Judo - 2/21/09

We started with our "deashi to control" footsweep exercise. This time Pat added a kouchigari to the drill from a missed deashi. After playing with that for a while, he showed me how to add an ouchigari from a missed kouchi. I'm always surprised at how amazingly fault-tolerant Judo is - if you miss a technique, there's always another one waiting for you if you can see it. Uke can't defend against everything at once.

Then we worked on hiza garuma for a while. We drilled the normal flavor, then from a garuma off-balance (looking out for osotogari opportunities if we missed the hiza). With the garuma motion, you make uke make a "hole" in front of himself, then pull his shoulder into that hole while propping the far leg. I need to remember not to pull uke in toward me as in osoto, as it helps him stay up. We played with "me hiza, you hiza" for a while (countering hiza with hiza), as well as "me hiza, me hiza" (following a failed hiza attempt with another on the other leg).

For groundwork, we went over the wakigatame/udegarame drill again. It felt more awkward to me this time than it did the first time we did it a few weeks ago, but I'll get it.

Pat also introduced the Rear Naked Choke. I need to remember to get the position set in first, then work towards the choke. Pat demonstrated the "meat grinder" turnover - used to roll a turtled opponent and take his back. A couple ways to sink the choke in might be "walking" the choking hand up into choking position, or punching uke in the neck with your bicep. We also went over the kata version of the choke, focusing on moving back so uke falls back into the empty space, and "chambering" his head against you so he has no room to move his head.

Lastly, I asked Pat to demonstrate a cross collar choke, because I haven't had much luck with it in our Judo study group at home. Maybe I'll get to try it out tomorrow night...