Judo, 7/4/09

We worked on an osotogari/hiza guruma combo. If you try for one of those, and uke resists it, he makes it very easy to throw him with the other one. Pat said it seemed like I was feeling more comfortable with both of those throws. I think that's true - especially for osoto, but I only noticed a big difference in that one shortly before he mentioned it! I think I had been doing my osotogaris more like a trip than a sweep. It is indeed feeling much better to me now. That's exciting to me. We ended up playing with osoto a lot more and exploring this epiphany.

Next we worked on seoinage. We played with it as a hip throw variation rather than a hand throw. We also looked at a drop knee seoiotoshi, both as a standalone throw and as a transition into groundwork. This was only the 2nd time we've looked at seoinage. A few weeks back when we first looked at it, I suspected seoi might become one of my favorite throws. I felt like I was getting it, and it seemed easy to do. But this time it was confusing me way more for some reason. Two things I was having a ton of trouble with, and need to get into my head: 1) keep my feet closer together, and 2) get my hips lower!