Jadon and Stuart Vs Kata

I am filling in for Stuart today as he wasn’t going to be able to write this article in his usual timely manner.

The day before training at Dorking, the facebook BJA forum blew up as the new syllabus was suddenly released with almost no prior warning or discussion with coaches. So there were a lot of angry people who wanted to voice their opinions, this was also coupled with a hike in grading costs.

Stuart and I were both affected by the changes as they dealt mainly with 2nd and 1st kyu. Almost all the leg grabs techniques were removed bar one or two fundamental ones like kata garuma. The other significant change was having to do a kata set which before was optional. My initial reaction to this news was.......poor. Especially as I had recently been researching judo kata as some judo leg locks still exist there (a credit to kata). But was mortified by how half of the whole process seemed to be ritualised bowing and shuffling about.

Knowing the likely hood of doing some kata tonight was extremely high I tried to keep an open mind.

We did some light warm up with some animal movements which I enjoy as they offer variety and are very in keeping with my BJJ warm ups.

We were then introduced to doing some Nagano kata focusing on the Seoi-nage set.

The ritualised bowing was as I feared, highly detailed and specific, the purpose of which I could not ascertain, other than keeping with tradition. However I think the coaches sensed myself and Stuart’s trepidation and did not spend too much time on it, focusing on the bare bones of what we needed to know.

We then moved onto the Seoi-nage section which shows tori executing a Seio-nage as an evasion and counter to a very strange hammer fist to the head. Stuart and I partnered up and were very pleasantly surprised with the results. Stuart sometimes has trouble with Seoi due to his redwoodesque height but it all flowed perfectly today. The stepping forward momentum and the hammer fist action almost gives you all the kuzushi you need, making the throw almost effortless. And despite a 20kg difference, the throw seemed just as easy with Stuart as uke. I wouldn’t say we are converts just yet, but we both certainly developed a greater appreciation of kata’s applicability.

The session was then balanced out by having a good old tussle with some light randori and newaza. Stuart and I went throw for throw, varying our throws as much as possible. We switched a few times with the young guns and did a few rounds of newaza. There is some real potential on the ground at Dorking. A few of the youngsters have some good instincts and will definitely be terrors later. I always try keep our rolls fairly educational, giving them plenty of room to escape but not to easy so as to enforce bad habits. Letting them put me in bad positions and escaping, or if done well tapping to their submission.

I always use a lot of guard in judo training as Judo guys just seem to love jumping straight into it. It’s definitely weaker than my top ability so it has been useful to work on it. After an initial armbar (Juji gatame) spree people are now keeping their elbows a lot closer which is good to see. However this has led to people forgetting the 2 in or 2 out rule, so San gaku jime (triangle) has been rampant. At the moment not much is taught in the way of counters and defence to submission attempts (at any dojo I have been to), but I can definitely feel people naturally developing their own ways of staying safe the more we roll. Keeping in mind the strength difference, there are youngsters at Dorking who roll better than some 1st and 2nd Dans I’ve practised with. Practise doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. And these young guys possess squidgy sponge like brains which absorb information at an amazing rate. I hope to be apart of that and show them everything I can. It would be fantastic if I was given the opportunity to do some newaza coaching, but I haven’t quite worked up the nerve to ask yet. I have taught many sessions at my old club in Farnborough but I haven’t quite built up my relationship to the same extent at my judo venues just yet.

To finish off we were given the chance for some harder randori with newaza allowed if appropriate. I struggled against Stuart as I just walked straight into his grips and didn’t do enough to make life hard for him. He caught me a few times; my only victories were a Tomoe-nage where he landed on his side. And dodging his own Tomoe-nage and getting a pin. Lots of fun and some good learning points to be had.

So all in all a good lesson that did away with some of my prejudices regarding kata. At least for the moment!.

Back to the Drawing Board

Duncan took the class last night and our warm up consisted of very light newaza randori. For Jadon and I this quickly descended in to a little more than “light” randori, so Duncan stopped us and reiterated the point that this was just a warm up so try and flow between positions and not use any strength.


There was a distinct lack of seniors tonight, just myself and Jadon present, but there was an abundance of cadets so we changed partners regularly. Following our Newaza warm up Duncan had us practice Tai-otoshi in to Juji-gatame. The point of this was moving seamlessly from tachiwaza to newaza, with no pause. In fact the technique could have been called Tai-otoshi-juji-gatame (a Roy Inman special) such was the emphasis of flowing from one technique to another.

