.Random Guy VS. Teddy Riner.

This could be bad for your health but funny nonetheless

Dead leg, BJJ and Ronda

I managed to train last Thursday at Yoshin Ryu but got thrown hard and then had a knee hit me in my upper thigh, giving me a dead leg and ending my training for the night. This was only my second randori session of the evening so it sucked that I had to sit out with an ice pack strapped to my thigh whilst everyone else carried on sparring.
In my previous fight I had a good tussle with Steve (as usual) and managed a Tani-otoshi. The rest of our session we kind of cancelled each other out and I even managed to stuff his obligatory Tomoe-nage attempt.

Before the class started I noticed a new guy wearing a BJJ gi and after chatting to him I found out that he trains BJJ at Roger Gracie’s place in London and that he is a Blue belt. I was partnered with him for our warm up and Uchikomi, but I never got the chance to roll with him in Newaza. However I’ve got the urge to do some BJJ training again, probably at Nova Forca, but I need to work out if this will be possible with work, looking after my daughter and Judo taking priority.


As this post is a little short and rushed I thought I’d share the following video of Ronda Rousey.

This is from the current season of The Ultimate Fighter or TUF for short and shows Ronda, who was brought in as a guest coach, doing some grappling training with TUF middleweight fighter Uriah. Uriah is the most feared fighter in the TUF house, having already KO’d two opponents in brutal fashion and is favourite to win the whole show. This video shows just how good Ronda’s grappling and Judo is as the 135lb female throws and armbars her 185lb male opponent. Enjoy

Update

It’s been a particularly busy period at work over the last couple of weeks which is why I haven’t blogged for a while. Seeing as I stare at a computer screen all day the last thing I want to do after training is to sit in front of my Laptop and stare at a computer screen some more. I am however still training and slowly working my way through the blue belt grading syllabus. I was hoping to have gotten a nice new blue belt before the Easter break but unfortunately it wasn’t to be. But Graeme spoke to me this week and assured me that we would finish it soon after the Easter break.


Dorking Judo club is now closed for a couple of weeks but I’ll be training at Yoshin Ryu tonight, although I’m unlikely to get the chance to blog about it, unless of course I manage to throw Przemek for Ippon. I haven’t yet decided where I’ll be training next week as I need to consult my diary (the Wife) first but expect to see me back to blogging as usual.

One last thing, I’ve been promised a gi to review from Black Eagle, not sure yet whether this is going to be a single or double weave (hopefully a double) so I’ll review that after I’ve worn and washed it several times.

O-soto-otoshi

It was an interesting lesson on Tuesday as my partner for most of the class was Andrew who has only just begun his Judo journey. What was interesting was that a lot of what he was doing was how I used to do things a few years ago. For instance, in randori he only really tried Osoto-otoshi , the first throw most of us are shown, but he never stepped in far enough with his left leg and never unbalanced me enough to be successful with this throw. Instead I was able to simply stiffen my leg and make him slowly fall to the ground with an Osoto-otoshi of my own.  I can see why this is one of the first throws they teach to beginners as it encourages the thrower to use movement and kuzushi. Done static it’s fairly simple, however the throw becomes a lot more complex when trying to throw someone who doesn’t want to be thrown and normally ends up with the thrower being countered with the same throw. In fact in all my time doing Judo I can’t remember ever successfully pulling off this throw as a direct attack.  Any success I’ve had with it is usually as a counter or combination.

Aneta Szczepanska Seminar – Yoshin Ryu

I was informed a couple of weeks by Przemek that Aneta Szczepanska, 1996 Olympic Silver Medallist, would be taking two classes at Croydon Judo club on the 2nd and 3rd of March and also an additional class at Yoshin Ryu on Monday the 4th. Luckily I was able to attend the Monday night class at Yoshin Ryu. Upon arrival I counted 40 people on the mats, which is as many as I have ever seen.

Aneta was accompanied by her Coach, Roman Stawisinski and Przemek acted as translator due to her limited English. Following the warm up we were told that she would be focussing on Uchi-mata, which was one of her favourite competition throws, and all the little details surrounding this technique. Uchi-mata just so happens to be one of my favoured techniques due to my long legs but I am fully aware that I do a rather lazy version of this throw and usually end up having to hop a few times to complete it. We started with the entry to the throw which resembled the following video:

We really got to drill this entry for quite a while, which was good as it felt natural when we then progressed on to the full throw. Something which Roman Stawisinski picked up on was that I was to close with my entry. What I needed to do was pull uke on to me and drive up with my right or collar hand. This made uke a lot more off balance and helped with getting uke airborne unlike how I normally do it:

Not the cleanest looking Uchi-mata, although I did get the ippon.

We progressed on to the San-gaku turn over which despite favouring San-gaku-jime off my back I’ve never really practised it from this position. Again I got some excellent instruction from Roman and by the end I was making my Uke tap fairly quickly.

We then managed a few rounds of randori each but as there were 40 of us we were restricted to 3 x 1 minute rounds. For my last fight I paired up with Przemek and I almost threw him with O-uchi-gari but as we were near the wall, finishing the throw would mean dumping him against it so I pulled out of it and let him off. He repaid my kindness by dumping me with a big Uchi-mata right at the end to a chorus of boos from the rest of the club who were watching and disproving of him beating up a lowly green belt.

