In this huge year for sport in Great Britain we are offering you the perfect chance get fit and try out an Olympic sport for the first time in a fun, friendly and enjoyable way. Throw yourself into judo with other new beginners!
Take part in this free taster session on 11th & 18th September; 8pm - 9.30pm at Dorking Judo Club.
If you like what you see in the taster session you can then sign up to the full course, or if you already know judo is the sport for you, you can sign up straight away!...
The cost of the full course is £60 which includes a British Judo membership, training diary, record book, insurance, the 10 weeks of coaching fees, first grading and judogi (judo suit). After this free taster session the course fully begins on 25th September at 8pm - 9.30pm.
Dorking Judo Club's contact details can be found here http://dorkingjudoclub.blogspot.co.uk/
Friday, 3 August 2012
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Olympic Judo – Ban theTurtle
I’ve been watching bits and pieces of the Judo when I can but yesterday I decided to record the whole day’s action and must have watched about 4 hours of nonstop Judo last night when I got in from work. I was surprised that I didn’t get bored watching for that long as even when I watch a UFC event I normally have to split it over two days.
Having never really watched high level Judo before, except for a few highlight videos on YouTube, I was a little surprised about a few aspects of what I have seen thus far.
Now this is based purely on what I watched yesterday which was the under 81kg Men’s and under 60kg Women’s but I found the lack of groundwork very surprising.
I know that the referee restricts the amount of time you have on Newaza and this is done largely to make the fights more interesting to the non Judo watching public and to an extent I can see the logic behind this. What I can’t understand though is why the fighters are not penalised for turtling up every time they hit the ground. Quite often the other fighter doesn’t even bother to attack the turtle as he knows he is just wasting time and effort on something which has a low percentage of success.
I know a lot of people on the Judoforum advocate cross training in BJJ to help improve your groundwork but on last night’s showing that would be a total waste of time. All you really need to practice is how to turtle, which can probably be taught fairly quickly. I’m not suggesting that the rules of Judo should be changed to allow unlimited Newaza as this would, imo, change Judo for the worse as Judo is first and foremost a throwing art/sport. However if you were penalised for using the turtle position every time the fight went to the mat, say with a shido, then it would make the limited amount of time that one spends in Newaza that more exciting.
Do you agree?
Having never really watched high level Judo before, except for a few highlight videos on YouTube, I was a little surprised about a few aspects of what I have seen thus far.
Now this is based purely on what I watched yesterday which was the under 81kg Men’s and under 60kg Women’s but I found the lack of groundwork very surprising.
I know that the referee restricts the amount of time you have on Newaza and this is done largely to make the fights more interesting to the non Judo watching public and to an extent I can see the logic behind this. What I can’t understand though is why the fighters are not penalised for turtling up every time they hit the ground. Quite often the other fighter doesn’t even bother to attack the turtle as he knows he is just wasting time and effort on something which has a low percentage of success.
I know a lot of people on the Judoforum advocate cross training in BJJ to help improve your groundwork but on last night’s showing that would be a total waste of time. All you really need to practice is how to turtle, which can probably be taught fairly quickly. I’m not suggesting that the rules of Judo should be changed to allow unlimited Newaza as this would, imo, change Judo for the worse as Judo is first and foremost a throwing art/sport. However if you were penalised for using the turtle position every time the fight went to the mat, say with a shido, then it would make the limited amount of time that one spends in Newaza that more exciting.
Do you agree?
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Stat Man
People who know me well know that I like my stats. In fact some friends call me the“stat man”. For example, if we are talking football, I like to know how many games Frank Lampard has played for Chelsea and how many goals he has scored. I also like to know how many of these goals were scored in open play and how many were scored from a penalty or free kick etc. I’ll then cross check his stats with those of Didier Drogba etc. In my current job as a Treasury Analyst I get paid to create spread sheets full of stats with lots of different graphs etc. So why am I telling you this? Well recently Blogger.com has added a “stats” section for the blog owners to be able to see how many hits they get on their blog on a daily/weekly/monthly or “all time” basis and it also tells me which post gets the most hits. What’s interesting on this, a Judo blog, is that the post that has gotten more hits than any other is in fact my first post on Nova Forca BJJ in Epsom. I first went there to try out BJJ two years ago and trained there for a whole summer whilst DJC was closed. This post has gotten twice as many hits as my next most popular post which was called “Judo tips and tricks”. Of the top ten most read posts on my blog 3 of them have BJJ in the title and 2 more are related to MMA.
