Thursday, March 10, 2011

Judo Class Visit

I paid a visit to our local Judo school and had a great time. The guys there were very friendly and a lot of fun. The class was small, the blackbelt instructor, a female blackbelt, and a guy wearing a yellow belt. It was their newaza class, so they made it a brazil night in honor of having a BJJer in the house and we just paired up and rolled the entire time.

They have strangely unexpected holes in their ground game. Very little defense against being butterfly swept, and pretty much zero defense against any guard passes. Their only mount escape appeared to be hook the arm and Upa like mad. They invited me to throw out some BJJ tips whenever I saw an opportunity, so I showed one of the guys technical mount and how to launch attacks from it, and how my favorite collar and sleeve breakdown works and how to launch attacks from that. I also showed the female blackbelt how to use the knee to elbow mount escape and showed the yellow belt why he shouldn't reach up from under mount.

They were absolutely baffled by my guard work and seemed to enjoy trying to get past it, when one of them did get past I damn near tapped from the pressure in Kesa and he managed to kickstand armbar me while I was trying to breath. That actually damaged some cartilage in my rib cage from an old wrestling injury so my ribs are a bit sore today, but overall it was a blast. I might drop in on them again every once in a while, but I won't be able to start Judo training until next summer.

I skipped out of my Jits class early because my wife has a nursing test coming up and then her final exam, so she needed to get home to relax.

3 comments:

  1. Good luck to your wife on her test. The Judo people sound pretty cool. We have a Black Belt Judo instructor at our school. I love training with him. His classes are always fun and his Judo is relevant to BJJ. He has a brown belt in BJJ, too. I think that, if I couldn't train in BJJ, I would train in Judo.

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  2. Good luck on your wife's exam; my husband is going back to school for a career switch into nursing (from engineering) so I sympathize.

    I LOVE JUDO! the only problem I have with it is, people start learning how not to fall when they're like 20 months old. It's a lot of muscle memory to overcome. :)

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  3. Thanks for the well wishes, I'll pass them along to her.

    I've got previous falling experience from parkour/judo/aikido so I'm pretty decent at taking a throw and not dying, as long as you keep your chin tucked and don't try to catch yourself with your arms you generally can get away without being murdered.

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