AM judo

AM judo with Rob & Rick

• warmup with some light-movement randori with Rob
• footsweep to control drill with the idea of how do you make a reluctant or careful opponent attack so that it is easier for you to counter
• deashi as a response to stiffarming
• hizaguruma as a follow-up to deashi
• groundwork mobility drill with emphasis on positional asphyxia in kesa, mune, ushiro kesa, and tate

Working the envelope

AM judo with Rob

• warmup with the ground mobility cycle
• kosotogari→(kesa↔mune)→(wakigatame↔udegarame)
• near leg (bent) armbar, far leg (straight) armbar, and elbow crank from kesagatame
• top shoulder choke and step-over choke from kesagatame
• straitjacket holds from kamishiho, tateshiho, and munegatame

Busy, busy day

5:00 am aiki with Rob.

• we worked on the Sankata knife stuff. I enjoy getting his CSSD Modern Arnis ideas at work on the aiki knife stuff.

5:30 PM Kid's judo with Gavin, Mason, and Emma

• Laps of the mat with silly walks for warmups.
• ukemi, including the demonstration forms and the crash pad forms
• osotogari
• osotogari→kesagatame
• osotogari→kesagatame→uphill escape
• taiotoshi

6:30 aiki with Kel and Rick

• ROM & ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on using some ideokinesis ideas to improve posture and relaxation of the shoulders.
• hanasu with emphasis on loose, relaxed shoulders
• hand randori
• aigamaeate
• 2-3 of the Rokukata knife-taking and knife-retention techniques

PM judo and aikido

Kid's judo with Gavin, Whit, Knox, Emma, and Quin

• Ukemi - and lots of it with me throwing/spotting Whit, Knox, and Quin for about 30 minutes before class started. Then the others arrived and we went through the ukemi routine for the parents' demo in about a month.
• osotogari into kesagatame
• quiet sitting counting sounds that we can hear.

Aikido with Kel

• tegatana with emphasis on taking small enough steps that the heels do not strike or lift off the mat.
• hanasu with emphasis on 'stay-off-me' hands.
• chain #1, including shihonage, iriminage, and ushiroate
• some various interesting techniques from Sankata as the cool ninja techniques of the night.

I am exhausted from the three workouts today. Elise, my darling wife, has gone to purchase me a bottle of whiskey to drink while I lie in a scalding hot bathtub.

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.

Thursday aikido

We had no 5AM class this morning - Rob had a test to study for.
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Kid's judo with Gavin, Whit, Mason, and Emma

• Warmup, ukemi, spider-crawling alternated with big falls (teguruma) with a spotter
• Osotogari uchikomi "by the numbers" sets of theee throwing on the last rep and trading partners. Whit was doing especially good on the osotogari, and hammered Gavin once. Gavin tried to whine about it but then started laughing.
• Osotogari into kesagatame
• Uphill escape from kesagatame. Mason was majorly out-doing the others on this escape with an excellent bridging action.
• Crawling man

Aiki with Rick

• tegatana emphasizing balls of the feet and short, conservative steps.
• hanasu #1-4 emphasizing the feeling of release.
• partner evasion exercises using release motions to evase and brush off lunges.
• suwari kokyuho (kneeling freeform pushing exercise)

Judo by the numbers

Kid's judo with Gavin, Whit, Mason, Knox, Emma, and Quin.

• warmup, ukemi
• osotogari by the numbers: 1) stand next to uke, 2) stretch your leg out behind him, 3) sweep the leg. Worked pretty good with this crowd.
• kesagatame, again, by the numbers: 1) knee on the ground, 2) wrap the arm, 3) sit on your butt, 4)hold the head. Again, worked pretty good.
• uphill escape from kesagatame - no counting this time. worked pretty good except they had a hard time extracting the trapped arm, so I had them step over and pull uke to his back for a pin. This was good for a lot of grunting and groaning and energy expendature. Lots of fun. I even had kids where they would volunteer to be on the bottom of the hold-down.

