Two Gis for sale.

I've decided I need to make some room in my wardrobe so i'm selling two of my gis. The first is an Adidas J500, size 200 which has shrunk so that its more like a 190.

The second is a Mizuno Shiai size 5.5 jacket only.

The links to both of them on ebay are below

Adidas J500

Mizuno Shiai

If you need any more details then let me know

Happy Bidding.

Got it!

I haven’t posted anything for over a month now and there is a reason for this which will soon become apparent so please read on.

On the 16^th November I made my way to the Judo club where I would be attempting to pass my Dan grade theory test. For those of you who are not aware, in the BJA there are two parts to the 1^st dan black belt test, the Dan grade theory is usually done first followed by the competitive part which is to obtain 100 points in competition against other brown belts. This basically equates to winning 10 fights via Ippon. As I had already passed the competitive part of my dan grading I had just to pass the theory test and then I would be officially a black belt.

I arrived on a Sunday morning at 9.30am and was told to expect the day to last until approx. 4.30pm, which is quite a long time to be doing Judo. I was thankful that, in this room full of twenty strangers a familiar face appeared that of big Russ from Witley.

The course was quite informal despite both the examiners being 5^th dans. They went over a variety of techniques from the syllabus and allowed us all plenty of time to practise them. Having Russ as my uke made things like the first set of nage-no-kata particularly easy for me as he is roughly the same height as myself. This meant I didn’t need to bend down quite so low when executing the Ippon seoi nage and the kata-guruma and likewise when I was his uke.

Just before we were both tested all the techniques went out of my head. I was watching the other judoka doing their tests and when the examiner called out the technique they wanted to see I had no idea what it was. It was like I had never done Judo in my life. All the Japanese names suddenly made no sense to me. Then when we were called every technique suddenly did make sense and I nailed every throw, counter and combination first time with ease. The pass mark is 190 out of 270 points and I scored 242 so I felt like a really deserved to pass.

I got more out of this days course than just my black belt, I got a lot of confidence. I am able to perform every technique in the Gokyo to a reasonable standard, which when you consider how many throws and strangles and arm locks and hold there are is no mean feat.

What I didn’t get from passing this course was the elation that I got when I won my line-up, or batsugun as they call it in Japan. This was more of a relief.

Now back to why I haven’t posted about this until now, well I was to be officially awarded my black belt by my club and I wanted to take photos and add them to this post but there has been a delay in getting the belt embroidered so I won’t get it until the New Year now. In the interim I am wearing a plain Adidas black belt which feels a bit strange and I do find myself keep looking down at it. I still have tons to learn but I feel like I am now ready to start learning Judo, if that makes sense? I know the basics and am able to apply them to anything new I learn. I’m also ready to start refining my Tokui-waza and will try to become something of an Uchi-mata god over the coming years.

So what now? Well I’m not sure what else I can add to this blog. It was always about my Judo journey from white belt to black and beyond. Now that I am a black belt I don’t feel I am ready to turn this in to an educational blog like this one which is an excellent resource if you are nearing dan grade level, however I also don’t think I want to continue the blog in its current guise where I write about each class I had and each technique I learnt in that class. So for now I will add the odd post when something interesting happens but you can expect posts like this to be a lot less frequent from now on.

British Judo announces new sponsorship deal with Ultimate Fighting Championship

This will upset a few people.

The below is taken from the BJA website, the link can be found here 

British Judo today announced mixed martial arts promoters Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as title sponsors of the 2015 British Open Judo Championships, as part of a new partnership.

The Championships, which will take place at Wembley Arena on 12th of July, will be supported by the world’s largest mixed martial arts organisation which champions all forms of combat sports.

The sponsorship deal will also see UFC take advertising on the British Judo website and social media as well as other advertising opportunities as they look to support and promote sport and the national governing body.

UFC is one of the fastest growing event organisations in the World, creating a huge following of the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) of which judo is a core discipline. The partnership will support the promotion of combat sports and is expected to have a positive impact on grass roots participation in judo.

