On the Mat Day 385: Passing Drills and Overheating

I woke feeling fairly fresh on Sunday morning and after seeing my son do Judo the day before had no excuse not to go train. Inside the dojo was very hot, but not as hot as it can get mid-summer, just a kind of stifling warm that makes it uncomfortable to wear the gi. I felt a little stiff at first and my thumb even today still feels bruised but its on the mend. Yoshida and Kondo turned up a little late but in time for doing the guard drills F-sensei made us do.
This is what we did:

Opponent is on his back with both hooks behind my knees. I push with my hands on his hip and knee. Windmill one leg over his hook, push his leg to the floor and do the knee cutter pass. We did this about 10 times each and then some more.

We also started from closed guard, two hands grabbing cloth at the hips, one knee in to his arse, other knee out, twist hips, hand on knee to break guard, inside knee (one at his arse) crosses over his leg, outside leg steps over then move to knee cutter pass again.

So basically F-sensei got us to do an open gaurd and closed guard pass using only the knee cutter pass. I think he did this because Kondo only does this pass and he wants him to perfect it.

We moved on to what I like to call the Pretzel pass because it squashes your guts out and makes me grunt with discomfort. This is it:

You grab the opponents legs, push them down with a C-grip, step forward with both feet to the sides of his hips. You then thrust your C-grips inverted hands forward while pushing out your pelvis so you end up sitting on his hamstring and he is pretzeled up. From there we continued the pass by either pulling his legs to the side or kicking one leg over.

Sparring was rough because of the heat. I just don't do so well in temperatures of near 30 degrees. This would be a very hot day for the UK and I guess my genetics or something just don't handle it well. It sucks the strength out of me so all I can do is play survival when I get to the 3rd round. Kondo did well passing my guard and mounting. He is athletic and quick. He threw me with uchi-mata at first. Then knee-cutter pass and mount. He is easy to escape from though so I quickly put him into half-guard. Failed to get old-school to plan B sweep because I did not hold the legs tight enough. Anyway, I was exhausted. I love spring days when the weather is mild and I have slept well but you got to take the bad with the good. It can't all be good days.

Sparring time: 3 x 6 mins = 18 mins