the A-Team was on TV on a Friday evening (the same time as my Karate class). In 1985 there was no Sky+ and relying on your mum to hit the record button on the video was a very hit and miss affair, so I gave up on Karate (Crazy fool)
Then at the age of 19 I got the bug again so I looked around for something different and found Wing Chun Kung Fu.
Wing Chun was very different to Karate, less physical but more technical. It also seemed to flow better. Then I discovered that Wing Chun was the system that Bruce Lee had first learnt before he developed JKD which made me think that Wing Chun was the best Martial Art to study.
Whilst learning Wing Chun I met some very interesting people, one of those people was one of the Junior Instructors called Marc who I later found out was teaching his own style of Martial Arts from his Garage with a select few students. This new style incorporated high kicks, locks and throws that he had picked up from learning various other Martial Arts and even some grappling. I’ve highlighted grappling because at around this time I had read an article in a Martial arts magazine about a tournament in America which pitted Martial Artists from different styles against each other in a cage with no rules and this was called the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)
I managed to locate a video of this in HMV and watched with fascination as Royce Gracie, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Black Belt defeated everyone by tripping them up and submitting them on the ground.
BJJ to me looked very similar to the Judo I did as a child so the fact that someone in my Wing Chun Club was teaching his own style which incorporated grappling, very much appealed to me.
So at the age of 24 I left Wing Chun and trained with Marc twice a week in a hall near Croydon. The style was just called Freestyle but it was very similar in concept to Jeet Kune Do (JKD).
It was whilst training with Marc that a friend approached me and asked me to teach him Martial Arts. So along with training twice a week I was now teaching twice a week privately for free (as he was a guinea pig for my teaching).
Marc decided to branch out and open another school nearby and wanted his students to turn up for support, so I decided to take my own Student (also called Mark but spelt differently, pay attention) Mark along to see what Marc thought of him. It was whilst at this new club that I befriended Richie who would become my training partner for both freestyle and some seriously heavy Gym sessions. Richie is now training MMA.
Marc was very impressed with the work I had done with my student and I think this eventually led to Marc taking me under his wing and giving my PVT lessons with a vision of me teaching in one of his clubs as part of my ongoing progression.
I did eventually start teaching for Marc in one of his clubs in Streatham but I seemed to suffer from one injury to another, and eventually I lost the buzz that training gave me so I decided to quit.
I wasn’t that long after I quit freestyle that I started to miss the buzz so I dabbled with BJJ but as the gym was a long drive from my house it was a short lived affair.
Then when I was 31 I decided to give Judo a try again and went to Westcroft Judo club and loved it, especially the ground work as I felt like I was Royce Gracie and would quite often try things I had seen in the UFC. Unfortunately after only a couple of months training I tore my Pec Major and damaged my rotator cuff trying to avoid a throw, i.e. not being thrown on my back. Looking back at this now it seems ridiculous that I would worry that much about being thrown for ippon in a randori session but that was how I used to train, full of testosterone and not wanting to get beaten by anyone. Now my ego is left outside the dojo and I’ll happily practice my breakfalls when I am thrown in randori
Anyway the injury kept me out of anything physical at all for almost a year so I gave Judo a wide berth but now at 37 years and 6 months I have decided to go back to Judo, this time at my local Dorking Judo Club.
I have so far had 2 lessons and will shortly start logging all the techniques I have learnt so far.
The instructors at the club all seem friendly and there certainly doesn’t seem to be any ego’s in the dojo.
Anyway that’s my Martial Arts history so far, hopefully this blog will continue until I reach Black Belt and beyond.
Well I’m not quite at Black Belt level yet but I still have the same enthusiasm for Judo. The style of my blog hasn’t changed that much over the last two years but if anyone has any ideas of how to change it or what they would like to see then I’m open to suggestions.
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