Monday 1/6/15 Session (Recreational Training)

We had a special visitor on Monday night. Our lightest and most agile member yet.

Everybody warming up and getting ready for a good Monday night practice.

We have lots of beginners on Monday nights so Wai Kit leads them in a session of forward rolls.

I brief them about the use of Japanese terminology in judo, telling them they have no choice but to learn some Japanese words. I also told them they would be tested on this during grading.

"What is this technique called?" A few beginners were able to state "kesa-gatame". Not bad.

During the video session I showed them some clips of strangles during international competitions and everybody was pumped up about learning strangles. The one I demonstrated was gyaku-juji-jime, which is best done when you are on the bottom.

We had MMA and BJJ visitors today. The former (in black) tries his hand at gyaku-juji-jime.

Zaki, a real motivated beginner from Saudi Arabia, tries out the strangle on Matthew, our Thai-Czech player.

Aunter, a beginner, tries to strangle Wai Kit. He finds out it's not so easy to strangle an experienced player.

Ziuwin, a beginner tries the cross strangle on Luka from Taiwan. He also finds out it's not so easy to do.

Clinton tries to strangle his college-mate, Johnson. The both of them have been with the club since it's opening day and are amongst our most dedicated members.

Suan Wah, our youngest member, likes training with adults and here he is trying to strangle Wai Kit.

There's a doctor in the house. Jason arrives in time to help out with the newaza drills.

Luka helps me out by supervising the players while they do some gyaku-juji-jime drills. We are very big into drills at KL Judo. We have our students do many, many drills for newaza and for tachi-waza.

I also have them do kesa-gatame drills. For our drills we ask uke to provide resistance. Sometimes I ask them to do this in progression of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% resistance. Other times I tell them to just go 100% straight away. Today, I told uke to go all out to break out of the hold.

At KL Judo, we are big into randori. This applies to newaza too. For each pair, I ask one of them to start off in a defensive position. This is more realistic than having each of them face each other, which is how a lot of newaza randori is conducted in many places. I don't believe in that because it's an unrealistic situation.

Time for tachi-waza. And out comes the crash pads. At KL Judo, we don't do a lot of uchikomi. Instead, I prefer full throws (or nagekomi). But to save them from some pain, we provide plenty of crash pads. We use these extensively.

Jason demonstrates the most basic of basic throws, ogoshi, on Luka. It's always great to have the likes of Jason and Luka on hand to help me teach techniques.

Next, I have the players break out into groups of three or four and practice the throws on crash pads. Each station one experienced player monitoring and to provide guidance.

The ogoshi training ends with a line-up where every player gets to throw everyone else, on a crash pad!

One thing our players love about our club is the randori, which we very much believe in. We have beginners do randori straight away. But we pair them with black/brown belts of course. Here I am sparring with Johnson while Jason spars with Aunter.

Jason is a really good safe player for beginners to spar with.

Wai Kit squares off with Ziuwin, an absolute beginner. He really found it fun and enjoyed the experience. All our beginners do. They are really glad that at KL Judo, they get to actually do judo instead of endless breakfalls and uchikomi for months on end. We view judo as a sport and we get them playing the sport as soon as possible.