Judo, 8/5/15

Judo tonight was pretty good...

For the first part of class, I had to demo all the yellow belt material (throws, counters, combos, sweeps & other misc mat work, pins, chokes, arm bars, and escapes) for one of the senior black belts, for him to report back to the head instructor on my performance. So I felt a little pressure. My buddy who's closer to my size wasn't there tonight (my throws look beautiful on him) so I had to demo on a tall, lanky guy. So I don't feel like my performance tonight was my best. Monday may have been my best. In any case, I got through all the material with only a few pointers from our coach, and feel like it was adequate for a yellow belt demo. Not my best, but maybe 75-80% of my best to date, for those techniques.

For the whole class lesson we worked on deashi harai, moving forward and back. I feel like I'm getting my deashi groove back finally. Those went well.

Finally, we did hop randori. I went 2 rounds:

First round with tall lanky guy. We did ok, he's a cool guy and always fun to work with. We both got some smooth throws in.

Second round with the strong yellow belt I was apparently trying to keep my distance from last week. This time I did seoi otoshi right out of the gate, dropping to where he was standing, and yeah, it was much easier. He's a super guy as well, and I always learn something from losing to him. I did get an okay gedan ate on him tonight.

I find maybe the thing I'm struggling with most, with my return to judo, is getting used to the idea that people come in lots of shapes and sizes, haha!  I've found that doing aikido with different sized folks doesn't seem as disparate as doing judo with a variety of body types. Aikido calls for an adjustment here or there when you have to go under a short uke's arm or something, but my mind short circuits when I go from tall, lanky uke, to short n' stout uke.

I'm curious what our coach for tonight had to say to sensei about my pseudo-demo, but I'm not anxious over it. I did my best, it was what it was, and is now in the past. Wish I would have done a little better, but I'm not ashamed either.

Ah well; Kano said the way to get better at judo is to keep going to class. Onward!