Wednesday 10/6/15 Session (Competition Training)

Hey, hey, hey... KL Judo is now 1 month old! We've come such a long way in such a short time. We are so thankful for all the things that have gone right but most of all, we are greatly appreciative of our members who make the club what it is.

Aishah & Qaini have been out of town and away from training for one-and-a-half weeks. We missed them a lot and everybody was glad to have them back in training!

We had brothers Peryue & Porhao from Penang drop by for some training. It was great having them on the mat on Wednesday. We trust they had a good workout. Here they are doing tricep dips.

Our players regularly do High Intensity Interval Training and the two brothers joined in.

We started the training with juji-gatame-related drills.

Our guest Jihad, who is on vacation from his posting in Sarawak, is seen here working out with Matthew. The drill is for tori to keep uke from standing up.

Next drill involves rolling your partner into juji-gatame. It's not so easy when they are fully-resisting, which is what this drill calls for. Here, Peryue is trying very hard to roll his partner.

After that are arm-straightening drills. Here, you can see 15-year old Cherylynn trying to straighten Suan Wah's arm out during the drills.

What's a practice without randori? Newaza randori for all, before we proceed to standing.

Porhao does well to lock his partner with a type of ushiro-kesa-gatame.

In newaza, it is common for bodies to crash into each other, such as this case illustrates.

Everybody loves a water break.

Next, everybody does mat-edge drills.

We're now in the last third of our 3-hour session. I show them why doing ippon-seoi-nage the traditional way, such as throwing off the sleeve (rather than off the lapel) is ineffective. There's simply too much space between tori and uke.

I demonstrate a straight-leg seoi-nage done by inserting the driving leg in between my partner's legs.

Cherylynn, my 15-year old trainee, initially had some problems with the leg insertion but now she does it well. In fact, almost perfectly.

Look at how good the throw is!

Jihad tries the straight-leg seoi-nage, with leg insertion.

Porhao doesn't seem to be too familiar with throwing on crash pads. He kept lifting uke as he falls to the crash pad. This is useful when throwing on tatami since that hurts. But on a crash pad there is no necessity and it doesn't train you to throw when you support your opponent's fall that way.

Qaini shows what a full-blooded throw should be like.

Despite the full impact, uke feels no pain because of the crash pad.

Peryue doing some randori with Aishah.

Porhao comes to grips with Qaini.

We end the session with our usual circular bow. We thank Jihad, Peryue and Porhao for visiting us and training with us. We always welcome visitors and hope they will come back soon.

Everybody say... "Ippon!"

We have a really fun crowd at KL Judo. We train really hard but there's always lots of laughter ringing throughout the dojo before, during and after training.