tonight made up for a lackluster Monday class. Hottest day of the year and record breaking temperatures made the class great!

Didn't really cover any new techniques, just drilling ones from the last few classes and one new combo: step in for a tai otoshi, uke counters by stepping out and tori turns the technique into an uchi mata.

Lots of randori and different spin on randori called ippondori. randori continues until an ippon is scored and then the losing partner is replaced with a fresh opponent. the drills continue until the time is up.

There was a good sized class tonight.

We reviewed all of the throws that are required for our yellow belt grading:
o goshi
seoi nage
de ashi barai
uki goshi
o soto gari

When practicing uki goshi, we use one of the katas to help. uke steps into tori with an attack: a downward strike with the fist to tori's head. I realize that this kata is traditional and kept this way due to tradition, but it reinfored my belief that a lot of the "attacks" in other martial arts, whether it is judo, aikido, or some other art, are unrealistic and should be "taken with a grain of salt."

Tonight we worked throws. Lots and lots of throws. 100 ippon seoi nages and 100 o goshis. My legs will not like me tomorrow. We did a bit of randori, but not much as there were only two white belts (me and another person). Hopefully there will be some more on Wednesday - it's exam time now so I expect a lot of the college students are studying.

Class was great! again, worked on o goshi, ippon seoi nage, and o soto gari. I got my first taste of randori tonight at only 50% resistance and it was great. i managed to get in a great ippon seoi nage. I can't wait to start mixing it up with the coloured belts.

Last week's soreness is nothing compared to what i'm feeling now and what i'm going to feel tomorrow. Think LOCKUP seminar, but 1000x worse.

We had a "high performance judo coach" run the class last night. She was hired by Judo Alberta to help train the high level provincial and national judoka. one word: wow.

Class was more review of the basics: ippon seoi nage (shoulder throw), o goshi (major hip throw), o soto gari (major outter reap), and kesa gatame (scarf hold).

After practicing kesa gatame with several partners, i realized that what we have as a basic defense, push the head back far enough to hook your leg around uke's neck and peel him off, doesn't work most of the time. If the attacker has any remote idea of what he's doing (i.e. saw it on TV) it will be very difficult to get the head back far enough to hook the leg around - mind you we weren't scratching, biting, fishhooking, etc. A more effective method seemed to be grabbing onto uke's belt (or gi or clothes) and lifting his hips just enough for you to slide your hips under his. after this, bridging and pulling uke over the front of your body to the opposite side is very easy, and you end up in side control.

Again, this is another illustration of the difference between martial sport and martial art.

Well, class was interesting that’s for sure.

There were 9 new people, including me. About 4 of us had jiu jitsu backgrounds, 2 guys had done judo a long time ago, and the rest had no martial arts experience at all.

The entire class was about 25-ish people.

After the warmup, we were taken aside and worked on breakfalls: 2, 3, 4, and 6 and were pretty much exactly how we do it. I got some weird looks when I was doing mine because of the counter kicks and x-blocks were instinctive. The instructor also pointed out after seeing my breakfall 2 to bring the hand in that did the slap and cover up your head. We then did some shrimping and a version of shrimping when you’re lying on your stomach; you use your arms to drag your body across the mats. we worked on some basic kuzushi and then moved on to ippon seoi nage (our “basic” shoulder throw).

Some comments on the judo vs jiu jitsu method of ippon seoi nage:

Foot and body positioning: judo tends to keep a bit more space between uke and tori than jiu jitsu. By a bit more, i mean tori's feet are about 5-6 inches in front of uke's and there is no hip-to-hip contact. The basic mechanism is as follows. Tori steps across with his right foot. As Tori turns to the left to bring his left foot in, he pulls uke's right sleeve with him. Tori is using his own body rotation as well as arm strength to pull uke with him in a circle. This pulling breaks uke's balance and makes him lean forward as tori finishes stepping into position. Tori then continues pulling uke through the throw and uses uke's forward momentum to aid in the throw. This is a LOT easier than throwing from a completely static position, though it requires better timing than from static.

Overall, the class was what I expected, but I was a big disappointed. The instructor who was teaching us seemed totally unprepared for the class. Comments like "keep doing front rolls until I figure out what to do next" didn't exactly exude confidence. He said that the regular instructor is working nights on Mondays for the next few weeks so he’ll be subbing. I hope he’s a bit more professional. It took a lot to not overstep my bounds and show people how to do stuff. I hope he just had an off night.