JudoNotes

I just saw this on Lance Wicks's blog, JudoCoach.com:

This video I found on the OKCDT website and I think is from Australia. Please note the laughter, the clear message of what Judo involves. The "ooh"s and "ahh"s. The loud applause. Note also the use of male and female demonstrators and of people of different sizes.

I've embedded the video below — it is great! The instructor's voice is a little hard to hear, but the audience reaction is unmistakable. I saw Lance's post on Planet Judo, a great judo blog aggregator (hello, Planet Judo readers!).

Sensei and his brother gave a demo at my high school many years ago. I don't remember much except the crowd going "Ooh!" at one point when Hachiro-san suddenly whipped out a fake knife and charged Sensei, who threw him. Straight out of the nage-no-kata, but Sensei dressed it up with a little drama for the crowd.

It's almost three years since my return to judo. On the one hand, progress has been very slow. On the other hand, the overall trend has been consistently positive, and that is good news.

The thing I'm happiest about now is that my body is starting to remember morote-seoinage. Never mind that it's nowhere close to working in randori. It feels great just to do it again, to drop into that squat while holding on with both hands.

Here's a small sample of things I have to work on.

• General fitness and health:
  • Cross-train (weights, calisthenics, running, stretching, balance exercises)
  • Remember to ice the knee (I only tend to remember about 10% of the time, and it should really be 100%)
  • Watch my diet — I weigh too much for my height and frame
  • Stay hydrated
  • Improve sleep habits
• Judo-specific stuff:
  • Do more uchikomi, including more lifting
  • Do moving uchikomi
  • Practice combinations
  • Practice timing of ashiwaza
  • Pull when I do seoinage (I think uchikomi with a rubber tube should help with this)
  • Stay on my toes
  • Relax my shoulders
  • Study books, web sites, and videos
  • Get to class on time (which means getting out of work earlier, which is related to the sleep habits mentioned above)

The list goes on, but basically it can be summed up as: everything. I think working on my fitness, which is still terrible, would go a long way toward helping with the rest.

Sensei drew these feet on the bottom of a mat for the kids to practice footwork with.

On a vaguely related note, I've added photos of Sensei's artwork to the dojo web site. See the links on the left-hand side.

Oishi Judo will be closed Thanksgiving Day. Friday and Saturday classes will be as usual.

I heard from Paul that Germain Difo got his shodan yesterday. Germain's in grad school at Georgetown.

I remember when Germain was a newbie. I remember two practices in particular — one when Sensei made him escape from yoko-shiho-gatame over and over and over, and another practice when Sensei tossed him all over the dojo during randori before promoting him to sankyu at the end of the night.

Congratulations on a well-deserved promotion!

Thanks to Paul Virtue for iPhoning me these photos of Kevin passing the kata portion of his shodan test, with Shintaro Higashi as his uke. Congratulations, Kevin!

Belated congratulations to Alberto Botero on his promotion to yellow belt. I meant to post this on October 25, when this photo was taken.

Anybody know who's going to the upcoming Cranford, Tech Judo, and/or Northeastern tournaments on Oct 26, Nov 2, and Dec 7 respectively? Please shoot me an email if you do. Depending on Oishi turnout, I may come to shoot video.

You can get application forms here.

Kevin McGrath threw for ippon twice with hiza-guruma. The ref was blocking my view of the first one, but upon reviewing the video I'm pretty sure it was hiza-guruma.

John Harris made batsugun with four ippons: two throws, an osae-komi, and an armbar.

Rich Fabella, who was there to spectate, pointed out something I hadn't noticed: the refs were allowing plenty of time for newaza before calling matte. If this is a new trend, I approve. (By the way, thanks to Rich for the ride home.)

When the tournament was over I got some much-needed exercise myself by helping pick up and stack the mats.

Here are Kevin's two throws for ippon:

Here are John's matches. You can hear Alison rooting for him from the sidelines:

Congratulations to Jason Mitchell, who got promoted to sankyu last night. I haven't had a chance to practice much with Jason lately, but the last time we did uchikomi, I noticed a huge difference in how smoothly he was moving. Of course he's always clobbered me, but the way he clobbers me is much different these days.

Here he is being congratulated by Masa: