Early AM judo increasingly strenuous

5 AM Judo with Rob

• Warmup with ground mobility cycle and holding cycle
• Drill: uki→kesa→mune→ushirokata (10 reps each)
• Drill: uki→kesa→mune→udegarame→wakigatame (10 reps each)
• Drill: uki→mune→kesa→wakigatame→udegarame (10 reps each)
• nagekomi: R1/R3→outside cross grip→deashi/kosoto
• nagekomi: R1/R3→outside cross grip→osotogari (with a crashpad)
• nagekomi: R1/R3→outside cross grip→uranage (with a crashpad)

It was good to be back to a more vigorous judo practice after bruising/breaking (or otherwise busting) a rib a couple of months ago. I can tell I've lost (temporarily) some of my tolerance to having my chest crushed in groundwork. Well, now that I can play more vigorously again I'll get it back pretty quick.

Shortcuts

Judo with Rob

• warmup with the groundwork cycle. We worked on shortcuts from munegatame to tateshiho and from the guard to tateshihogatame.
• randori - rob started out beating me a couple of rounds, once with a very uncomfortable face-down rear mount and the threat of a RNC. Towards the end I wore him down some and had better success. I then sprawled as Rob shot in and got him in a facedown position with a relatively wimpy collar choke but the addition of the sprawl submitted him.
• osotogari working on getting the timing and direction of the individual pulls right.

Aiki with Jill

• walking kata and releases
• chain #3: wakigatame and kotegaeshi
• nijusan wakigatame working on emphasizing the release feeling and brushing off.

Don't forget the Call for Submissions for Carnival #5.

Vigorous judo tonight

Judo with Rob

• ROM and groundwork cycle as warmup. The groundwork cycle was a lot more freeform and ranged across the mat almost like no-resistance ground randori. Cool.
• Three flavors of ukigoshi. Good nagekomi. Lots of airtime and mat pounding followed by light standing randori emphasizing ukigoshi.
• Newaza randori. I think I was the bear tonight. My ground mobility was particularly good tonight and Rob just had a hard time. Take away lesson: you have to keep your butt in motion., or if you're going to rest, get an assymetric grip on the opponent, get him offbalance and make him bear your weight. Then you can rest.

Aiki with Rob

• Suwariwaza and Hammi handachi from Sankata.

CSSD with Rob

• basic cuts (1-12 and the abbreviated 1-2-3-4-5-12), a Modular pattern, and some stick Crossada. I can see how I could become comfortable with the system but it sure sucks for me right now. Ah, the joys of being a newbie!

Judo and aiki at Mokuren last night

A slight change in the format of my training logs...

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Judo with Rob

• Groundwork cycle – emphasis on minimizing 2-knee downs and reversing the flow of the cycle using the shoulder press turnover, the knee-lift turnover, and the cross-face near ankle breakdown.
• Newaza randori followed by drilling the skill of walking out of jujigatame by feeding the arm farther in and stepping over his body. I also got to try a step-over guard pass that I saw in a book. Worked great.
• Standing throws into a crashpad. A few repetitions of ogoshi (I hate that throw!) then working into the otoshi-guruma concept with taiotoshi, ukiotoshi, sumiotoshi, and hizaguruma.

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, Jill, and J.P.

• Tegatana emphasizing pulling with the front foot to snap the recovery foot back under your hips to minimize time spent in an indeterminate state.
• Hanasu emphasizing the transition from #1 into #5 and #2 into #6
• KiHara Chain #2 working maeotoshi, shihonage, tenkai kotegaeshi, and aikinage/aigamaeate. Emphasis on using the wrist-hand in aikinage as a feeler instead of an end effector.

Recent aikido and judo workouts

Had a couple of good classes since last I posted. Friday I had two new judo students. A couple of BJJ guys. The did pretty good on the basic material we worked on. We warmed up with the groundwork cycle and worked on kosotogari into ukigatame into the meatgrinder. They seemed pretty comfortable on the ground but a little out of sorts on kosotogari. We did a few three-minute rounds of newaza randori and they handled themselves well. They would be exceptionally hard for an untrained guy about their own size to handle.

