Friday 31 October 2014

On the Mat Day 540: Sitting guard, takedowns and stuff

Not many turned up last night. In fact, it was only me to begin with then Matt came later for sparring. The day before Halloween (lots of dads at our club) and the day before F-sensei would travel to LA for the World Masters JJ Championship over there I believed would have everyone coming to train. But on, it wasn't to be.

F-sensei went over lots of sweep from sitting guard. Duck under, technical standup leg pull, take the back, etc. It was a good revision for me. Later Matt came so we decided to do takedown sparring only. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while and now that we had the mat to ourselves it was a good time to do it. He is very hard to take down. Good balance, strong an fast. While doing this type of sparring it came to me that successful takedowns only come by tricking the opponent. A talented opponent will not be taken down by a single setup. For example, you cannot just go to kuzushi then seio-nage and get the throw/takedown. You have to trick the opponent so their body moves into the correct position for the seio-nage. That's what I did. I went for a foot sweep to make him move back and bend at the waist as most jiu-jitsu guys do then ducked under for the drop seio-nage. Basically, what I am saying is that to get a successful throw or takedown I need to think about chains of throws. This is true for ground techniques. The other thing I discovered that standing for 6 minutes sparring is tough in terms of cardiovascular and muscular. No wonder judo guys are so strong and fit (much more than BJJers in general).
I also need to relax more and probably should do it as often as possible. Thanks Matt.

Hopefully F-sensei will arrive in LA safely have a two matches and get through to the televised matches on Sunday. He is flying out on Friday and returning on I think Monday. That's a rough schedule! It looks like his first opponent will be a Frenchman called Emmanuel-Fernandez.

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