Things have been incredibly busy the last month. Blogging has been one of several things that have taken a back seat to more pressing issues. At the beginning of the month, I signed a lease on a space in south Philadelphia. I will move the Judo club there and begin to teach BJJ as well as have a kettlebell program and presumably others as we have time to develop and place them.
First just a few notes on the techniques of the last few weeks. For BJJ I made last week deep half guard week. This was triggered by some poor defense to the position during training by a purple belt. The classes seemed to have profited from both the position and basic sweep as well as learning proper body position for defending the position. I always liked this position but used it sparingly as i am not by first inclination a half guard player. I aggressively put myself in the position several times recently and had good success, sweeping from there. Better than I normally do from a more traditional half guard to be honest.
The next week we worked on several sweeps from closed guard when the Uke uses a standing split. Nothing earth shaking but very good fundamental sweeps everyone needs to know.
For Judo I covered a Left vs. right yoko tomoe nage (as well as the right versus left version). I do this as my right versus a left sided player pretty well as that is the side I mainly practiced it and did most of my repetitions. However, I think it would be a more useful technique for me as a left versus a right sided uke technique. It fits well with the left sided attacks I have been using. We also went into Oma Plata from the failure which also went well. I like it as a throw or as a offensive guard pull .
We did a down the line stepping pattern for Harai Goshi. This didn't go as smoothly as I thought, but did reveal a couple of people who were doing too much of an Ashi Guruma rather than a Harai Goshi.
We did an Uchi mata class and several Ashi Waza classes as well.
The big news obviously is that I will be moving the club from Maxercise, our home for the last 10 years or so to a new location in south Philadelphia. There are a lot of reasons for the move. But, the ones that matter the most are that I think its in the best interest of the Judo Club as well as my (and my family's) best interest. I have been ready to have my own place for a long time. I have been teaching Judo classes for over ten years. I have been taking BJJ for nearly 12 years and have taught some BJJ classes as early as 2003. I couldn't do this without the support of my entire club, both their commitment to make the journey to south Philadelphia and to come to the classes. I have wanted the opportunity to build my own club and make the decisions that I believe make the most sense for a long time. I have studied the excellent instructors that I have been fortunate enough to have teach me. I have studied and discussed ad nauseum, not just the elements of a technique to be taught but the intricacies of the art of teaching, why some instructors are better than others, what parts of an instructors abilities do I want to emulate and what parts do I not. I have had countless hours of discussion not just of what was taught but, how it was taught, why some people got it better than others, what I woudl have done differently and why, the technique selection and all of the ways the individual class was structured. also how it fell into the overall program(s) was structures. I am also looking forward to testing my ideas of the best model for a Martial Arts studio. I hope and believe that this will be a good move for me personally and for the club and it's members in general.
The next few weeks will be more about physically building the home for the new club. I will focus most of my efforts in that area. I will also be blogging about some of the details and my impressions of the experience. time permitting.
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