This set the tone for the night as we practised other throws straight in to groundwork like O-uchi-gari, Harai-goshi and Morote-seoi-nage. First with little to no resistance from Uke and then, following the throw, full resistance.

When I was practising Morote-seoi-nage I was paired with Ynez, who is, shall we say, vertically challenged somewhat. This meant that I had to get even lower than normal to throw her. I was unable to perform even one throw properly on Ynez and even when I changed partners to someone approaching my own size I still was not able to throw them. This was in stark contrast to a lesson we had in June where I seemed to have gotten the hang of this throw. With the parents of the cadets looking on they must have wondered how the highest ranked kyu grade on the mat was not able to perform the throws that their Yellow and Orange belt sons were able to do so easily. I found this both frustrating and demoralising.

We finished off with some throw for throw randori, with the caveat that we use the throws we had been shown tonight, and we were told to follow in to groundwork but not to spend too long trying to get a pin or submission. Again the key here was that the throw and the groundwork were as one. I felt quite comfortable doing this but it’s hard to gauge my skill level when most people are half my size and strength. My Harai-goshi works great on the cadets but I could pick them up and throw them without any technique because they are so light. All of this has made me realise that I need to get 100% fit quickly so I can get myself back to Yoshin Ryu where I can test myself properly.


It was an excellent lesson tonight with plenty of throws and groundwork, however I’m left with mixed feelings. My inability to perform Morote-seoi-nage at all, following last week’s class where my Ippon-seoi-nage was almost as bad, has really dented my confidence. Graeme mentioned to me the other week that he expected me to grade for brown belt by the end of this year which would leave me one step away from black. At the moment I feel as far away from being a black belt as I ever have.

How many of these throws can you do?

Found this posted in the new Judoforum, under the tagline "how many of these throws can you do" I was particularly impressed with the double O-uchi-gari at 1:08. Enjoy

Bicep Injury

I’m nursing a bit of an injury at the moment, picked up whilst doing Lat Pulldowns in the gym last week. Basically my bicep just started getting very tight, like severe cramp, so since then I’ve been icing it as much as I can and taking Ibuprofen. Anyway I still managed to make it to Judo on Tuesday, although I was a bit wary when we worked on Juji-gatame.

Ippon Seoi-nage was on the menu tonight, with Ko-Uchi-gake-mata-maki-komi used in combination. The Seoi-nage was for the benefit of Andrew, who needs it to pass his yellow belt theory and the Ko-uchi-gake-mata-maki-komi was for Jadon and yours truly as it’s on the brown belt syllabus.

Now I’ve never been a fan of any Seoi-nage throw, mainly due to my height and the fact that presently there isn’t anyone near my height at the club. This means I have to get really low down, which at my age isn’t particularly easy. It’s the reason I have never really attempted this throw in randori and the reason I don’t give it much thought when doing uchi-komi. As I was partnered up with Duncan I knew that my sloppy seoi-nage was not going to work but it was as much about my poor kuzushi as it was about my inability to get low enough. I do feel that, at blue belt, I shouldn’t have so many things wrong with my technique. Sometimes it feels like I am a complete beginner who doesn’t deserve to be wearing a blue belt let alone to be looking towards grading for brown. If the class had ended straight afterwards I would have left feeling a bit depressed but Newaza and tachiwaza randori made me feel a lot better. There’s nothing like throwing someone with a Harai-goshi or submitting someone with a Juji-gatame roll to get your confidence back up again.

So with this annoying bicep injury keeping me away from doing any upper body weights I have been concentrating on doing squats, lunges and other horrible leg exercises in a bid to strengthen my legs, which should hopefully help when I have to bend down low for seoi-nages. One legged squats were particularly nasty. Hopefully the injury heels quickly as I do not want to miss any Judo whatsoever and, assuming it does, I need to pay Yoshin Ryu, Witley and Guildford Police Judo clubs a visit to get some extra sessions in.

Dorking Judo has a new Black Belt.

I was back at Judo last night after two months of training solely BJJ and was very much looking forward to it. Upon arriving we were given the good news that one of the clubs brown belts, David, got the final 30 points needed for him to get his 1st dan black belt, which at just 17 years of age is a great achievement. David is the son of one the clubs coaches Graeme and will be presented formally once all the paperwork is completed and signed off by the BJA. I will post photos of his presentation in the coming weeks.

