Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Monday 6/21/2010 - The class I got tired of people coming late.

Judo - Beth is away so I had baby duty and missed Kettlebells and BJJ. I hired a babysitter so I could make it to teach class. Between babysitters for Sunday and Monday I paid nearly $100 to be able to teach the classes. I also have a pretty nasty cold that is bothering me quite a bit. Between playing 1-1 for a few days as a parent, being sick, paying to come and teach class and missing Kettlebells and BJJ, my mood wasn't good. Most of the people were waiting for class to begin downstairs, this makes it easy for the BJJ class to run late and takes longer for our class to begin, which I also find annoying. So as warm-ups are going and several of the students are wandering in late, I decided to make an issue out of it. I had the latecomers keep running while everyone else did rolls and elbow escapes. What bothers me most about the tardiness is that these are upper ranks who i expect to set a solid example for the large group of new students we have, instead, they are doing the opposite. I almost left them to keep running while the rest of the class began working, but, I decided it would be too distracting. I had some technical work i had intended to cover, but, I was too irritated. so we did pulling and throwing drills up and down the mat. As I began to relax I pointed out some issues with the posture and movement of the ukes that should help their hip cuts and defensive movement. Once we had odd numbers I joined the drill and worked with Eric. I enjoyed it and found it productive for me. I'm going to make a point to get into it more often. We did a few fits and then did randori.

I was still feeling annoyed by the whole experience. I felt good during randori. being edgy makes me play more aggressively and better rather being lazy and complacent. Also some of the class members are much better training partners than others. This is a factor of style of play, technical ability, willingness to engage and make it an offensive match rather than an ugly defensive match, size  and various other factors. I often take bad partners for myself because of the match ups in the room, but, this is making my enjoyment of randori less and leads to me sitting out and coaching more. I think it would be best for the class for me to work in more, which means that i am going to take the people who are good training partners for myself more often. I can help make the good training partners better by working with them more. Some of the upper ranks are not as good for me and I am going to skip them. I need people who will fight hard with good technical ability and will engage in the fight rather than running from it, if I am going to get my game back. I took the two best training partners (at least for me) that were there regardless of rank, Eric and Lex. I had two good sets, threw some, grip fought, had to defend against legitimate effective attacks. I think this will be a good plan for me. I had also forgotten that I like to play when I am feeling the adrenaline and edginess that anger brings. I genuinely play much better like this. I used to be able to just get it from the competition, but, I have been doing so many sets with lesser partners that I need to create it artificially now. This is something else i need to get back to feeling.

In Ne Waza, I worked more on the knee drill, taking the head out from turtling to come up and behind the uke who is attacking the turtle from the front. We went to the power half nelson reversal from either uke holding on too long, or flattening him out and the reversing the flat turtle with leveraged half nelson. We ran 2 sets of Ne Waza, the, lined up to bow out.

I gave a come to class on time speech. I pointed out that coming to class consistently late is disrespectful to the class. the members, the instructor and your own rank.  I need the senior students to set a positive example, especially with so many new and lower ranked students with us now. I tend to run a loose class, treating everyone as an adult and expecting the students to police themselves about the little things, but I might have to modify that approach.

So, my plan is to make people sit by most tardy to least if there is an odd man out situation. I will also amke sure to demonstrate unpleasant techniques on the tardy ones. There will also be a rule for the BJJ people transitioning to the class from the BJJ class before it. They have a 5 minute turnaround window to get back to the next class, then they will join the late people.

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