Day of the bear

I got schooled tonight by a measley judo shodan! Rob tapped me 5-6 times to my 1-2. Mostly positional deals, but I do recall him getting one fine jujigatame and one good choke of some sort. I think I tapped him with a sodegurumajime (sleeve wheel choke) and with a head-crushing tateshiho (north-south hold). But I know for sure that my mat mobility was off tonight and Rob did very well. Standing I got a sode tsurikomigoshi (sleve lifting hip throw) and a morotegari (double leg pick). Rob, as I recall, mostly got these clinches and dragged me into the ground, from which position he crushed me. He must have had a good judo instructor at some point in his past.

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And that was all before aikido class started! By the time Kel got there I had the shaky jelly triceps fasciculations. We worked releases into ukemi, tegatana, and the atemiwaza (striking throws) from Nijusan. Kel is getting very good at shomenate and his aigamaeate and gyakugamaeate were better than mine tonight. We'll keep working on his rank requirements and solidify his skill and knowledge and have a rank test in a few weeks. At the end we played with the offbalance for kubiguruma and the kata otoshi brushoff from Owaza Jupon. Fun, but not very sklled performances on my part by that late point in the night.

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If I did not already have a great name for the dojo, I think I'd come up with a name involving a bear - as in my defacto motto, "Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you."

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.

Sudden kataguruma thought

Leave it to Chad to bring up the one throw in the whole syllabus that I understand least. We'd just finished a miraculous workout in which we investigated the otoshi and guruma throws in judo. I'd assigned him some open-ended homework of looking at all the things in the judo syllabus that are named either otoshi or guruma and figuring out why they are named as they are. He chimes in, "What about kataguruma?"

Well, first off, kataguruma is NOT my throw. I can barely get the iron cross variant from nagenokata to work on someone half my size. I have a variant that I can throw to some effect occasionally in randori, but it is not really a guruma. It is more of a home-grown taiotoshi with a shoulder in the mix as a fulcrum.

Guruma throws tend to make a very distinctive fall for uke as he rotates in two planes - head-over-heels, and around a vertical axis through his body. It very much resembles a cylinder rolling on its axis as it turns end over end. Kataguruma has this fall when thrown properly.

Part of why kataguruma is so confusing an example of otoshi vs. guruma is because it is typically taught with a parallel offbalance down the line of uke's feet. This offbalance is typically associated with otoshi throws. In this case. tori offbalances as if to throw an otoshi and as tori compensates with the rear foot he gets lifted in a guruma throw.

Last night I had a sudden thought regarding this. Often, the otoshi-guruma thing makes more sense to me when I can find the otoshi variant of the guruma that I'm studying or vice versa. In this case, what is an otoshi that is thrown from nearly the same position and timing as kataguruma? I think it is tsurikomigoshi. I'll need some time and skilled ukes to play this idea, because kataguruma and tsurikomigoshi both intimidate most ukes, but I think that playing for a while with these two throws in a compare and contrast type practice will help to clarify why kataguruma is a guruma.