Advice from a Judo World Champion

Judo advice from Dr. AnnMaria Demars:

... I think once every few months the instructors should schedule a 'no students' workout and get together. There should be 90 minutes of people just showing each other drills or new techniques that they have been thinking about. This should be followed by 90 minutes of beer-drinking and swapping lies about how good and good-looking we all used to be.

I'm all for this.  We already do a version of this with our Aiki Buddies Gathering in the Fall of each year, but it's not always instructors-only.  It's a doable concept on a lot of scales - you could do regional, state, or multi-state instructor hookups for judo, judo&BJJ, or even more diverse.  The concept works best to improve the instructors if it is an informal thing with everyone contributing - and if everyone contributes, you have to limit the scope of the thing in order to give each instructor a few minutes to share and stay within the 90 (or 120) minute time limit (of course, if you did 120 minutes of judo, you'd have to expand the beer-drinking accordingly to maintain balance...)

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Anyway, any judo/BJJ instructors in McComb, Hammond, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Hattiesburg, or points between interested in setting up this sort of thing?  I'm busier than a one-legged guy in a butt-kicking contest but give me a call and we'll see what we can set up.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Slicker than snail snot!

A friend of mine loaned me a couple of DVDs that he recently bought.  One was Zdenek Matl's Variations DVD and the other was Clif Norgaard's Ashiwaza DVD - Both available from GW Enterprises.  I have to say, these were the most astounding technical DVDs I've seen in a long time. 

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Dr. Norgaard's broken timing entries into the ashiwaza were not so different from some of my entries on some of my throws, but he was doing it across this whole set of throws and the effect seemed magnified, as if his understanding of this whole set of things was based on that broken timing.  I do a similar broken timing entry on ashiguruma, but this video clearly demonstrates that I stand to improve by carrying that concept into some other techniques - especially Dr. Norgaard's miraculous uchimata.  It seems this lesson has been the one I've been missing for a long time with regard to uchimata.

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And Mr. Matl's approach to haraitsurikomiashi and uchimata were particularly instructive too.  It was apparent that he has made his mantra of "safe - effective - simple" a part of all of his judo.  I also liked how his variations on judo techniques were NOT optimized for shiai or for self-defense, but were clearly effective in both environments.

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It's going to take me a long time to dissect and internalize the information on these two DVDs.  If you want to join me in this quest, check out these DVDs at GW Enterprises.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Game face

Whit trying on his judo game face in the mirror...

A few days ago, I asked Whit, "Son, how did you and me get to be so cool and awesome?"  To which he responded immediately and without thinking, "I donno, Dad.  I figure you used to be pretty lame, but then I was born and things started looking up for you."

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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