After we warmed up I was paired with Andrew for some Newaza randori. We started with one kneeling up right and the other standing behind them. The person standing pushed the other to the floor and once they hit the mat the Newaza begun. I started in the kneeling position first and Andrew attacked. I went in to the turtle position but turned the attack on him and quickly got his back. From here I secured a collar grip with my right hand across his neck and swung my leg over his head to finish the choke. I got the same submission on him when we restarted and finished off with a nice Juji-gatame. Now it was my turn to attack him. I tried and San-gaku turnover but he managed to squirm out, however he left his arm behind and I finished with another Juji-gatame. We restarted again and this time I turned him over on to his back and held him in mune gatame but my grips were not great and he was slowly escaping so I moved to tate-shiho gatame , pushed him arm across his neck and sunk in a Kata-gatame. To finish I moved from Tate-shiho to side control and he duly tapped.

Next up was Jadon. I attacked first but his turtle was good and he managed to grab my leg and use that to get me on my back where he was quick to pass my guard and mount me. Now if this was BJJ I would have defended my neck and waited for him to attack before trying to escape but as this was Judo and I was in a losing position, the emphasis was on me to escape, which I tried in vain to do. When Graeme called matte Jadon had one cross collar grip in place and was seconds away from applying his usual choke on me. I do struggle to escape from the mount, or tate-shiho-gatame, and this is something I need to work on. I could of course roll over on to my front, which would mean I have escaped the pin but would then expose me to being choked. Not only that but, from a self-defence point of view, I really don’t want to get in to the habit of escaping this way. That said, if I was losing in a competition I would certainly use it as a last resort.

Anyway here are some simple escapes from the mount demonstrated by the excellent Roy Dean.

We restarted, this time with him attacking and somehow we ended up in the same position, me on the bottom and him sitting on top waiting to pounce. Again he secured one of the cross collar grips and I knew it wouldn’t be long until he sunk in his choke. I tried to push his hips back but they wouldn’t budge and eventually I made the mistake of pushing his chest with a straight arm which he collected up and put me in Juji-gatame. I tried to escape from here but it was on tight so had to tap. When we stopped I realised that his foot had hit me in the face and my nose was streaming with blood. This meant I had to sit out the next 10-15 minutes until my nose stopped bleeding.

After my nose stopped gushing blood I paired up with Andrew again for some on the move Uchi-Komi, concentrating mainly on Tai-otoshi. Then Graeme got out the crashmats and had us do an interesting exercise with our partners whereby one of us (Andrew) would assume the turtle position and I would do a rolling breakfall over Andrew towards the crashmats. Then Andrew stands up and moves quickly towards me where I take a grip and immediately do a forward throw. I really enjoyed doing this as it got us all working hard doing multiple repetitions of throws and encouraged us to grip and throw. We changed this around after a while so that the person who had been in the turtle got up and did a rear throw on the one standing by the crashmats.

The class finished with 4 rounds of Randori. Jadon and I had a really good scrap, with multiple throws for both us and not too much attention paid to grip fighting.

Against Andrew I was allowed to follow my throws in to groundwork which was good fun. I managed quite a few successful Harai-goshi’s, which was encouraging and was the perfect ending (Nose bleed aside) to a perfect Judo class.

Choke - Nova Forca BJJ

Tonight’s technique was a simple but very effective choke which gets tighter as you allow the other person to pass your guard. Using my left hand I take a cross lapel grip with my palm facing up. You then pull the back of your partners head down with your right hand so that it’s tucked under your arm. Most people will look to pass to side control from here as a normal reaction to escaping what looks like a guillotine attempt. However this just further tightens the choke. If they attempt to move further around in to the north-south position (Kami-shiho-gatame) the choke becomes tighter still. From what we were taught there are a couple of escapes. One is to roll over on to your back, however you can stop them from doing this by simply grabbing hold of their gi pants with your right arm whilst applying the choke. The other escape was to move in the other direction, so instead of passing to your right, they move to your left. Ricardo showed us a simple counter to this which involved putting pressure on the back of your opponent’s neck with your right arm, in a scissor movement.

I liked this choke as it’s quite easy to get the initial cross lapel grip without your opponent feeling duly threatened. When I practised this I substituted the pull down of the head by grabbing the jacket just behind the neck. This way the technique becomes Judo legal.

The below video shows this technique being used in competition. Here the attacker not only passes the guard but actually takes the back of the guy applying the choke, probably in the hope that the further around he moves the less effective the choke becomes, when in fact the opposite is true and he gets choked out.

As a Judoka, one thing that screams out at me whilst watching the above is the un-Judo like posture and total lack of any throwing attempted by both fighters. To me, this more closely resembles wrestling than Judo, which is odd when you consider that BJJ is derived from Judo.

