Ronda Rousey - UFC 175

Sometimes actions speak louder than words so i'll keep mine to a minimum so you can enjoy the above gif from Ronda's latest championship fight.The whole fight lasted 16 seconds so apart from the bit where they touched gloves this gif shows all of the fight.
So ladies, you wanna be a UFC fighter, go to your local Judo club and start training today!

Dorking Judo Club - Senior Session

Two posts in quick succession as I trained two nights consecutively this week.

The title may seem a little odd considering I always attend the senior session at Dorking Judo club, however just recently the numbers have started to swell so thought it was worth a particular mention. When I look back at my first ever post I was actually the only student present, with two instructors. Since then people have come and gone but really it’s since some of the under 16’s have joined the senior class that the number of actual seniors has slowly started to increase. Last night there were four dan grades on the mat, one of whom was a 3^rd dan who was returning to Judo. Then among us kyu grades there were 2 brown belts, 2 blue, 3 green, 4 yellow and two white belts, which is encouraging and gives us all lots of different people to practice with. For my own personal development it’s nice to have a couple of bigger guys train at the club now. One thing that takes me a while to get used to when I train at Yoshin Ryu is being out gripped, especially with a high collar grip as there just aren’t any big guys at Dorking who can do this to me. This has changed with Russ starting to train here, from Witley Judo Club and also 3^rd Dan Neil.

Something else I wanted to mention was that Jadon had received his brown belt from Guidlford Police Judo club which means I might have some company next time I attend a dan grading event. Well done Jadon, it’s well deserved.

Newaza night @ Yoshin Ryu

When I last trained here I found out that they had added an extra days training to their existing three, so that’s four in total now. However Wednesday night is newaza only, which is my favourite part of Judo, mainly because it hurts less than being thrown on your back. The format of this class is similar to their Thursday night randori session in that there is a long warm up/work out of about 30 minutes, followed by a couple of techniques and then about 30 minutes of continuous sparring. There were about 20 people on the mats, half of whom were dan grades, so I was in for a tough night. Sensei Dave (3^rd dan) took the class but Neil and Tim (also both 3^rd dans) were also present and gave extra coaching where needed.

My first roll was against a stocky yellow belt so I decided to try and work on my strangles, a week point in my game in my opinion. I was pleased that amongst the submissions I got were two Sode-guruma-jime’s. One off my back and the other when I was top, in the mount position.

This proved to be my easiest roll of the evening as my next three were against Sensei Tim, Sensei Dave and Prezmek, all of whom crushed and submitted me in various ways. In the three minute roll with Prezmek I counted 6 submissions, surely some kind of record!

After rolling with these three I mustered up enough strength to submit a black belt with Okuri-eri-jime before my last roll with another yellow belt who I suspect had some BJJ training, due to the way he pulled guard was very active on the bottom, way more so than any Judo yellow should be. However I was so gassed at this point that all I could do was play defence and not let him sweep me. I just didn’t have the strength to open his guard and mount any attacks and I apologised to him afterwards for being so negative.

At the end of the class sensei Neil took me aside to show me how I could have got Juji-gatame against Sensei Dave from a certain position off my back. Despite not being a regular at Yoshin ryu the instructors still have time show you little things like this to improve your game even after the class has finished. It’s for reasons like this that I’m prepared to travel that little bit further to train at Yoshin Ryu.

Leg in Triangle

I thought I had invented a new submission last week when I was training with Jadon. We were rolling, doing newaza randori, and I was doing well in that he hadn’t been able to submit or pin me yet. In fact he was playing guard and was having trouble trying to sweep me, which is a victory as far as my battles with Jadon are concerned.

Anyway Jadon used a deep half guard sweep that he told me he hasn’t used in a while; according to Jadon I can see the standard ones coming a mile away now, and whilst the sweep worked, Jadon was obviously a little complacent and didn't expect the triangle to be able to close with his leg still in! From here I squeezed as hard as I could but with his leg in it was putting extra pressure on my crown jewels. Although I've already fathered two Children and don’t plan on fathering anymore, I still wanted to retain the ability to piss standing up, so much to my annoyance I had to let go before I got the tap, which BTW would have been the first time I have tapped Jadon arggghhh. I guess if I had got the tap I could have claimed it as a new submission especially as I've not been able to find many examples of a “leg in Triangle” even amongst BJJers. However it appears I am not alone as someone posted these pictures on Facebook the other day.

