10-20 years behind isn't so bad

I got a great comment a day or so ago from Nick Lowry at the Windsong Dojo in Oklahoma City. He commented on my “Divine Nine’ judo throws that we practice more often than the remainder of the syllabus. Apparently KG’s students in Houston were practicing almost this same set of core techniques 20 years ago and Windsong students in OKC have been practicing a similar set for 10 or so years. This is one of those funny times when finding out that you’re only 10-20 years behind the times is good. These are great guys to be 10-20 years behind. True giants! So, I consider myself to be close to the right track when I can find out that I’m only a couple of decades behind folks this awesome.

One of the differences Nick noted between my Divine Nine and their core set was that they practiced tsurikomigoshi and sodetsurikomigoshi in the spots where I practice ukigoshi and kubinage. Those are certainly good throws. I was approaching the set of core techniques from perhaps a different point – TKGoshi and sode TKgoshi are variants of ogoshi/kubinage, so I put kubinage in my list. But I can see where TKgoshi could be a higher percentage throw because of perhaps greater ease of getting sleeve grips in a tourney or because of the necessity to get lower than a resisting opponent.

Ouchigari, kouchigari, and dojime

Tonight at Judo we practiced kouchigari and ouchigari. These are great throws, but not my favorites. I've seen some amazing examples of these throws - particularly by Bob Rea and Nick Lowry, but they're still not my tokuiwaza. If there is a problem with these throws, it's that they tend to put tori between uke's legs in the dreaded GUARD (which we call dojime even if we don't squeeze the torso). So tonight we worked these throws with tori working his way out of uke's guard into a side position (ushirokesa or mune) after the throw. This was one of those slow classes, where each drop of sweat was a tick of the clock. At the end, Cody obliged me and was uke for me to practice some Jodo for about 10 minutes. I got to do several repetitions of hikiotoshiuchi and kuritsuke. Both were working pretty well, if I do say so myself. Kuritsuke felt like gedanate to me tonight though. I don't know if it's because that's the technique I blogged about recently so it was on my mind or if it is supposed to work that way, but it was sure interesting and thought-provoking.