Judo Day 14: Sore Everything

I met an old friend last night back from Australia for a week and went out for a few drinks to a British pub. He is such a c**t and took like forever to order me a drink or go to the toilet. :) (Inside joke and not true). It was good to catch up. Good to see you again Jim! However, this morning I was paying for it with a splitting headache and thought to myself "Uh huh, no way I'm training judo today".

I did a few things around the house and tried to recover. I've been looking at throws a lot recently and have come to love how beautiful a well executed throw is. The more I kept watching them on the computer today, the more I wanted to go and train. I'm also going to teach Turtle defence and attacks on Friday so wanted to see what the judo boys would do to me when I gave them the turtle position.

I of course ended up going to train (still a little worse for wear) and totally enjoyed it. Although, training was a bit rough for some reason. Maybe the cold because I couldn't feel my feet. I felt like I broke them a few times as they bent the wrong way a couple of times but no...they are still intact and fully functioning. Against turtle, the judo boys never really attacked me from the side even though I kept turning that way so I could sweep them. I either sat back into closed guard or butterfly guard or had to do a sit out because they would never attack me from the side. A few times I forced them to turtle so I could attack them. They just pancake out most of the time so I easily caught them in a calf crank. I know its illegal in judo but on the floor it's fair game for me since I meet them on their field while standing later on. I caught one in a crucifix but he wouldn't tap so I didn't want to put it on too heavy. I could not get a clock choke, they hunker down too tight leaving no gaps.

I feel beaten up now because I did almost the entire class and 8 rounds of standup sparring at the end. I usually do 5 or 6 at the most. I need a good sleep tonight because James and I will do some drills from 10am before class tomorrow.

Judo Day 13: Back to Training

I feel a little off. Poor timing and winded easier after only a week of no grappling over the holidays. I hope to build my stamina this year and improve on stand up more than ever and become more efficiency in jiu-jitsu. I am also very interested in movement, namely the MovNat workouts and Ido Portal. I've considered weight training but I think a more natural approach using body weight is probably best for me now at my age. With that in mind I went with my daughters the other day to the park where there are some hanging rings and pull up bars and messed around a bit. I've lost a lot of strength with pull ups and can't do many now. I think I need to work out a sequence of movements I can do in the park and get my arse out of bed in the morning and do it.

This kind of thing!



Today at Judo I got some tips from a very strong black belt on uchi-mata. He showed me what I was doing wrong and then informed me that it is risky to use it in BJJ (he also does BJJ) because of people going to single legs or taking you down with tani-otoshi. I still like the throw and enjoy the mechanics of it. It seems like a great technique to strengthen the upper body. I was also trying to get kosoto-gari a lot and managed to on lower level people. It seems like a good technique for BJJ after seeing Kondo-san use it a lot.

F-sensei asked me to teach and I told him I could do so on Friday morning. So from hereon I will teach the Friday morning class. I want to do things a little different, fewer techniques to drill and more focus on specific sparring. Also, more focus on escapes and survival for white belts. Basically, I want to cover stuff that I felt frustrated with as a white belt.

Good times.

On the Mat Day 666: Ramblings on Judo versus Jiu-jitsu

There really are too many techniques in grappling. It's just so easy to get bogged down with them. Judo on the other hand seems so simple. Although, that doesn't mean it's easy to throw an opponent because it isn't. Judoka seems to practice a handful of the same techniques over and over again. One kid I train with only does seio-nage and o-uchi now and again. It's said that many of the top players only use 2 to 3 throws. The rest is just body position, reading the opponent, athleticism, stamina and strength from what I can gather.

Jiu-jitsu on the other hand has so many guards, different passing methods and ways to submit an opponent that you need an encyclopedia brain to hold them. That or teach all the time. I suppose this is why it takes so long to reach black belt and why people get so addicted to it. It engages the mind more than the rules of Judo ever do.

I'm not knocking Judo though. I enjoy training it once a week now. I think any good grappler should be training in both. It's even made me consider trying drills judo-style with BJJ sweeps, etc. I'm also attempting to cut down to a core set of techniques only but maybe this is a side-effect of doing BJJ for almost 6 years now.

One thing I can say is that Judoka are very serious in their attitude here in Japan and reflect the society in its nose-to-grindstone no nonsense attitude while BJJ takes a relaxed approach and practitioners tend to smile and laugh a lot more than their Judo counterparts. Perhaps if Judo in Japan were a bit more forgiving and fostered an enjoyable atmosphere more kids, like my own son, would practice it.

On the Mat Day 661: Open Mat with A Dodgy Back

Injuries seem to have come to a head right now. I've been nursing a sore neck. pulled crotch ligament and now I have a tweak in my back which when I look at my toes sends out a spasm in the left side of my back. Despite this I received a call from James to join him and David at open mat on Sunday so I decided to train.

I went with the notion that I would just watch and practice a few techniques but ended up sparring and I actually felt OK and tried to move carefully. As long as I didn't invert or get stacked I was fine. I think the damage has been due to Judo nagekomi and maybe some awkward turning when I was sparring BJJ. I won't stop doing Judo though because I enjoy it so much. It gives me a lot more confidence when standing and I can feel myself becoming a more rounded grappler.

I'm mostly just working on half-guard right now. Nothing fancy. Old school sweep, London bridge sweep, Knee shield to get the underhook and turn into them, etc. Nothing that would aggravate my back. I played half-guard a lot at blue belt and it feels like I am returning to an old friend.