So what does all this information tell me? The way I read it is that there are probably a lot of people who are looking for BJJ or MMA in my area and when they do a Google search for BJJ in Dorking or MMA in Dorking, my blog pops up. It would be nice if these people then thought that Judo was a viable alternative to BJJ but I’ve talked about the reasons that this doesn’t tend to happen before but maybe the Olympics will change some people’s perceptions of Judo.
So what does all this information tell me? The way I read it is that there are probably a lot of people who are looking for BJJ or MMA in my area and when they do a Google search for BJJ in Dorking or MMA in Dorking, my blog pops up. It would be nice if these people then thought that Judo was a viable alternative to BJJ but I’ve talked about the reasons that this doesn’t tend to happen before but maybe the Olympics will change some people’s perceptions of Judo.
Friday, 13 July 2012
Competition Ne-waza Techniques by Steve Gawthorpe
Just thought i'd add this Youtube clip as at 22 seconds you can clearly see both Stuart and Stewart from DJC kneeling either-side of the guy that's standing up. Stuart is the one wearing the black rashguard.
The Newaza instruction is pretty useful as well.
The Newaza instruction is pretty useful as well.
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Everything ends in Juji
As tonight was the last lesson before DJC closes for the summer months we had a rather relaxed class. Once we were warmed up Ivan, Stewart and Peter went off to grade Ivan for his red belt. The rest of us were shown some self defence techniques by Big Stuart.
Stuart then went on to show us some nogi throws like Osoto-gari and Harai-goshi, although we kept our gi’s on we just didn’t take grips. The throws themselves worked fine, although when I was Tori I felt inclined to follow uke to the ground. What did feel weird though was when I was Uke, as being thrown without a gi to hang on to certainly makes for a harder landing.
We played around with the nogi throws and self defence moves until Ivan had passed his grading. Stuart then said that we should all pair up and practise various throws but whatever technique we used we had to follow up with a Juji-gatame. This came about largely due to Ronda Rousey (who is quickly obtaining cult status at our club) finishing all of her MMA fights with a Juji-gatame.
I was paired with Stuart and just to make things interesting, I suggested that we should tell each other which throw to use. That way we would be forced to perform throws that we wouldn’t normally pick. It also posed some interesting problems going from an O-uchi-gari in to a Juji-gatame but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.
As the club is now closed until September I will be training more at Yoshin Ryu. I think I’ve also persuaded Ivan to join me next week.
Stuart then went on to show us some nogi throws like Osoto-gari and Harai-goshi, although we kept our gi’s on we just didn’t take grips. The throws themselves worked fine, although when I was Tori I felt inclined to follow uke to the ground. What did feel weird though was when I was Uke, as being thrown without a gi to hang on to certainly makes for a harder landing.
We played around with the nogi throws and self defence moves until Ivan had passed his grading. Stuart then said that we should all pair up and practise various throws but whatever technique we used we had to follow up with a Juji-gatame. This came about largely due to Ronda Rousey (who is quickly obtaining cult status at our club) finishing all of her MMA fights with a Juji-gatame.
I was paired with Stuart and just to make things interesting, I suggested that we should tell each other which throw to use. That way we would be forced to perform throws that we wouldn’t normally pick. It also posed some interesting problems going from an O-uchi-gari in to a Juji-gatame but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.
As the club is now closed until September I will be training more at Yoshin Ryu. I think I’ve also persuaded Ivan to join me next week.
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Blitz Olympian Blue Judo Gi
I'm finally selling the Blitz Olympian Double Weave gi that I bought over a year ago. It was too big when I got it but I thought it would shrink down after a couple of hot washes. Unfortunately it didn't shrink, not even a little bit, so I was stuck with a gi that I couldn't send back and swamped me.
Anyway here's the link to it on eBay. The auction ends on Sunday evening.
Anyway here's the link to it on eBay. The auction ends on Sunday evening.
Friday, 6 July 2012
Pulling Guard – Yoshin Ryu
I missed Tuesday’s class at DJC due to a dodgy stomach so was looking forward to training tonight. I’ve never had so many upset stomachs and colds etc as I have since my daughter started nursery in February. It’s odd because I’ve always had a cast iron stomach and was normally the one who wasn’t affected by that dodgy curry that gave everyone else the “two bob bits”
The warm up consisted of some light movements and stretching before we had to perform shuttle runs with sets of 10 pressups, sit ups and squat thrusts. This was repeated 5 times. Then, with a partner turtled up, we did static jumps over them and back, taking care not to land on them before swapping with our partners who then performed their 10 repetitions. Following this we did some Newaza specific exercises. With our partners in our guard we performed 20 reps of reaching up and over our partners shoulder and grabbing their belt (right hand over partner’s right shoulder). Effectively this was just like performing 40 sit ups but doing it this way you can easily see how it relates to Judo.
