Blogs

The training of combat skills always has one major flaw - they can’t be practiced for ‘real’.  You can’t arrange a mugging to test your skills learned in the dojo - nor is there any easy way to emulate the adrenaline rush and fear of a truly random personal attack.

Most people have only the vaguest idea of the differences between the two major political parties in America today, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party. As one author comments:

As some of you may know, I am also involved in another website GodoInfo.com - and an important & interesting update has finally been completed today.

At class last night, one of our brown belts announced that his knee was giving him problems… I congratulated him on earning his undocumented points towards his black belt promotion.  Then, checking around, I discovered that all of our brown belts either had knee pads or knee problems.

Like many other Judo clubs, we have our visitors from BJJ, as well as some of our students and yudansha who practice BJJ in addition to Judo.

Perhaps the most powerful concept that I’ve seen come over from BJJ is a simple one - we already do it in tachiwaza…  it’s the simple concept of uchikomi.  Repeatedly performing the entry for a technique.  But in Judo, we seem to restrict it to throws, and yet, there are many opportunities for practicing setup moves in newaza as well.

It’s really rough in the Judo world when the only thing I can think to gripe about is the strain of ordering a new black belt.

I finally got my ‘Deluxe, Olympic, Elite Competitor, Super-duper, 2-inch wide’ black belt, and I hate it already.  I suspect that by the time this belt will hold a knot I’ll be ready for my Judan.  Call me a traditionalist, but I really expect to tie my belt just once for class. 

I was dong randori last night with some kid (a 7 year old girl), and as is normal for such a matchup, I was doing my best to avoid Osotogari.  I continuously kept pulling my right leg back, so that the Osoto would miss - hoping that my young uke would pick up on the lesson I was offering…

And indeed she did… for when she kept failing at Osotogari, she switched her attack to the leg that was close and not moving away from her - Ouchigari!  Naturally, I took a nice fall, and congratulated her on her slick change of tactics.

To improve your Judo, particularly shiai, you must speed up your techniques… one of the ways to do this is to shorten the number of steps that you take when entering for a throw.

One of the earliest defensive moves that any Judoka somehow manages to learn despite a complete lack of teaching on the topic - is how to stop an opponent by straight-arming him. This is a wonderful defense, and generally works even occasionally up to the brown belt level.

The topic comes up frequently about rules in Judo regarding Newaza… the fact that referees will stand you up after 5 seconds or so.

Although I think this should be extended to 20-30 seconds - I certainly don’t want major changes to this rule… if you want to do matwork, you can do all you want in wrestling, BJJ, or even in the Judo club during randori.