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Random notes

A handful of unrelated notes:

  • My legs felt like they had a little extra spring in them during today's practice. No idea why. I didn't work out all week except for last night, so my legs should have felt like lead this afternoon. Maybe going easy last night helped.
  • When I see a demo of a technique from judo or any fighting art, and uke is smaller than tori, I have to resist the urge to discount the value of the demo. I think this is an understandable reaction, but it isn't entirely rational and I should judge the technique, the demo, and the demonstrators on their own merits.
  • I think learning the foot sweep motion is like learning to dribble for a basketball player: you should be able to do it without looking. The movement should be so ingrained in your muscle memory that you can brush the mat with the side of your foot while looking straight ahead.
  • There's a bunch of updates I'm supposed to do on oishi-judo.com, including a few tasks that have been slipping my mind for months. This weekend would be a good time to get them all off my plate.
  • I was tempted to go watch the tournament at Tech Judo on February 1, even though I don't know of any Oishi players who are going. I think I'm addicted to the action and the atmosphere. But I'll be celebrating Chinese New Year's with family that day, so I'll have to miss the tournament.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Random Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Random notes”

  1. yotam Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    I'm planning on going to the Tech Judo tournament!

  2. Andy Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    I'm so absent-minded — I'd completely forgotten, even though you were the one who told me about it!

  3. Yonah Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Andy,

    The foot sweep thing brings back memories. Sensei Oishi would incessantly make me keep doing the Ashi Barai drills – to get better with them, and always remind me to keep my head up when doing them. A couple of weeks ago, I was teaching some neighborhood kids about Hockey Stickhandling – same principal, keep the puck in front of you and don't look down – know where it is. If you put your head down in Hockey, you get hit, if you put you head down in Judo you get thrown.

    –Yonah

  4. Andy Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 11:00 am

    It looks so simple, but it definitely takes practice to keep your head up and stomach out, not bent at the waist.

    Speaking of hockey, I was explaining to someone the other day that you should turn your foot so the bottom of it presents a vertical face, like a hockey stick. I believe you do that to maximize the surface area that contacts uke's ankle. Tori's leg should be straight out like a stick too, not bent at the knee, to better engage the adductor. I do that all okay when I'm practicing the motion without a partner, but I often forget to turn the foot all the way in randori.

    On another note, I didn't get around to those web site changes over the weekend. Hopefully tonight if I'm not too pooped after practice.

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