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Mrs. Red, Here are the links to the video I told you about. They sure are having a load of fun:

• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2008/02/getting-better-at-randori.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2008/01/kids-newaza-randori.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2008/01/baby-got-backfall.html

Improvement on osotogari and kesagatame

Judo with Gavin, Whit, Mason, Knox, Emma, and Quin

• warmups, running, ukemi
• kneeling kubinage into kesagatame - most were doing much better on getting into kesagatame
• uphill escape from kesagatame - this is the first time they'd seen it and most of them did pretty good. This will give them incentive to get better at kesagatame, which wil in turn, give them incintive to get better at uphill escape and to learn more escaping actions. A cool feedback loop.
• osotogari - all were improved and we worked on uke's falling action - making sure the butt hits first and slapping instead of putting arms down. We also wlrked on supporting uke by pulling up with both hands on one arm and moving in beside the chest as uke falls. The 6+ year olds were grtting this action pretty good.

Aiki with Kel

• warmups, tegatana (worked on some hand motions), hanasu (kinda off tonight)
• Chain #2, including maeotoshi, over-the-shoulder straight armbar, shihonage, aikinage, sumiotoshi, and tenkai kotehineri
• This transitioned into randori. Kel was doing well tonight.

Parkers do judo

Judo with Whit, Knox, and Quin

• ROM and warmups: running, tornado twisters, smashing pumpkins, etc...
• ukemi: rocking&slapping, teguruma with me as spotter interspersed with more running
• newaza: crossface far knee tap turnover to mune
• tachiwaza: osotogari emphasizing kicking knee-to-knee and helping uke to land properly. Whit hammered Quin once. We'll have to work on falling better as well as showing tori how to help uke better.
• newaza: kneeling kubinage into kesagatame. This seems to be the best way to get kids to actually do kesagatame.
• Below is a technique that Knox spontaneously invented tonight - nose gatame - submission by nose honking!

Boiling poisonous acid lava

Tonight we had the pleasure of Sensei Dave Shorey of Acadian Judo visiting our kids' judo class. He seemed to enjoy the class and I sure enjoyed having him drop by. It's good to get to know some more of the local grassroots judo crowd.

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Kids' judo with Dave, Jill, Gavin, Whit, Mason, Knox, and Emma

• ROM and ukemi as usual.
• Laps across the mat galloping, alternating one kid out per lap to take an assisted teguruma fall. Of all the types of movement skills I've worked on with these kids, galloping has been the toughest, so I had them gallop with a flag held in a hand and gave them the condition that they had to keep the flag out in front of them the whole time. Worked like a charm to get them galloping.
• Crab war. I told them that the mat was boiling lava and poisonous acid and they had to keep their bottoms up out of it while trying to knock the other guys into the boiling poisonous acid lava. Again, they loved it.
• Repetitions of suwari kubinage into kesagatame. I was pretty loose on the form of the thing - just wanted to get them knocking each other down with something approximating the technique. Then we had races to see whih judoka could throw his partner seven times in the least time.
• Amazon wrestling (the river, not the naked, one-breasted, warrior women) This was our approximation of the ethnic wrestling style featured recently on Discovery Channel's Last One Standing. They did well and seemed to have fun. They've practiced tactics to get around to the back and secure a bearhug but they pretty much all favored the knee control route to winning.
• Cool-down with seated meditation. Really just a quiet concentration game at this age. Quiet sitting with eyes closed trying to remember all the sounds they hear.
• Tomorrow is the kohaku shiai for this month.

Kid's judo season is starting

Yesterday we had a good beginning to Kid's judo season. Let me back up a minute. Judo, like most other martial arts does not usually work on a seasonal basis, like baseball or soccer. It's a year-round thing. Well, we've had some difficulty getting people to go for kid's judo and it seems that part of the reason is because parents are so caught up in a seasonal sports mindset. Teeball and soccer are big sports around here. Well, we decided to try Judo as a seasonal thing here too.
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We're going to initially try an 8-month season through the cooler parts of the year and take off during the most sweltering season. We've gotten a lot of interest in this thing and have set up a 4-8 year-old class on Fridays with red-white tourneys the second Saturday of each month. We've signed our club and all our athletes up with the AAU and yesterday we had our first practice.

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And the best thing is the price. You can do an eight-month season of Judo with me for almost the same price as one month at the nearby competition club and the organization membership, insurance, and tournaments are included in that price. That's a deal you can't possibly beat anywhere!

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Five kids showed up. Somewhat less than the ten or so families that expressed interest but I figure a couple of families were just being polite and a couple more families will trail in during the next couple of weeks, so we should have a nice sized class. I started by giving them the ultra-short explanation of what Judo is...

