Judo, 6/29/15

Tonight's class was chock full of judo goodness!

First we drilled (most of) our Orange belt throws:

Kouchi gari - small inner reap. Wasn't bad tonight. The guy teaching us got us to emphasize stepping off the line better with our back foot, to help the throw.

Ouchi gari - large inner reap. He showed us a version I'm not accustomed to, where tori kind of drives into uke with his hips, to make uke take a turning step. The reap takes place when his second foot comes around to square up against you again.

Deashi harai - advanced foot sweep. Nothing to add here, still need more reps.

Kibisu gaeshi - heel pick. This one felt pretty good.

We didn't have time to work on the last orange belt throw, osoto maki komi, which is a shame because I haven't seen that one yet. 

Next we did a drill with a "sticky foot deashi". Tori would stick his foot to uke, and uke would lift it up a bit, then they play a game where uke tries to survive and tori tries to throw. I didn't do so well at it, my uke kept turning around backwards, and since the drill was for deashi, I didn't want to throw him with something else.

Ground randori was next. I rolled with a yellow belt, and got a collar choke I was unusually proud of. It was a lot "cleaner" (better technique) than I usually get. It felt more effortless. I think the difference was me remembering to break his posture down more. I also had a really good scissor sweep, that I set up well ahead of time and worked beautifully. 

The next guy I rolled with was a black belt, and things didn't go so well for me ;-)   I kept getting caught in side control again. I get the concept that I need to start escaping side control before I'm in it, but I haven't been able to pull it off yet. 

Finally, we did some "hop randori". Pretty light, not attacking with 100%, and not defending with 100%. My partner was the same black belt I just rolled with. He's left handed, which made most of the throws I'm used to doing awkward (impossible). I did get a couple of smooth morote garis I was proud of, a very sloppy osoto gari (at least he fell), and a "wrong sided" tai otoshi.

I need waaaaaaaay more work on standing randori. Lots of fun!