Before the class finished Aneta called out one of our GB squad members as Uke so that she could show us some nice counters to throws. Despite the best efforts of Uke to throw her she was able to counter really quickly everything that was thrown at her. I found this video which shows her countering with her favoured Uchi-mata in competition, which gives you an idea of just how good she is.

And here is her final match in the 1996 Olympic games which to be fair I think she was unluckily not to have won with a other brilliant Ko-uchi-gari counter at 35 seconds

 

A very enjoyable class tonight and a special thank you to Przemek for translating and helping put together all three of the seminars.

From left to right: Sensei Neil, Stuart, Aneta, Sensei Errol, Roman

Ronda Rousey - UFC 157

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of MMA. Well last weekend saw the first ever women’s MMA fight in the UFC featuring Ronda Rousey, a former Olympic Judo bronze medallist, whom I have championed on my blog a couple of times in the past.

What’s so nice about watching Ronda fight is that she uses her Judo skills a lot. Her opponent on Saturday night was Liz Carmouche, a tough ex US Marine who put up a really good fight, taking Ronda’s back at one point and putting on a horrible looking face crank which caused me to tap from the comfort of my sofa!

Ouch, that's gotta hurt

Luckily Ronda is made of tougher stuff than me, eventually escaping and then throwing Carmouche to the canvas using Koshi-guruma. Now what was odd, for MMA anyway was that Ronda then proceeded to hold Carmouche in Kesa-gatame and peppered her with short punches to the face before finally submitting Carmouche with her trademark Juji-gatame. The reason I say that the use of Kesa-gatame is odd is that in MMA and no-gi submission grappling, the person on the bottom can often escape from the kesa and end up taking the back of the person on top. This is a very dangerous position to be in in MMA and no-gi grappling but less dangerous in Judo where one can simply turtle up, although the ref normally calls matte before then.

 Kesa gatame

Juji gatame, Ronda's trademark submission.

Opinions were divided on Ronda’s use of Kesa-gatame. On the new Judo forum (E-Judo) many of the guys (and girls) on there simply said that as Ronda is such a high level Judoka that it’s very unlikely that anyone would ever escape. Others on there said that Ronda will lose one day when someone escapes and takes her back and chokes her out. It’s interesting to note that on the same card Urijah Faber was being held in Kesa-gatame by his opponent Ivan Menjivar. Urijah was able to simply pull Menjivar across his body and ended up in side control, where he eventually took Menjivar’s back and choked him out. That said, Menjivar does not possess anywhere near the same level of Judo as Ronda does but I think it’s worth noting anyway.

It’ll be interesting to see what Ronda does in her next fight and whether she continues to use Kesa-gatame. Whether she does or not I’m sure we’ll continue to see other aspects of her Judo like the throws and of course her trademark Juji-gatame.

Blue Belt Grading

I got an email during the week from Graeme to say that he would concentrate on grading everyone in the coming weeks which meant more blue belt syllabus for yours truly.
It was good to see Andrew return after Injuring his shoulder and Jadon was back sporting his new green belt.

After the warm up we did a couple of quick rounds of newaza randori and then I was asked to show the rest of the class various techniques from the blue belt syllabus which went like this:

Okuri-eri-jime –Wasn’t text book but it worked. There are a number of collar chokes/strangles in the blue belt syllabus, which is good for me. I’ve actively tried to use them more as it is a weakness in my submission game as I tend to favour no-gi chokes such as one would typically see in MMA like the rear naked. In newaza randori I’m often able to grab the collar around the neck but then have to stop and think how I apply the choke, by which time Uke has escaped. However, with the addition of Nami-juji-jime, Gyaku-juji-jime, Okuri-eri-jime and Koshi-jime, I at least have some options now.

Koshi-jime – I’ve used this recently in randori to good success so was ok performing this.

Soto-kibitsu-gaeshi, Uchi-kibitsu-gaeshi & Kata-uchi-ashi-dori are all techniques that I’m never likely to use in randori. In fact I think we’ve only practised them once in the class before, so taking all of this in to account I think I did ok.

Kata-guruma – My mind went totally blank with this one and I didn’t know how to enter in to the throw. I eventually performed probably the worst version of this I have ever done. Before Graeme could come and correct me I insisted on doing it again, which was barely passable. I’d like to blame my poor technique on Oli’s (my uke) expanding waistline but I was just having one of those days, at least where this throw was concerned.

With only 10 minutes of the class left we finished off with a couple of rounds of randori where I managed a nice Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi on Oli. I then paired up against Jadon, who I found really difficult to throw. He was particularly quick and able to counter me a couple of times, throwing me nicely with a Yoko-guruma or was it Uki-waza? (It’s very difficult to tell these throws apart in the heat of battle and without the benefit of television replays). Although it only lasted a couple of minutes I can definitely see the improvement in his tachiwaza since we last sparred.

I’m more than half way through the blue belt grading now so hopefully I can finish it off next week. I just have a couple more throws to perform and then it’s on to the performance part of the grading which includes things like showing counters and combinations of a certain technique followed by randori. If I do get my blue belt next week it will be just over 1 year since I got my green belt (2nd March 2012). I wonder how long it will take me to get to brown!