Sparring followed and my first roll was with a young guy (only 16) who was having only his 4th lesson. Not much I could do other than let him try out what he knows. I’m certainly not good enough to start teaching him nor would I want to in someone else’s club. I did however just point out to him that it’s not a good idea to push me with straight arms when I have him mounted.

Next up was a stocky guy who was training nogi. He spent most of this roll moving from my guard to half guard. He was looking for a guillotine choke when in half guard but I was able to defend this. I wrapped up his right arm with my left but there was no collar to grab hold of, in fact the lack of any grips made this quite a difficult roll for both of us. I’ve never trained nogi myself as it’s not really applicable to Judo but I might give it a go one day.

Next up I rolled with Jadon. We fought for grips quite a lot with me trying to pass his guard. I eventually got to half guard but then I got reversed in a scramble and the bell went with Jadon in full mount putting on a cross collar choke that I was fighting not to tap to. Definitely a case of saved by the bell.

My Last roll was against Tubes who’s a purple belt. Following on from my roll with Jadon I fought for grips and tried in vain to control his legs which would have allowed me to pass his guard. He pulled me in to his guard but I was very weary of him sweeping me so I was constantly adjusting my leg position so he couldn’t get a grip on them. What I failed to notice, whilst I was concentrating on this, was that he had raised his hips and had slapped on an arm bar. At this point I tried to stack him but that allowed him the opportunity to grab my gi bottoms and roll me over to complete the arm bar and get the tap. We resumed and this time instead of getting me with an arm bar he caught me with a triangle and got a second tap. I found myself smiling through this roll, mainly as I was really impressed with the technique being used against me. I do this often when I train Judo and get thrown with a really nicely executed throw. It’s my way of saying good technique; I aspire to be like you one day.

The class finished with one of the white belts getting his birthday whipping and although he was entitled to run the gauntlet he opted to walk instead. Hardcore!

Guard Sweeps - Nova Forca BJJ

I paired up with Rob a four strip white belt for the first technique of the evening which was a sweep against an attempted guard pass. I’ve been meaning to ask Rob if he had ever trained at Yoshin Ryu as he looked very familiar and following the roll that I had with him last week I was convinced he had as he used the same technique to pass my guard as he done when we did Newaza and that was the stack pass. It turns out that he has been training at both places for a few months now.

Back to last night’s technique, I start on my back with Rob in my closed guard. He stands up in an attempt to break open my guard and I underhook his left leg with my right arm and drive my hips in to his knee, which pushes him on to the floor. All the while I keep hold of his right arm with my left arm. From there I raise my hips and drive the shin of my left leg behind his neck, whilst pulling on his right arm and rotate clockwise in to him and end up in an armlock. It sounds complicated and looks complicated but after a few pointers from Tim, one of the black belts, I had this technique down.

Ricardo go us doing a guard pass drill where one person starts in the closed guard of another. It’s the person on tops job to pass the guard whilst the person on the bottom has to defend by sweeping, submitting or catching the other person in half guard. We played winner stays on.

At first I was one of the people trying to pass guard and my first two attempts didn’t go well. On my third go against another white belt I managed to pass his guard and get to side control. Now it was my turn to start on my back and from here I had quite a bit of success as I managed a perfect flower sweep on one person and then another sweep which is the first one shown here.

The only difference when I did this was that with my left arm, I wrapped up my opponents right arm and grabbed his left side collar, thus making him think I was looking for a choke and also taking his right arm out of play. Then I swept him and ended up in mount. I like this sweep a lot as there is little set up work needed, unlike the version of the flower sweep which I do that most people know.

I stayed on for another couple of goes before Ricardo called time and told us to take a quick water break before we started sparring.

I managed 5 rolls in total, all but one were against fellow white belts. The one non-white belt I rolled with was a blue belt that I managed to hold down for a while, switching between mune gatame, Kesa gatame and Kezure kesa gatame. I was actively looking for a submission but I knew that as soon I went for one he would escape. However I am here to learn BJJ not to sit there in a pin and feel comfortable so I went knee on belly and tried to mount him (Tate-shiho-gatame). Unfortunately he took this opportunity to escape to half guard and eventually managed to sweep me but I regained full guard and remained in this position until the buzzer went.

My other rolls, against white belts, went pretty well with me being largely dominant and attacking with sweeps and submission attempts. The only time I was in trouble was my last roll when I was very tired having had no rest in-between.

The class finished with Ricardo making us do two minutes of knee jumps, press-ups and squats. The two minutes was actually more like four as he kept adding on time when someone didn’t jump high enough or do their press ups properly. Another tiring but very enjoyable session.