Photo courtesy of Parhessiastes
[Update Feb 2010 - This was one of the very first blog posts I ever did, a simple training log - the picture came later, just a few months ago. It took me a while, maybe a year or so, to figure out that lots of people were interested in my blog, but few were interested in my training logs. Since then I have mostly quit doing training logs, but I figured that I'd go back and try to inject some more interest in my old training logs, since they comprise more than 300 of my archived posts. Over time I'll be going back to each of my training logs and commenting on them from the point of view of having done the art several more years. What would I (an older, hopefully wiser) instructor tell a younger self based on my training logs? What do I know now that I wish I'd known then? - PLP]
Today in Judo class we worked on low-resistance newaza randori using the hold-down cycles as a basis. This is essentially randori where the man on top continually shifts from one hold to the next instead of cinching a hold.
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This provides the bottom man many more opportunities to work on escapes and reversals while the top man works on transitions and movement. This is an especially productive form of randori because each partner gets to experience 10-20 groundwork situations per minute as opposed to the 1-2 per minute if the top man is striving to cinch the hold. This way both partners leave with much more knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses on the ground.
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[Update: August 2007 - Here's a great guest post that I wrote for Nathan Teodoro's TDA Training blog, in which I talked about this same kind of ground randori exercise. Check it out!]
[Update: February 2010 - I still agree that this is probably the single most valuable mode of training in judo newaza - and I've read several jiu-jitsu instructors that agree. It is not as valuable to go 100% balls to the wall against every partner during every practice. It's much more productive to play around - to "roll" or "spar" instead of "fighting." We don't get a huge amount of rolling in our classes - my classes are so small these days that rolling becomes tiring when you only have the same 1-2 guys to roll with every time - so we spend a lot of time on repetition and drilling and nagekomi. I'd like to have a few more regular players so we can do more rolling and get more from it.]
[Update: February 2010 - I still agree that this is probably the single most valuable mode of training in judo newaza - and I've read several jiu-jitsu instructors that agree. It is not as valuable to go 100% balls to the wall against every partner during every practice. It's much more productive to play around - to "roll" or "spar" instead of "fighting." We don't get a huge amount of rolling in our classes - my classes are so small these days that rolling becomes tiring when you only have the same 1-2 guys to roll with every time - so we spend a lot of time on repetition and drilling and nagekomi. I'd like to have a few more regular players so we can do more rolling and get more from it.]
