Black Belt Presentation

Although I have been wearing a black belt since the 16th of November, I've only been wearing a plain black belt that I bought online. I knew that the club had ordered me a nice embroidered belt because Graeme asked me what I wanted written on it. however a belt like this takes a little time to make so I've had to wait until now to receive and be presented with it.

 I blame Mr Miyogi for not bowing properly when receiving the belt from Graeme. "Always look eye"

A firm handshake is certainly more preferable to the belt whippings some of my BJJ friends receive when being awarded with their new belts.

Tying my belt in front of the whole club, including the parents of the kids, meant I did a rush job and therefore my name and the kanji for Judo is round the wrong way.

A nice club photo, something we don't very often do.

I just wanted to add a few thank you's for those who have helped me on my Judo Journey so far.

Peter Leach and Stuart Mcdougall were responsible for coaching me through my early grades and without them I wouldn't have stayed with the club.

Oliver Bradley was the best Uke I ever had and gave me encouragement and also taught me lots. He also followed me on my numerous club visits to Yoshin Ryu and my many BJJ excursions.

Ynes Anderson taught me that everything ends with a Juji :)

Stewart Park helped keep the club running with Stuart McDougall and taught some old school hard Judo. It was a real shame that he had to give up coaching.

Jadon, for pushing me hard when we trained together,

All the coaches at Yoshin Ryu, you know who you are (Neil, Tim et all). Even though I was not a member of Yoshin Ryu they always treated me as one of their own and gave me some excellent advice and coaching, not to mention a few bruises.
Pete at Witley for giving me some great advice just before my dan grading contest at High Wycombe "just do your Judo Stuart"

Lastly Graeme for believing in me and making me believe in myself. I wouldn't be a black belt today if it wasn't for him.

And there we have it. My Oscar speech. I wonder who i'll be thanking when I get my 2nd dan!

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