October 20th - Gi (I suck at Judo)

Ray started us out with a warmup and then we did some stretching.  Hopefully we'll start doing this more often.  Conan taught the rest of the class and we worked on some different Side control escapes/reversals than usual.  The first one was in response to a knee on belly to mount by turning and then gaining half guard.  I kind of liked it and I'll see if I can use this next time it happens.  The next one was going off of an armlock attempt with the shoulder.  When they bend their elbow going north/south and rolling them over.  The last one we worked on was kind of a Judo throw from the ground where you hold their shoulder and turn away from them keeping their weight high and rolling them.

During the Judo portion the theme was Randori or sparring.  We did a progression from just fitting in to taking turns throwing to actually competing with each other.  Going against Fuji was pretty tough.  His size is something to deal with in itself but he also has experience with Judo and is pretty good at setting up throws in my opinion.  I didn't feel like I was doing a good job at all.  He threw me really well a couple of times and the last time my foot kind of got stuck on the floor and it twisted my hip a little bit.  It was okay but I had a little hitch in my get along after that.  One of these days I'll figure out kazushi with throws.

For open mat I went against Ray.  He seemed hard to move and really solid like usual.  I did feel a little more comfortable with him than I have in the past.  He did a good job of keeping me from passing his guard one thing I took note of was he grabbed my sleeves and kind of pulled me into his knee that was on my chest; this was difficult to deal with.  I can't quite remember how he submitted me.  He got me in an armbar one time and almost a triangle but I kept myself wide enough for a while.  There was a point when I went for my deep half guard sweep but he was able to counter it.  Later he told me that I needed to control the leg more if that was going to work.  I realized that I wasn't thinking about my legs as much as I should have.

Conan went to Shihan with me and got us permission to workout at the dojo on Wednesday mornings.  So if anyone is interested, let me or David know.  I think what we will do is communicate through text messages on Tuesday nights to make sure someone with a key will be there as well as enough students to make it worth while.  The time will probably be from 6:30-7:30ish.