Judo

I just got another parcel of Ventolin inhalers for controlling my athsma. For most of my adult life I’ve run about one of these a month, maybe every second month during a good run.

Turns out I had last got some in 2006. That’s three every year and a half.

JU-JUTSUFFRAGETTES!

Clearly I need to learn more about Edith Garrud.

I had to renew my ventolin prescription this weekend and had a pleasant surprise: I’m now down to one renewal every six months, instead of every three; Judo has clearly upped my cardiovascular fitness to a significant degree, since that’s the main fitness-related change in my life.

An absolutely gorgeous video.

Or why I will never teach primary school.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting to Judo early enough that Alan has been calling me on the mat to help with the kids’ classes; not in any big way, just keeping them focused and correcting basic mistakes in their technique. With 20—30 kids in the class it’s very much a case of the more, the merrier when it comes to instructors and assistants.

Last week I grabbed a pair of girls for tai otoshi, and then a pair of eightish year old boys who were supposed to be learning o-goshi and o-soto gari.

I discovered the pain of trying get the little bastards to pay attention to anything—me, sensei, the idea of taking turns practising their throws. So. Very. Tiring. And you can’t even call them little bastards, either. Their parents will sulk.

Still, for all the frustration of trying to keep them focused, it was satisfying to note that, when all the kids were called out to demonstrate the throws, my pair of boys did passable efforts for the two I’d been trying to drum into them, but barely knew what to do for the one I hadn’t helped them with; I like to pretend this means I was making a difference.

One of the things my sensei likes to drill into us is the idea that Judo is very much a thinking martial art; he extended his shiai days long beyond his physical peak by becoming a more thoughtful competitor and working bouts at his own pace, emphasising control over speed and raw physicality (not that he’s any slug in that department, either).

This is an approach which I’m more than happy to pursue; with over 100 kilos to shift around the mat, I’m never going to be able to move around with the kind of speed smaller fighters do, so slowing them down, and using smarts to bring my strength to bear is going to be a far better approach; moreover, it’s one that will work at 40, 50, or however long I choose to do judo for.

It is possible to overthink, though; one flaw, especially in my tachi-waza, is a tendancy to suffer paralysis-by-analysis, where I can see what an opponent is trying to accomplish, and spending all my time running scenarios through my head rather than clobbering them. Similarly, I’ve gone backward on committing to attacks because I’m trying to avoid obvious counters when they don’t come off. Of course, coming in half-hearted makes it inevitable that they will.

With my weight and strength, the only ways a twisting, charging attack like ouchi-gari is going to fail is because I’m not putting all my effort into it, or a mis-timing.

The other peril of over-thinking is the seduction—which I feel as a constant tug—of trying to master too much. Alan competed with tai otoshi as a favoured throw and most top level of competitors have a fairly small cluster of favoured throws; but with scores of throws in the kata, it’s tempting to look at how the many different throws can be applied to different scenarios, and end up being able to do a bunch of throws badly. Some times everything is a nail, more or less. Best to have a really good hammer.

One of my butt-muscles hurts, I think I’ve strained something in my inner thigh, and I’ve got a headache.

I’m also the join bronze medal winner in the Wellington regional tournament. And pretty damn happy with it, especially given it’s my first ever tournament.

My first bout in the over 100 kilo divison was with Adrian, a second Dan from my old dojo on College Street.

The first bout didn’t go too badly; I lost, but got a takedown and held my own on the mat.

The second was all over quickly when I went for a leg wheel, stayed on one foot for too long, and Adrian grabbed my foot and drove me on my backside; since it was just Adrian and I, that gave him the gold in the 100+ division.

Alan, my sensei, and I watching a bout. The expression on my face is more short-sightedness than anything else.

I then went on to the first bout of the open; a smaller blue belt whose name I missed.

Rodger smash!

Again!

Rodger wants to play with you! Why do you run away?

I’d scored a point and Alan was screaming from the the sideline, “You’re ahead, don’t do anything stupid!”, and hollering the time remaining every time we were reset.

My final bout was against Brian, an extremely experienced competitor. I wasn’t doing too badly; Brian is lethal on the ground, and focuses on takedowns to apply his wicked armbars. I escaped one of those, but had an asthma attack and had to forfeit. In spite of that my performance was good enough to earn the bronze.

The lineup for the Men’s Open medal presentation: Me, Des, Brian, and Adrian:

So it’s only a tiny little grading, but I’m still knackered after it. The run through of theory, ukemi (breakfalls), throws, holds, strangles, and arm bars was relatively straightforward, and I managed to avoid forgetting anything obvious (in that manner one can when being examined).

But the randori left me buggered. At the end of the class we had to pick a series of opponents and spar one after the other. I ended up with two green belts, two brown, and a black, and I was absolutely shattered by the end of it.

Big fat case of nerves beforehand for both of us; Mai had been sick or injured for three weeks preceeding the grading, and we’d spent the week practising in the evenings and weekends to make sure she was back up to speed; I have trouble with some of the Japanese (that would be proper) names for techniques.

I also had the self-inflicted pressure of having had a number of people (including a 6th Dan) suggest, over the last few months, that I shouldn’t be on a white belt. This just left me feeling like the only way I couldn’t pass is to do something abysmally stupid. Like forget the difference between o-goshi and seoi nage.

So, the big day is next week: not much of a hurdle, in theory, since it’s leaping up to a yellow belt, but I still have to display that I’ve learned something in the last wee while; I did a practise run last night: o-goshi, tai otoshi, seoi nage, a throw of my choice (tomoenage, my personal favourite throw); muni gatame, kesa gatame, kuzure gatame, kami gatame, and yoko shiho gatame; any two arm bars, from which I chose ude garami and juji gatame; and finally, a couple of strangles, again of my own chosing—kata juji gatame and okuri eri jime.

There were also some questions but they were pretty easy (What’s the hall we’re in? What do we practise on? What’s the order of the belts?).

Given that I’m still having a bugger of a time remembering the names of some of the hold downs, it may not be as easy as it ought to be. Time for some cramming.

One of the first things I aspired to in Judo was to use my legs.

When I started Judo, I went to Wellington Judo and Ju jitsu Association to train. While their frighteningly high injury rate (and the broken arm that, in part, resulted) persuaded me to look for a different dojo, they provided me with that aspiration via Brian, one of the two instructors there. Brian is about my height, a lot leaner, and is amazing on the ground; one of the things that makes him amazing is the fluid way he can use his legs.

Up until recently my legs were largely dead weight on the ground. While I use them just fine for driving from a kneeling position or to push someone away from a guard position, I made very little use of them beyond that: on the ground, I would be mostly focused on my arms. If an opponent could tie them up, I couldn’t effectively attack. But a couple of days after last week’s session I realised I’ve actually attained that goal: I use my legs.

Not terribly effectively most of the time, it must be said; I’m still a rank beginner, after all. But the important bit is that I’m trying to do things with them; while direct attacks with the legs (with a leg scissors to the body or neck, for example) aren’t allowed, you can legally augment a strangle (via sankaku, for example), hold and control, defend, augment arm bars, and the like. Some two handed techniques can be executed with one hand and one leg; essentially, it opens up an extra dimension on the ground if you think of using them. And that is the big difference in my ground work: I am thinking about to to attack, defend, and counter-attack with all four limbs.