Judo is a kind of Japanese wrestling in which the goal is to throw your opponent onto his back or hold him on his back for 25 seconds. The name Judo means “the smart way of using your strength.’ It was invented about 120 years ago in Japan by a man named Jigoro Kano. When we practice Judo, we wear a uniform called a gi and a belt called an obi. The teacher, or coach, is called sensei. In judo you bow to each other as a salute – just like in the army.

... followed by talking about the terms hajime ("go") and matte ("stop and listen right now"). We enforced this by pairing up by size and having them throttle each other roughly by the shoulders every time I said hajime until I said matte and they had to stop. They though that was great fun. I figure to reinforce this response this way for a while.
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We warmed up with some ROM and some running, hopping, skipping, galloping, and laterals back and forth across the mat. From there we worked on falling exercises and moved into a kneeling takedown resembling kubiguruma into kesagatame. Next week we'll repeat some of the exercises, adding others and particularly enforcing the skill of getting into kesagatame. Toward the end of class we had a rousing round of toestomp randori.
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Since no parent likes having their kids worked into a froth and then given back to them, we're instituting a few minutes of quiet sitting at the end. The best intro to this that I've ever heard was to close your eyes and be quiet for 1 minute, while trying to remember every sound you can hear. Then you go in a circle and everyone names one sound they heard. This is a good intro to meditation/focus training for little kids.
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The kids had a lot of fun and so did I. I'm looking forward to next week already.

Old-Bear regains his honour

Another good class. Tonight in judo we worked the Meatgrinder entry into groundwork and focussed on entering into jujigatame from the rear mounted position. Cool and easy. Standing we worked on some nice, easy ukigoshi followed by some uchimata. Good work. Rob needs to work on getting the standing leg placed properly under himself as a fulcrum. That involves:

• toe-out and hipswitch
• standing foot slightly farther back underneath our collective center of mass.
• standing foot, knee, both hips, and all abdominal muscles pointing in the same direction
• butt cheek underneath uke, almost through uke's groin

On the ground the old bear recovered his honor. I got Rob in 4-5 good submissions, including a kesagatame (i think), a couple of tateshiho, and a jujigatame. Rob crushed me at least once with something or other - maybe a kesagatame? Good stuff. Neither of us got clean throws tonight in randori. I got a partially successful kouchigari and he attempted several single leg picks, which mostly got him sprawled-on and grounded. I think I may have gotten an arm-snapdown and I know I got a great cross-face turnover.

At aikido tonight, Kel and Patrick M. and I worked on hanasu into ukemi, a little light randori, some kata shomenate and several variants of aigamaeate, including some from goshinjitsu and kimenokata. Cool stuff.

The boys are back in town

Tonight's class included Whit, Knox, and myself. We're about ready to re-start the kid's judo since teeball and 6-7 yo baseball is finished for the season, and We wanted to get Whit a head start so he could be a good example to the new heads on how stuff works in judo class.
We warmed up with some ROM and then ran laterals, diagonals, and circles in tsugiashi. We worked on rolling, doing the kneeling forward rolls and the standing kindergarden rolls where you put your hands and head on the ground between your feet and roll straight down the spine back to standing. Whit did pretty good on the kneeling roll, Knox didn't get it. They both did great on the kindergarden roll.
Then we played kneeling knockdown, using two lapels grip, arm and lapel, and arm and head hug. At the end we worked on kesagatame with me helping them get into position and the uke struggling out of the hold. Whit spontaneoudly invented the bridge&roll escape and Knox spontaneously invented the uphill escape. It was pretty cool.

Here are a couple of cool old vids of kids Whit's and Knox's age doing judo. Groovy 1960's music too...

We ate the bear!

Every day of your life you have to fight a bear. Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you. Well, today, we ate bear!

We had a cool judo class of just myself and Rob. We warmed up with some ROM and then threw nagekomi for a while. That was okay except for falling for the hipthrows - that was unpleasant on my post-clinic muscles. But we survived it. Then we went to the ground and I did pretty good for an old fat guy. I got a triangle armbar and a straight armbar from kesagatame and a pretty good ushiro katagatame - at least those are the things I remember. Best of all, I was able to conserve my energy so I lasted for a goodly session with a 200+ pound, pretty in-shape dude 14 years younger than me. Rob did get a good positional hold at one point and wedged me into a corner of the mat but good.

Not only that, but after class I went to watch my son, Whit play baseball. Whit hit a double that drove in the tying and go-ahead runs. So Whit ate his share of bear too!

