Judo, 11/16/15

Our rank group worked on all the ground work for green belt. As a class we worked on an arm bar escape. I had one round of ground randori, but it kind of ruined my night, haha. For one of the first times, I had good control over my huge buddy I frequently roll with. I had a really tight spider guard working and was getting ready to sweep him. Being a mountain compared to me, he was able to pick me up slightly and sort of slam me on the mat. Then he said reset and stopped rolling.

I had no idea what was going on, but the teacher was nearby and explained to me that by "judo rules" if you can pick your opponent's back up even a little off the ground, it's a stop, and you reset. I was appalled. I thought "What kind of martial art is this, that gives an already stronger opponent a greater advantage?"

For the rest of the roll, every time I got caught in something I'd say "oops, let's reset" in a real sissy voice, to make fun of him. That's a laaaaaaaaame rule! I'll be ready for it next time.

Judo, 11/9 and 11/11

For the first class last week (my first class as an orange belt) we worked mainly on ouchigari and a couple different setups. For randori, I only went once, against a black belt, but did okay. I had a nice tani-otoshi, and got lucky with one tai otoshi.

For Wednesday's class, my rank group worked on counters and combos for green belt. The whole class lesson was about ken-ken uchimata. I did better with it than I did the last time we worked on it. I did 2 rounds of ground randori; once against a brown belt. I almost had him in an inverted triangle, but couldn't finish it. Next was against a black belt. I survived pretty well, but couldn't really mount an offense against him.

Judo, Study Group, and Demo, Nov 4th, 5th, & 7th

11/4/15
Wednesday we worked extensively on rank material, and did maybe 4 rounds of ground randori. I was really apprehensive about my uke, but he was able to help me tweak some technique to make throwing him easier - jita kyoei!  There's a "side entry" to ogoshi that really helped, and pulling and twisting more helped my ippon seoi nage.

11/5/15
My uke came over and we worked on rank material for a couple of hours. I'm really glad we did. I think it made a big difference in our demos today.

11/7/15
Rank test! Three of us tested today - one acquaintance of mine tested for green, me and my buddy for orange. It was a grueling, nearly 2 hour comprehensive test. I feel like I did okay for the most part, especially with the ground work. My ogoshi, ippon seoi nage, and seoi otoshi weren't the best I've ever had, but they were 10x better than they would have been a week ago. In the end, I was promoted to orange belt (gokyu), and felt like I earned every inch of it, haha! I should have another 6 months or so until I'm ready to test for green. I feel like I'm going to grow a lot in skill between now and then, so that's exciting.

Judo, 11/2/15

We got lots of work on rank material. I'm testing Saturday for orange belt, and I'm a little concerned because my uke for my demo is ~40 heavier than me. Ogoshi, ippon seoi nage, and to a lesser degree, seoi otoshi are tough against him. I want them to look passable for the demo.

We ended the night with ground randori. I went a couple rounds, and did okay. Lastly, we did a really neat thing - "Tag team" randori!!  Everyone in our rough size group (10-12 people that night) sat in a circle. Two guys would do ground randori in the middle, and at any time, either guy could tag someone sitting in the circle. Then for 5-10 seconds, the tagger and tagee could gang up on the other guy! It was a lot of fun and introduced a situation where grappling is weakest as a defensive art - multiple attackers. I only got in once, but it was great! Trying to neutralize one guy while keeping the other guy at bay with my feet was tough (but somewhat doable, if only briefly).