As part of my rehabilitation I went to an onsen last night. Got into a bath that was almost 43 degrees Celsius and just felt the aches leave my body. It was so good.

On the Mat Day 655: BJJ and Judo thoughts

With my appetite for stand up whetted by my once a week judo I have been playing around with half-guard again as of this week. It's a position I feel comfortable in since it was my survival position at white belt but now that I have more experience I have more time to think and analyze the position. For instance, at a glance, I consider how far my opponent's leg is in my half guard (is the knee poking out or are my legs around the thigh), do I have an under hook? I then start to see branches off in my mind leading to sweeps or the next technique. For some reason, experience and staying calm allows me to think more carefully about what the opponent is doing and act with the best move. It doesn't always work out but now that I can do this in my mind, after class or a day later, I can review what went wrong more easily and think about a countermeasure. I wish judo was like this for me but right now it's just a flurry of arms and legs then I'm on my back.

I'm feeling a little beaten up (probably judo) and the heat is taking its toll. I can train about 3 times a week right now and its my limit. I know that given cooler weather where my heart rate isn't already high even before sparring, I could train 4 to 5 times a week for sure. I went out and bought some Protein the other day because the aches are taking so long to go away. I think it's helping, along with all the chicken breasts. I'm down to around 71.2 kg right now. I haven't been lower than 72 kg for many years. It's probably a lot of water content as well as the hard workout that judo brings.

Right now I am really enjoying training in both bjj and judo. It makes me feel like a more complete grappler. I'm also able to ask F-sensei about counters in Judo and he gives me good advice. Like today he told me how to better drill ko-uchi-gari and also how to counter ippon seio nage since just stepping around was not enough as my opponent simply adjusted his angle and continued with the throw. Grappling is like a big jigsaw in which more pieces keep getting added to the table as you are about to complete it. It's frustrating but it occupies my mind so much.

Judo Day 2: Aches and Pains

Arriving at the judo dojo this morning I saw Yuuki-san from my BJJ club also at the judo club. Apparently he had trained there for a few years a couple of years back. No wonder he got really good at seio-nage.

We started off with newaza and I decided to just play half-guard and see what they do. All of them distribute their weight far too high over me so it was easy to sweep them either by using knee-shield to Shaolin sweep them over my head or get an underhook and go to an old school sweep. They immediately do the dead turtle when I come out the back and it makes me laugh each time because it really is a bad habit since there are much better things to do like re-guard. At one point I had one of the more lively youngsters in my full guard, he used my collar to choke while standing (I like to do this as a last option) but he did not consider the armbar so I took it. He should have been ready to bail on the choke.

For uchikomi and nagekomi I decided to keep it simple. I don't want to exhaust myself until I get more stamina so only practiced kouchi gari. I like this approach and once I feel good about each smaller technique I will try to move onto bigger throws.

Sparring was tiring. It really beats me up. Towards the end all I can do is try to defend. I appreciate the tai-otoshi throws and foot sweeps but one kid kept doing a seio-nage and just launching himself forward so I had to roll with it and into an ippon. In BJJ I would just take his back and choke him. My hand was in his collar without thinking and I had hooked him so it would be trivial for me to submit him but under judo rules he wins from the ippon. That part was frustrating. At one point my arm was not free so that I could not post so face planted. I did no enjoy that and it made me mad. I had to calm myself down to continue.

I just hope that I can get better with time. Learn small throws in progression and focus on the details. Always try for throws that I am working on during uchikomi. Standing vs Judoka is not easy that's for sure.

Judo Day 1: This is Hard!

We have an older guy at our BJJ gym who is a high school teacher and takes care of the judo club. Since it's the summer holidays now I sort of invited myself to train with his judo club. They don't have many members but he said I could go along and train with them.


Today was the first time I went to workout with them and I got a shock to my system at how little stamina I had. This is what the lesson comprised of:

3 min x 6~8 rounds of Newaza with about 30 seconds to allow partners to change. This was the easy part for me as none of them can pass my guard and it was very easy to triangle or armbar them. I was shocked at how long they take to tap when stuck in an armbar position. Eventually I had to with slow control extend it until they tap.

Uchikomi: This was about 30 min of standing 10 repetitions of any technique you want with more power on the last one but not necessarily throw them.

Nagekomi: We took turns to throw each other 10 times each. This was where I felt really tired. My technique is not great standing so I use a lot of strength and it tires me out. I practiced ippon seionage, o-uchi gari and uchi-mata. I'm still unsure if I was doing it correctly and they were hesitant to correct me so I asked a lot of questions. (Asking questions helped me get a breather!)

Randori: 3 mins x 10 rounds of sparring. This was the most fun for me but I had to rest more than the young guys. I just don't have the stamina. The 2 young black belts handled me fairly easily and I was thrown by Tai-otoshi quite a lot. On my part, I tried ude-gaeshi (semi-successful), sumi-gaeshi (no success) and tomoe-nage (not successful but I am getting better at this as I almost got one of them).

BJJ (bad?) habits: There were many times they threw me for a yuko because as they turned into drop seio-nage I just took their back and they pushed into me with their legs so my back hit the floor. This is a yuko in judo but in BJJ I am in back mount and can go for a choke. It's weird for me to think of this as a loss as I end up in a dominant position.