Speaking on the sponsorship deal, British Judo Chief Executive, Andrew Scoular said: "We are absolutely thrilled at our new partnership with UFC, which will bring about many mutual benefits for both the organisations and the sports of MMA and Judo in the UK. We look forward to developing other sponsorship and advertising opportunities with UFC in the future.

“By partnering with such a leading martial arts brand as UFC, we will receive significant added exposure for British Judo as a core martial art and the partnership will be instrumental in raising the profile of the sport of judo, ultimately leading to increased participation for young people.

“British Judo's values include discipline and responsibility. These along with respect and ethics are shared by UFC.”

Garry Cook, UFC Chief Global Brand Officer said: “The 2015 British Open Judo Championships will be a fantastic event and an important stage on which athletes can perform and promote their sport. Judo is a key component of mixed martial arts, and we are excited at the prospect of bringing together UFC fans, Judo supporters and practitioners of both sports.”

Judo is one of the combat sport disciplines widely used by MMA fighters within The UFC, a link which is demonstrated particularly well by UFC Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey (USA) who won Judo Bronze medal at the Beijing games in 2008 and made her MMA debut in 2010, before becoming the first female fighter to sign a lucrative contract with the UFC in 2012.

Neil Adams randori

I stumbled across this the other day and had to share it especially as it resembles my Judo very closely (My tongue is firmly in my cheek btw).

BJA Dan Grade Theory

This is the Dan Grade Theory Examination Form which I am currently studying whenever I have a free moment. Graeme is also currently running through any of the techniques which I am not comfortable with in the class, which essentially means that everyone is doing dan grade theory work, but i'm sure no one is complaining. Looking at the Examination Form I will be asked by the examiner to perform a single throw from each set under Nage-waza. There are 8 throws in each set and there are 5 sets so I have to know 40 throws.

Then I will be asked to perform 1 Ne-waza technique in each of the 5 sets, which is 27 ne-waza techniques.

Lastly I will be asked to choose 1 set under the following sections:

Renzoku-waza - 3 combinations in the same direction
Renraku-waza - 3 combinations in the opposite direction
Kaeshi-waza - 3 counters
Renraku/Kaeshi/Nige-waza - 2 combinations

Oh and then there is the little matter of doing kata, of which I have already decided to do the first set of Nage-no-kata, as I already had to do this for my brown belt.

I found the below on Youtube which appears to be all the Renzoku, Renraku and Kaeshi- waza as well as the Renraku ne-waza. All I need to do now is to decide which sets i'm going to choose but I've got a fairly good idea already. Simples

This is how you do Tai-otoshi

High Wycombe Dan Grading

So the time had arrived for my first dan grading contest. I did compete in February at brown belt in a points scoring competition but this was to be my first actual dan grading. Graeme very kindly drove me to High Wycombe and I was very thankful for that especially as I was extremely nervous.

On arrival I did what most people do, eye up the competition. This wasn’t a good idea as sat next to me was a giant of a man who stood at least 6ft 6 and weighed in at 113kg. Then there was the French guy, full of muscles, who weighed in at 115kg. Both of these guys I felt sure would be opponents of mine; however I only weighed 89kg so I would be giving away a lot of weight.

Also present were some guys from Witley Judo club which was nice as I was able to warm up with them before the fights started. Unlike the competition I attended in February where I weighed in and that sat around for 5 hours waiting to fight, this was well organised and no sooner had we warmed up than we called over to the mats to start fighting.

What normally happens at dan gradings is that they split you in to groups of light, middle and heavyweights. I normally weigh anywhere between 89 – 94kg so I’m usually classed as a HW, albeit one of the lightest ones. The fights soon started and there was some lovely Judo on display. I was particularly impressed with the newaza skills of a couple of the lighter guys and was surprised that the referees gave plenty of time for the newaza to progress before calling matte.

Before long my name was called out along with my first opponent who didn’t appear to be a heavyweight, in fact he was considerably shorter than me, although he was fairly stocky. What I didn’t notice at the time was the GB patch on his back so perhaps I shouldn't have been too surprised when I was thrown not once, but twice with a drop seoi nage for wazari scores. Bugger I had, as I always do, lost my first fight. On reflection I could have done better and probably would have done had I been better prepared mentally. I’m not saying I would have won but I was just caught cold a little.

