June 5th-6th - Judo & Morning Open

Went to Judo for my last class of my week chalk full of martial arts classes without my family around.  I didn't get to all of the classes I wanted to get to but it was a pretty successful week none the less.  I wasn't as good about my diet as I would have been if my wife had been here, but luckily I maintained at 195 lbs. 

Beggs taught Judo as usual with a couple of other blackbelts in attendance.  Nick (unfortunately I can't remember his last name) was who I worked with throughout the class.  He was very knowledgeable and smooth.  In fact I was downright impressed by his grasp of Judo.  He really knew how to apply the kazushi to get my body into the right position for whatever throw he wanted to do.  Although he seemed a little injury prone, the technique was really there and it was through minimal amounts of movements.

We started off with the bands and did some individual exercises and then up and down the floor pulling on the bands with a partner.  We chose a throw and then did fit-ins 20 times in a row with a partner.  Then we worked on a few throws that I don't remember the Japanese names of.  The one that I remember was when they grab both of your sleeves and then you do a type of a hip throw while lifting their arms up.  For the ground portion of the class we did the basic Judo pins and switched in between them. 

After class ended I worked with Nick again and he showed me tons of different things.  The thing that I took away from it most was that I might switch one of my grips to the back of my opponent's collar.  Then kind of reverse motorcycle grip the collar to get them on their toes and then throw.  There was also a very cool soto makacomi setup that I want to work on more.

It was only Claire and I this morning.  We treated it more like a class rather than open mat.  We worked on side control defense at her request.  I then tried to review as much of the x-guard stuff as I could which was a good review.  In the process I taught Claire the butterfly sweep and also a little x-guard.  We then went over north-south choke because Claire asked if there was anything to do from the north/south position.  We rolled a couple of times and while I can submit her pretty easily I see some improvement.