Saturday 6/6/15 Session (Competition Training)

I didn't expect much of a crowd on Saturday cos many of my black and brown belts were out of town. I thought if six people showed up, that'd be great. In the end about 12 showed up, so that was pretty good.

I decided that today we'd focus very heavily on newaza, and in particular juji-gatame.

First drill, I got them to try to keep their partners on the mat. They are not allowed to allow uke to stand up. Anybody who fails to keep their partners down during the duration of the song played (about 3 minutes) had to do 20 push ups.

Our guest Sven looking pretty tired. He had had a long day at work but still came to practice.

Next, I got them to work on rolling their partners using the Figure-4 grip invented by Neil Adams.

Here you can see 12-year old Suan Wah trying it out. By his mid-teens, he will be a juji-gatame specialist!

But right now, the rolling juji-gatame drill is proving to be too tiring for him. It's not easy for a young boy to be training amongst young men.

We have a pretty big mat area so there's plenty of space for people to roll around during newaza.

Still, people do tumble into each other.

Sometimes I have to stand in between the players to make sure they don't collide into each other.

The last drill I had them do was arm-straightening. He's doing his utmost to pull the arm straight.

He's finding this exercise very tiring.

Matthew is tired too.

We ended the session with some standing randori. Every session must have randori or it is not training.