Thursday 5/5/2010

Open Mat - BJJ
I did a Kettlebell work out on the mat upstairs. I like doing it there with my IPOD playing, I think. I am going to try to get there early enough to do my thgursday work out in this format. The work out was good. I emphasized strength and endurance over flexibility, but, it's a good fit for me right now.

Sarah came up and Eric S arrived. We both rolled with Sarah several times as she was getting ready for a big tournament and needed to sweat a few pounds. Covered a few fundamental technical mistakes she was making, but, she is a pleasure to coach. She listens and learns easily. He flexibility is almost too good and her fighting spirit is excellent. She could use some focus on her strength training for power and we will continue to fix some Ne Waza flaws, but her ceiling is very high and she has a great attitude.

Judo class is returning to it's more typical numbers of 12-15 rather than 18-20. I love having the bodies in class and prefer that, but it is easier to teach the smaller group particularly when there are mostly advanced players in the group. I covered some Ukemi, namely taking essentially a Kota Gaeshi fall to work on keeping the hip closed to the fall and not pancaking out of it. Better for tori to throw and much better for uke to take. Then, we transitioned to working on the basic tai otoshi. This is clearly not my best technique but, everyone needs to understand it and while I may not use it much I do have a good grasp of the fundamental elements of the technique. Falling better helped everyone throw better as well.

We did some Tokui Waza, for about 10 minutes then 3 sets of 5 minute randori. All in all, good sets, pretty hard competitive play without being too crazy.

We worked on taking the choke when uke turns away from you in Ne waza. Anticipate the turn, and as uke turns away, drive your hand deep across and secure the choke grip use the second hand to tighten the choke, then do a shin roll and pull uke up into your lap. Use the leg on the same side as the choking hand to peel off the defending hand of uke, grab the pants at the knee of uke with the non choking hand, arch your back and get the tap. I use this quite often and consider it a fundamental part of my game. They had, what I thought was surprising difficulty executing this. In general, there was a failure to get deep enough grips with the first hand. Tori didn't anticipate and react to the turnout by uke quickly and aggressively enough, which led to shallow grips and difficulty finishing the strangles. There was also confusion in executing the shin roll to get to the final choking position. I think this is an easy technique that will serve everyone well, so we will revisit it soon.

3 sets of ne waza and we called it a night.