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At aikido Saturday I worked with Andy on tegatana emphasizing falling steps and small steps, hanasu emphasizing precise kuzushi and coordinating tori's pushing motions to make getting around uke easier. From there we worked on chain #5, including kotemawashi, kotehineri, and tenkai kotehineri. We played some randori in the neighborhood of chain #5 and then finished up with nijusan - particularly shomenate and oshitaoshi.

Cuban Seoinage

Hot & humid class tonight. Roband I worked on groundwork cycle #1 and deashibarai as warmup, took a jaunt into some deashi variants and okuriashi and harai tsurikomiashi. For the cool techniques of the day we worked ukigoshi with emphasis on remaining neutral as possible during the kuzushi then hipswitching into position for the throw. from there we spun off into Gregor-nage (a seoinage variant from a wrong-side sleeve grip. Gregor-nage sparked a memory of Cuban seoinage, which we repped until the end of class. Cuban seoinage is a monster of a throw that is actually a nice, gentle sumiotoshi if uke is compliant but as soon as he tries to stand his ground or turn in to drape or choke it turns into an awful, assbusting seoinage. Needless to say, both o us are smart enough ukes to take it as a sumiotoshi and not fight our way into a head-plant.

Ground cycle #1 pointers

Great return to judo practice tonight after being out for a week or so. Rob and Iwarmed up with some ROM and moved into groundwork cycle #1 with some minor adjustments to what Rob was doing:

• Even though it's a pretty elementary drill and top man is not looking for armbars, bottom man has to actively work to protect his arms from being entangled and locked. Bottom man continually moves his arms as top man shifts so that they stay free and viable and so that they act as feelers.
• Also, when pushing back to base from your belly, you don't want to do a push-up type action. Rather, pull one knee up as far as you can and use you arms to slide your butt over that shin as if you were pushing your butt over a roller (your shin is the roller). I can push back to base this proper way with a 350 pound guy on my back, whereas it's hard to do a push-up with anyone on your back.
• Third thing was the crawfish action at the end of the groundwork cycle. Bottom man has to immobilize one of top man's arms against the ground or else he will float with you. Top man has to watch out for putting an arm around bottom man's waistline/beltline because the turnover is almost trivial for the bottom man in this situation.

We did a lot of randori, both newaza and tachi into newaza. Rob did well there and got me in some positional asphyxia deals a couple of times. I got him with a good jujigatame (cross armbar) once and a good jujijime (cross choke) another time. We finished up with some repetition of kouchigari (one of the divine nine). We both agreed that if we worked with this intensity daily we'd each weigh about 20 pounds less.

Return to judo

Last night Cody returned to judo after being out for a while. We warmed up and spent some time making sure that his ukemi was still functional. He must've had a good instructor because those skills are still there! We reviewed the groundwork cycle and the happo no kuzushi then moved into kosotogari, deashibarai, and a deashi-kosoto combination that works wonders in randori and shiai.

Kihon and uchikomi

Now that I've spilt my guts about kihon in judo over the course of the last post or two, it's time for specifiics. What do I consider to be kihon in judo?

On the ground:

• All ukemi (particularly rolling forward from kneeling and backward from side-lying)
• Shirai 2-hands on a point drill (shrimping and bridging - more on this in a later post)
• Groundwork cycle #1 (transitions between mune, kesa, ushiro kesa, tate, and kami with uke supine, prone, and turtled - more on this in a later post)

Standing

• Taisabaki (tsugiashi displacements to the diagonals, sides, and turning – particularly the backstep in)
• Happo no kuzushi (but not the senseless version seen in the judo textbooks - more on this in a later post)
• Footsweep to control drill (a nonspecific ashiwaza exercise that builds understanding of timing and kuzushi - more on this in a later post)

Some die-hard old school folks might ask why I didn't list uchikomi as kihon. Uchikomi is (to my way of thinking) more technique-specific than kihon. When you practice uchikomi you are practicing osotogari uchikomi or seoinage uchikomi or etc... If you look back over the short lists above these kihon are very general. The motions and skills learnt here apply to many situations throughout judo. If you do 25 or 50 reps of osotogari then you pretty much only become better at osotogari. On the other hand, if you practice 25 or 50 reps of some particular taisabaki then you stand to improve your performance of every technique in which that taisabaki appears. That is why kihon is deliberately non-specific and why class time is devoted to it in every class.

