Saturday, August 22, 2009

Judo, 8/15/09


I'm a full week behind posting this training log, so we'll see if time has washed away most of the details I wanted to remember!

We started with our "oozing" ukemi exercise. In preparation for working on hip throws, we did a more elevated version of the exercise. This practice, plus Pat's instruction really increased my comfort level with falling from hip throws.

We worked on seoinage and ogoshi, mostly. We'd do the throw, then transition to ukigatame, then into kesagatame, at which point uke would pick an escape to do. This not only gave us lots of practice with seoi, ogoshi and escapes, but it was a really good way to practice moving from tachi- to newaza. It was helpful to practice in different domains during each repetition.

What a difference I saw in my ukemi! I used to have a terrible time being thrown with ogoshi or seoinage, but I feel I really had a breakthrough during this practice. The difference was night and day. The falls were fun, and didn't hurt a bit! I was really excited and encouraged to see such significant growth in just one lesson.

Next we worked on ouchigari and kouchigari, and again, we transitioned into groundwork with each throw, in this case, passing the guard. I had gotten pretty rusty with ouchi, so this was a good review.

We ended the class by working on some "Zdenek Matl style" really "soft judo". It was a good cool-down, but still very intellectually stimulating! It was really amazing stuff, sort of aiki-fied judo.

This was one of the best lessons I've had in recent memory.

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