I walked over to the side of the mats with a look on my face which said “here we go again”. I was now thinking that if I can just win one fight I’ll go home happy. Before long I hear my name called and again my opponent was smaller than me. I would probably guess he weighed around 80kg. This guy was someone I recognised from the tournament I entered in February at Worthing so I figured he was competition hardened. When the ref called hadjime I quickly took a dominant grip and was able to really bully him. At one point I threw him to the mat just using my arms. It wasn’t long before I was able to do that again but this time I got my foot in for a sort of Kosoto gari and he fell flat on his back. “IPPON” shouted the ref and all of a sudden I was a happy man. I had achieved my goal of getting 10 points at my first dan grading. If Graeme had said lets go home at that point I would have probably gone home content. However winning my second fight meant I had another fight and even if I lost that I might still be in someone else’s line up.

My wait for my next opponent went really quickly as all the fights in between seemed to end in Ippon. Yet again my opponent was smaller than me and I knew him, it was one of the guys from Witley called Jack. Jack was just under 80kg so was giving a lot of weight away, however he was, at 17 years old 25 years my junior so I figured that evened things out a bit. Now I have never done tachiwaza randori with Jack before but I have done Newaza and I felt I definitely had the edge should we go to the ground. When the fight started we were both a little too defensive and the ref stopped us at one point and told us to attack more. With less than a minute on the clock I managed to throw him for Ippon. I couldn’t believe it, 20 points at my first dan grading and now I had a line up and the chance of actually getting all 100 points.

Out of the 20 or so guys that were present I think there were five who qualified for a line up. The tall giant guy and the French guy had both gotten a line up so I knew I wouldn’t have to fight them. The guy that beat me in my first fight had also gotten a line up so I knew I wouldn’t fight him. I think the organisers had a hard time matching us all up to be honest as a couple of other guys had been choked unconscious, one to the point of fitting, so they were not allowed to fight. Eventually my line up was called and of my three opponents two were ones I had already fought and beat. My first opponent however was what Graeme had called “a stopper” he was 102kg and was designed to present me with a problem, a real test, which after all this was supposed to be.

I was quite quickly able to establish a good grip and felt confident that I was going to be able to throw him. I probed him tentatively with some foot sweeps and noticed that he had his weight mostly on one side of his body so I tried a Hiza guruma and he toppled over for ippon. Within seconds I was fighting my next opponent, the guy I had beaten in my second fight and this time he had upped his game and was moving around quickly, making it a lot harder for me to control him. He attempted a drop seoi nage but I was easily able to step off and attacked his turtle. I was trying for the Juji-gatame turnover but his arm was stuck in good so I baited him by sliding off his back and hoped he would take the opportunity to attack me on my back. When he did I quickly pushed his left arm outside my guard and slapped on a really tight san gaku jime and got the tap almost immediately. That was two wins and I needed one more to get my 100 points. I was fighting Jack again and to be fair he really went for the win but I was coming off of 4 ippon wins so my confidence was sky high. Again it was a cagey affair and I was really reluctant to over commit to anything as I feared being countered. Then, in what appeared to be a blink of an eye, he attacked me with Kosoto gari and I was able to counter with Uchi mata for the Ippon. I was stunned; I couldn’t believe I had actually done it, 100 points and within touching distance of being a black belt. Jack had been my hardest opponent by far and I’m sure he’ll get his 100 points at his next dan grading. He ended up being in the tall guy’s line up and actually beat him with two wazaris. I called him Jack the Giant Slayer afterwards and told him he should have that put on his black belt when he gets it.

Next up for me is the dan grade theory test so I need to swat up hard. As I didn’t expect to be in this position I assumed I would have at least a year to prepare but now I want to grade quickly, in a month or so, so I have a lot of work to do. In the gym on Monday I felt a severe pain my left bicep whilst doing chin ups which is exactly the same injury I had this time last year. Hopefully it won’t keep me off the mats for long but at least I don’t have to worry about shiai and fitness now, just technique.

Below is the video of my line up