So have you ever caught someone in a “leg in Triangle”?

Do you have a funky name for this submission or can I perhaps claim it for myself?

More Ronda

Just though i'd share this short video of Ronda doing some nogi Judo for no other reason that it's cool.
Enjoy.

Black Belt Fit – The Man Maker

I found this exercise on a Health and Fitness Forum, which was recommended by the resident Personal Trainer, that I liked the look of. So I decided to give it a go an OH MY GOD, its super tough. I did 1 set of 10 reps with a 10kg dumbbell and I was literally dead on my feet. I’m so impressed with this exercise that I’m going to add it to the end of my existing “Black Belt Fit” workout which consists of 5 x 500 metre rows supersetted with 20 squats and 20 press-ups. However I think I’ll have to drop the weight a bit at first so I can manage 3 sets of 10 reps.

Anyway, give it go today and let me know how you get on with it.

Tomae-nage & Sumi-gaeshi – Yoshin Ryu

With all the injuries I’ve had this year I’ve avoided training anywhere other than my own club as its not fair expecting every new person you train with to “mind the left elbow” and “watch my left leg”. However I have been feeling a lot better recently and although the elbow still isn’t healed it’s certainly manageable at the moment. So with this in mind I decided to make my way to Yoshin Ryu and was duly accompanied by Andrew from Dorking Judo Club.

After a thorough warm up sensei Neil got us to partner up for a Tomae-nage drill. The point of this drill wasn’t so much the throw as the breakfall out of it. We drilled this for quite a while adding in variations of the Tomae-nage, for example using two feet, all the while trying to perfect a nice fluid roll out of the throw. We followed this by drilling Sumi-gaeshi from an over the shoulder belt grip. The foot which would normally be placed on the inside of ukes thigh was instead placed between their legs as though we were trying to kick them up the arse. This seems to be Sensei Neil’s most favoured entry in to Sumi-gaeshi and it is one that he has shown me previously.

Newaza randori followed and I was paired up with Steve. I managed a quick flower sweep in to ude-garami from mount and got the tap quickly. I was then able to fend off most of his attacks and attempts at passing my guard whilst remaining active on the bottom and nearly catching him with juji-gatame a couple of times, although no more taps were forthcoming.

I then paired with a young brown belt who I managed to tap with a variety of submissions including ude-garami, Juji-gatame (twice), san-gaku-jime, and Okuri-eri-jime. A most enjoyable roll.

Next was one of the dan grades with whom I had a tough time trying to control. He managed to pin me with ushiro-kesa-gatame quite early on but the rest of the roll was a bit like a chess game as we both tried to find each other’s weaknesses. It was a nice technical roll.

Last up was another dan grade, this time a small female. I attacked her quickly and took her back and was then able to make her tap with Juji-gatame. The rest of the roll I decided to turn down the intensity a little and tried to concentrate on technique only. I managed to take her back on a number of occasions but my attempts at finishing with a choke were futile and again I really need to work on this as it is a glaring weakness in my submissions.

A quick water break followed before we moved on to Tachiwaza randori. I paired up with fellow brown belt Sean whom I did manage one successful O-uchi-gari on. Other than that it was a fairly cagey affair with neither of us really fully committing and both fighting for the superior grip.

This theme followed in to my next spar with one of the dan grades, although he was able to throw me a number of times we largely fought for grips and I came off the worse. My problem is that I’m not used to fighting guys my height at Dorking but at Yoshin Ryu there are a number of six footers. So when they take a high grip on me I struggle a little as I’m used to being the bully where gripping is concerned.

Last up was Steve and we were even cagier than Sean and I was. Again there was lots of grip fighting and sloppy attempts at throws but not a lot of Judo. I think we were the catalyst for Sensei Neil calling matte and making us all do light randori using only one finger and thumb. This was right at the end of a hard session and as such I was close to just falling over. However I could see the point of this exercise as we were all too tired to use any strength and therefore had to rely on technique alone. I realised I need to work on my technique after this.

This was another excellent hard session at Yoshin Ryu. I really enjoy the fact that we get 5 minutes of sparring with each person in Newaza randori as it means you can try out a lot of things and just figure out what works and what doesn’t. Apparently Wednesday night is Newaza only night at Yoshin Ryu so I might have to check that out soon. I also like the fact that there are a number of large brown belts for me to spar with as its vital I get used to this if I ever want to score points in dan grading competitions.