Sunday Nite Training (24.9.17)

Most judokas prefer to do standing but KL Judo's players seem to prefer newaza. We had a vote on whether to work on newaza first or tachi-waza and it was 80% in favor of newaza first.

So, we started of with juji-gatame (or the cross armlock). I explained that sometimes, the juji comes as a follow up to a throw (transition) and other times, it may be a counter to a throw. But these are actually and far in between. Most of the time it's a result of a roll.

I told them there are two juji rolls that I would be teaching them: i) the one made famous by Alexander Iastkevich and ii) the one created by Neil Adams but that for today, I would focus on the former.

After demonstrating how the roll works, I got the players to do drills on them. I noticed that while most of them were able to execute the roll, many had difficulty keeping uke's head down after the roll. So, we did drills on those too.

The drills took up nearly an hour and we didn't have time to work on straightening the arm. That will have to wait for another day.

After a water break, I taught them tai-otoshi, highlighting the fact that it's a hand throw not a leg throw. I demonstrated the basic 3-step motion approach and then showed two variations: the cross grip version and the sleeve version. To learn the technique, the players did uchikomi followed by nagekomi.

Before we knew it, it was randori time and we had many guests show up. With so many players on the mat, we did randori motodachi style where a bunch of players would stand out there for two rounds in a row and then they'd be replaced by another set of players who would stay on for two rounds in a row. And this went on and on until we were too tired.

There were a few minor injuries which is to be expected and a couple of scares but those injuries turned out to be not-that-serious, so we are thankful. We are also grateful that there are judo players around who appreciate randori and want to join us to have a good sparring session. This type of collaboration for mutual benefit is what judo is all about and it's what KL Judo Club is all about too.