Sensei then showed us a couple of sweeps from the guard, one of which was done by reaching up and over Uke’s right shoulder with your right arm and grabbing their belt. Then you pull Uke in close to you and lean back, stretching Uke out as you do it and clamping their right arm to your side with your left arm. Then when they are stretched out you can simply roll to your left side in to Tate-shiho-gatame
Newaza followed and I stayed with my current partner who was a blue belt returning to Judo after quite a long layoff. I pulled guard and tried to work some sweeps but he was hard to move. He then attempted to pass my guard and as just as he got to half guard I managed to creep out and get his back. I spent a long time getting it but finally managed to submit him with a collar choke.
Next up was the big fella, whose name escapes me. I think he’s Polish but I may be wrong. Anyway he’s 120kg of muscle and a brown belt. Again I pulled guard and the first two rolls ended when we both stuck against the wall. He commented that I like to fight from my back, which I do but that’s mainly because otherwise you can end up knee wrestling for position which means you end up not doing Newaza. Anyway against someone of his size I am never going to win a “knee wrestle” and would likely end up with him on top of me in mune-gatame or something similar. As it went, pulling guard didn’t help much either as, apart from getting his back once where he turtled and I failed to move him, he generally dominated me and probably pinned me around 4 or 5 times.
I then rolled with a black belt who subbed me a couple of times with cross collar chokes, again from within my guard. I read about this on the Judoforum and the consensus is that you should never be cross collar choked by someone from within your guard as you should be able Juji-gatame them but I’ve yet to pull this off.
I had one last roll with a brown belt who was clearly more tired than I was. Again I went to my back and looked for san-gaku-jime, which I nearly had but he managed to roll out so I switched to an ashi-garami, thats Omoplata to my BJJ friends, and managed to secure the submission from there.
Matte was called shortly after and we went for a quick water break. At the time I wasn’t happy with my Newaza but on reflection and reading it back now it doesn’t seem so bad. I do, however, need to work on my top game. I can’t keep pulling guard, especially against the bigger guys who can lay on you and sap your strength as you struggle to move.
Following the quick water break I noticed that the crash mat had been put in the middle of the room. We were told to pair up and take turns in throwing our partner with Ura-nage, which is a throw I practised recently at DJC. The sensei commented that I needed to get a bit lower and user my legs and hips more, which would enable to get my opponent higher in the air. One person who seemed to have perfected this throw was the big Polish guy who was paired with Sensei Tim. Now Sensei Tim is by no means small but the Polish lifted him at least a foot above his head before dumping Tim on to the crash mat. This was greeted by oh’s and ah’s from the rest of us, most likely out of relief for not being paired with him.
We next practised Kata-guruma, which is a blue belt throw but one I’ve never done before. It actually seemed relatively simple to do but you definitely need the crash mat for this unless Tori is particularly skilled enough to drop you slowly. I’m not sure it’s a throw I’ll be adding to my repertoire of Randori techniques anytime soon but I think I can perform this in a grading environment.
We went straight in to Randori after this and I sought out Steve as we usually have quite a good tussle. I would say that Steve is just that little bit better than me in Randori which is why I like to go against him as I have a chance of actually throwing him as opposed to going against the dan grades where I feel I have no chance. I did manage to throw Steve with a Tani-otoshi and he threw me also so we were about even today. Of course he tried the obligatory tomoe-nage, which he always does against me, but I managed to step out of it. I then, following last week’s lesson, tried an Uki-otoshi on him but I was nowhere near to getting it.
My last randori was with an older black belt who I did manage to throw with O-uchi-gari. In return he caught me a couple of times with Ko-uchi-gari
Next week is the final class at DJC before it closes for the summer so I will be calling Yoshin Ryu home for the next 6-8 weeks. I’m also thinking about returning to BJJ for a couple of sessions as I haven’t been there since they moved in to their new permanent venue, plus it would be nice to catch up with some of them there, especially Ryan.