Sword sweeps

Tonight Rob helped me with the kid's judo class, which was very small - so each of the big boys got a small boy to wrestle with. We did mostly the usual suspects, motion drills across the mat to teach coordination and make them expend energy. Kneeling knockdown moving into kneeling kubinge into kesagatame escaped by a situp escape. kneeling arm snapdown and cross-face turnover. Standing toestomp randori. At the end we worked the kids back up into a lather having them run laps with one dropping out each lap to do a breakfall (teguruma or deashibarai)spotted by me. Lotsa fun and we had a new friend in class tonight.

Afterward I got to work my way through the Seitei jodo kihon and kata #1-6. The things that interested me most were the various sword-sweeping techniques (makiotoshi, kurihanashi, dobarai). I want to see how Henry does these three at the Starkville Henry clinic here in a few weeks. He showed me a sword sweep from Sankata last time that was beyond belief and beyond imitation. And speaking of an unbelievable sword sweep, check this out!!! I'm sure that poor guy had to go home and commit seppuku to try to cleanse himself of the shame (not that it wouldn't have happened to me...)

Run, doggies, run!

Tonight we did a lot of moving in kid's judo class. Warmed up with ROM and did laps of running, skipping, galloping, and laterals across the dojo. Worked on three standing techniques tonight - deashibarai, kouchigari, and a single leg takedown (I can't ever remember kuchikitaoshi and kibisugaeshi apart but it was one of them). The kids did great. On the ground we worked on kesagatame and the situp escape from kesa. Inerspersed in there was some kneeling knockdown randori - but not much. The last part of class was more laps and ukemi. I had them run laps across the dojo constantly with one of them dropping out each lap and doing a teguruma or deashi breakfall with me as the spotter. We cooled off with laps of dragging and/or carrying each oher across the mat. As they left with sweat flinging off their hair, a mom expressed her gratitude for wearing them out.

Kids judo class

"Judo is a kind of wrestling that was invented in Japan a long time ago by a guy named Jigoro Kano. Kano was a very good wrestler. The kind of wrestling that we do is the same kind that Kano did long ago."

That is the history that we reviewed tonight as the kids warmed up with skipping, galloping, and laterals and then moved on to logrolls, lowcrawl, inchworm, spiderwalk, crabwalk, and hipheist. These five year olds were doing hipheist great! Amazing what they pick up! We had a good, long session of kneeling knockdown (newaza randori) which led us into practicing a head-and-arm takedown (suwari kubinage) into a scarf hold (kesagatame). From here we moved into standing toestomp (tachi randori) which gave us an opporunity to work on snapdown as a response to someone fighting bent-over where you can't get to their feet. Everyone did great with snapdown and at the end of class they each took ten falls from deashibarai (front footsweep) with me sailing them and then letting them down into a proper back/side fall.

Of all that cool material they said that the backfalls from deashi were their favorite!

Kid's class

WOW! Those little kids are doing GREAT in judo. I don't think I've ever had so much fun in Judo as when I'm working with those 4-6 year olds.

Today we warmed up with laterals and ROM and stretching then did logrolls, lowcrawl, inchworm, and shrimping. We worked on backfalls with spotters holding hands and cueing them to "put your booty down first." Then we had adult spotters do teguruma to the kids so that they could practice being turned over and slapping (cue: "slap the ground harder than it slaps you.").

For randori we did kneeling knockdown and standing toestomp randori. The techniques of the day were kneeling kubinage into kesagatame and standing deashi. The cues were "put your booty down first" for uke and "hold both hands till he's on the ground" for tori. The standing deashi was the most remarkable because with consistent cueing they got it PERFECT! Deashi harai done safely and consistently correct by 5 year olds!

They must have an awesome teacher or something ;-)

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!

New Student, old ideas

Today we had a new judo student. Paul is a (perhaps) middle aged guy who did Judo as a kid and who has dome some isshinryu recently. We warmed up (or calibrated - see the earlier posts on this) and practiced some backfalls, side falls, and forward rolls. He did great! Then we worked on the kito principle using some suwari (suwari kubinage and suwari hizaguruma). This got us into kesagatame and munegatame so we could discuss these positions and beginbuilding the situp escape from kesagatame.

From standing we used kosotogari as our excuse to practice some more ukemi and talk about tori's responsibility to help uke fall properly. This also afforded us an opportunity to talk about how to engage by occupying the center with your hands as you approach. This gives us an advantageous inside gripping position and provides an automatic block/parry. The Gracie guys (I think) call a variant of this the cowcatcher or the wedge.