Additional Thoughts on My Last Judo Lesson

I forgot to mention a couple of things in my recent judo training log.

Pat's been doing a theme each month this year for his aikido classes. This month the theme is "Unbendable Arm". Well, yesterday unbendable arm showed up in our judo lesson! Pat showed how if you're holding uke's sleeve, and you can bend him forward (thereby lowering him a bit), you can make your gripping arm unbendable in order to hold him down there and keep him from regaining his balance. Indeed it will further deteriorate his balance. Neat stuff. I'm always amazed at the cross-over between judo and aikido.

Secondly, we were talking again about using our hands and feet as feelers..."detectors" instead of "effectors". In randori, when I'm trying to do something instead of feel where opportunities might be, it can be compared to a concept from Gavin de Becker's great book, "The Gift of Fear". He advocates learning to trust our intuition more, and worry less. He maintains that our intuition is designed to analyze clues quickly and efficiently, and warn us of any danger. When we worry, we're supplanting our intuition and trying to do its job for it, and we (that is, our conscious mind) just can't do it as well. I really do recommend you read the book for a much better and more thorough treatment of the subject. Anyway, Pat compared it like this: when I'm looking for a chance to execute a particular throw, it's like I'm worrying and turning my intuition off. When I'm just trying to synch up with my opponent and feel what's happening it's like I'm not worrying, and letting my intuition dictate the right throw at the right time.