The warm up consisted of some light movements and stretching before we had to perform shuttle runs with sets of 10 pressups, sit ups and squat thrusts. This was repeated 5 times. Then, with a partner turtled up, we did static jumps over them and back, taking care not to land on them before swapping with our partners who then performed their 10 repetitions. Following this we did some Newaza specific exercises. With our partners in our guard we performed 20 reps of reaching up and over our partners shoulder and grabbing their belt (right hand over partner’s right shoulder). Effectively this was just like performing 40 sit ups but doing it this way you can easily see how it relates to Judo.
Sensei then showed us a couple of sweeps from the guard, one of which was done by reaching up and over Uke’s right shoulder with your right arm and grabbing their belt. Then you pull Uke in close to you and lean back, stretching Uke out as you do it and clamping their right arm to your side with your left arm. Then when they are stretched out you can simply roll to your left side in to Tate-shiho-gatame
Newaza followed and I stayed with my current partner who was a blue belt returning to Judo after quite a long layoff. I pulled guard and tried to work some sweeps but he was hard to move. He then attempted to pass my guard and as just as he got to half guard I managed to creep out and get his back. I spent a long time getting it but finally managed to submit him with a collar choke.
Next up was the big fella, whose name escapes me. I think he’s Polish but I may be wrong. Anyway he’s 120kg of muscle and a brown belt. Again I pulled guard and the first two rolls ended when we both stuck against the wall. He commented that I like to fight from my back, which I do but that’s mainly because otherwise you can end up knee wrestling for position which means you end up not doing Newaza. Anyway against someone of his size I am never going to win a “knee wrestle” and would likely end up with him on top of me in mune-gatame or something similar. As it went, pulling guard didn’t help much either as, apart from getting his back once where he turtled and I failed to move him, he generally dominated me and probably pinned me around 4 or 5 times.
I then rolled with a black belt who subbed me a couple of times with cross collar chokes, again from within my guard. I read about this on the Judoforum and the consensus is that you should never be cross collar choked by someone from within your guard as you should be able Juji-gatame them but I’ve yet to pull this off.
I had one last roll with a brown belt who was clearly more tired than I was. Again I went to my back and looked for san-gaku-jime, which I nearly had but he managed to roll out so I switched to an ashi-garami, thats Omoplata to my BJJ friends, and managed to secure the submission from there.
Matte was called shortly after and we went for a quick water break. At the time I wasn’t happy with my Newaza but on reflection and reading it back now it doesn’t seem so bad. I do, however, need to work on my top game. I can’t keep pulling guard, especially against the bigger guys who can lay on you and sap your strength as you struggle to move.
Following the quick water break I noticed that the crash mat had been put in the middle of the room. We were told to pair up and take turns in throwing our partner with Ura-nage, which is a throw I practised recently at DJC. The sensei commented that I needed to get a bit lower and user my legs and hips more, which would enable to get my opponent higher in the air. One person who seemed to have perfected this throw was the big Polish guy who was paired with Sensei Tim. Now Sensei Tim is by no means small but the Polish lifted him at least a foot above his head before dumping Tim on to the crash mat. This was greeted by oh’s and ah’s from the rest of us, most likely out of relief for not being paired with him.
We next practised Kata-guruma, which is a blue belt throw but one I’ve never done before. It actually seemed relatively simple to do but you definitely need the crash mat for this unless Tori is particularly skilled enough to drop you slowly. I’m not sure it’s a throw I’ll be adding to my repertoire of Randori techniques anytime soon but I think I can perform this in a grading environment.
We went straight in to Randori after this and I sought out Steve as we usually have quite a good tussle. I would say that Steve is just that little bit better than me in Randori which is why I like to go against him as I have a chance of actually throwing him as opposed to going against the dan grades where I feel I have no chance. I did manage to throw Steve with a Tani-otoshi and he threw me also so we were about even today. Of course he tried the obligatory tomoe-nage, which he always does against me, but I managed to step out of it. I then, following last week’s lesson, tried an Uki-otoshi on him but I was nowhere near to getting it.
My last randori was with an older black belt who I did manage to throw with O-uchi-gari. In return he caught me a couple of times with Ko-uchi-gari
Next week is the final class at DJC before it closes for the summer so I will be calling Yoshin Ryu home for the next 6-8 weeks. I’m also thinking about returning to BJJ for a couple of sessions as I haven’t been there since they moved in to their new permanent venue, plus it would be nice to catch up with some of them there, especially Ryan.
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