Judo 1-31-09

In today's lesson, we worked on osotogari. More specifically, we worked on how to get an osotogari when your opponent stiff-arms you and protects the leg you want to sweep. Pat calls it "running away to get closer". Basically, a combination of moving your body away from him, and some nasty off-balances that are 90 degrees to each other makes the guy step forward with that leg he's guarding so carefully. This was my first time with this, so I'm not great at it yet. Still counting those steps. Pat demonstrated how hiza garuma could also be an option against Mr. Stiff-Arm Defense.

We talked about how there's a "gear" relationship between tori and uke in the hip throws. Different gear ratios result in different hip techniques. Pretty neat stuff, although, so far hip techniques aren't my favorite (maybe I just don't like being on the receiving end of them!).

Pat also talked about the "Divine Nine" throws, which are made up of all the required throws from the yellow and green belt syllabus (5 from yellow, 4 from green). These throws form the core of all the rest of the throws, so they're introduced early in order to give students many, many repetitions over the years.

I did my yellow belt demo today, and it went pretty much as I expected it to. We each did 5 reps of each of the 5 throws for my level: deashi barai, kosotogari, osotogari, hiza garuma, and uki goshi. Then I demonstrated the ground mobility cycle, and four escapes from kesagatame (leg-entanglement, sit up, uphill, and bridge & roll), and two escapes from munegatame (shrimp to guard, and bridge & roll).

When I say it went as I expected it to, what I mean is I did have trouble with a couple of things. Uki goshi is still awkward for me. There was a slight hitch in my cross-face turnover during the ground mobililty cycle. I asked Pat what deficiencies he saw, and he pointed out my uki goshi needs more work (no surprise there), and my uphill escape from kesa does too (I need to bump hard to effect the escape). Overall, I think he was satisfied with the demo and promoted me to yellow belt. I know it's just a first step. I do feel like I've learned a lot in the past months, and realized how very much more there is to learn (and practice) in the years to come.