My instructor has all his students on a mailing list so that when he needs to tell us about a competition or some special bit of news, he can just message us all at once. Yesterday afternoon he sent a mail telling us that he was sick so could not teach the class in Nonami. It is very rare that he is too sick to train - this has happened only once before in my 3 plus years of training. Apparently, he has influenza so he let Yoshida-san open the dojo for us all to do free sparring. I wanted to see how this would turn out and was hoping to bump into the new Canadian member who I heard comes on Thursdays, so I switched from Tsurumai (warm) to Nonami (cold) dojo.
By the end of the night about 8 of us turned up (not the Canadian though), some arriving late due to work. Our club's big hitters Yuuki and Atsushi were there and I got crushed by them both. They are both blue belts but extremely strong and technical. Each time I spar with them I feel I get a little bit better at defending against attacks. They are frequent players and throw a cold bucket of water over the tempered theory that all Japanese are tiny little guys with thick rimmed glasses. Both of them are beasts. I'm learning to embrace rolling with tougher guys like this.
At the end I asked Kondo to show me his judo combination which is so effective. I wanted to see the Kuzushi part and how he breaks down the opponent's balance. He showed me the first sequence which is hiza-guruma and then if the opponent regains balance the 2nd part which is ko-uchi-gari. They are extremely effective and because he is a 3rd dan has a lot of good advice. He is also becoming a beast on the mats so a great sparring partner.
I was very relaxed and did not tire out very much. One thing I need to do more is when caught in side control, I must pull my bottom arm under my shoulder to solidify my side position better. I did this once and it worked well but I piss about too much and forget to do it.
Sparring time: 9 x 6 mins = 54 mins
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