This does not mean that I think that uchikomi is necessarily a bad exercise. It can be quite useful as well as good physical exercise - but I wouldn't spend class time doing uchikomi of specific techniques during every class (though it might be good to do 10-25 uchikomi of your tokuiwaza after each class.

You can see from this that I am developing in this series of posts a sort of hierarchy of techniques in judo - some techniques or exercises you will want to practice every class, some others you will want to practice regularly but not neccessarily every class, and some other techniques might be only visited occasionally for spice or to make a point.

Stay tuned for my ideas on which techniques form a core that should be practiced regularly.

Groundwork with a new buddy

Rob brought a buddy to judo class with him and we had a blast. Vincent was supposed to show, but he had to work. We warmed up with groundwork cycle #1 and moved into the elevator exercise (mune, guard, pass, kimura). At the end we did some light, introductory randori (kneeling knockdown).

Judo with Rob

Rob and I had an hour or so of grappling to ourselves. We worked on the first groundwork cycle and then moved into the envlope exercise (mune, kesa, wakigatame, udegarame, ushiro katagatame). Standing up we worked on deashibarai until Rob declared the falls to be too severe for his delicate constitution ;-) then we moved on to single-leg takedown.Fun, good exercise, and educational.

Judo newaza practice

Rob and I had an individual session of judo tonight in which we reviewed our beginning movement drill that teaches motion and transition between the various holding positions on the ground. Most judo classes use a similar drill to introduce supine holding, but this drill is particularly valuable because it makes tori more comfortable in all the major top positions with uke supine, prone, and turtled-up.

Afterward we reviewed one of the major groundwork escape principles - bridge uke's face forcibly into the mat. It's amazing how much easier many of the escapes become when you smash uke's nose into the earth first. Similar to an idea that Tomiki sensei allegedly expressed, "None of this will work unless you do shomenate (hit them in the face) first."

Mac put the 'ju' into judo for me!

Tonight we calibrated and rolled then practiced the 1-2-3touch footsweep drill emphasizing vertical posture and walking on the balls of the feet. This drill teaches an awful lot about being able to know where uke's feet are at all times. It is common for uke to want to leave a foot hanging out so that tori can feel like he is successful but it is very important for uke to be honest in this drill. Uke should retreat with steady rhythm without trying to give the foot to tori or snatch it fom him. When tori reaches out, if he misses the foot control then he learns to turn that motion into a step and get back in synch with uke. So honest ukemi is a no-lose proposition for tori.

After getting our juices flowing we practiced the fundamental form of deashi and worked on fixing two common ways itcan get screwed up. his led to the "bumping the stuck deashi" variant and the deashi to kosotogari combination. They loved this pair of techniques - especially the deashi kosoto! There was constant giggling as uke dropped like he was shot.

For newaza we got into the groove with the first groundwork cycle then learned leg entanglement and bridge&roll escape actions for deashi. Bridge and roll is often a monster to teach properly because observers ignore whatever sensei says and all they see is tori dragging uke horizontaly over himself - which is NOT what is going on. I have found that by over-preaching "plant his face in the ground" as a performance goal and by setting it up with an uphill bridging action students get the proper motion as well as a workable randori technique much faster and easier.

This led to a discussion of how Judo is supposed to be "ju." That is, it is a gentle art of flexible tactics. If something is difficult to perform then tori is either not trying to do it right or is trying to do it wrong. This is a common problem because it is not natural to imagine that it should be easy to loft an opposing person. We think that we should fight during a fight!

God bless the late, great Mac McNeese for finally telling me a few years back, "If it's not easy then you're thinking wrongly about what you are trying to do." That meme buried itself in my mind and transformed my judo miraculously over the course of a few months! For that great lesson, I honor Mac as my first Judo instructor.

Judo fundamentals

Tonight we warmed up with groundwork cycle #1, which gives an overview of most all the basic hold-downs in judo and allows exploration of transitions between them. Then we named two of the holding positions, munegatame and kesagatame, and worked on escape motions for these two. We reviewed bridge & roll from munegatame and then played with situp and uphill bridging motions from kesagatame. For standing practice we reviewed the 1-2-3touch footsweep drill and then looked at the 'stepping around the corner' entry to deashi harai. Overall a very productive fundamentals class. The students caught on fine and did great!