Monday Night Workout at Seattle Jujutsu

I'm back.

I've also had other things going on with my life that have taken me away from my normally scheduled workout. Thanks to my coach Aaron Fields for getting me back into the gym. I'm truly thankful for his help.

Now onto the workout. It's been awhile since I really rolled around. I broke out my blue gi that has been sitting in my gi bag for sometime. It had the signature folded creases and stiffness; well mainly that it has seen the inside of a gi bag more than the inside of a dojo.

There were about 20 people practicing tonight, more or less and the dojo was packed. The technique of the night was tomo-nage. It was good to actually practice this over and over again. Here's a video on youtube from my favorite show, Human Weapon.

It was good to practice this with different people as different people's center of gravity are different, but the principles remain the same. We did this for quite a bit, and probably did about 20-30 repetitions of throwing and getting thrown. It was a hot, as it's still summer, and 20 bodies crowding in a sub-basement, no-nonsense, dojo was a great feeling. The single medium sized industrial fan blowing cool air into the basement did it's best from over heating. Oh, and a note about the dojo. I love this dojo. I helped rebuild the new expanded mats, bolted on coathooks in the dressing room and just the random cleaning that everybody participates in.

As people practiced their technique we then moved onto another technique. This was the ankle lock. One of the things that Vince pointed out was to maintain control of the toebox into the armpit and then putting pressure on the Achilles with your wrist. I'm not the best at descriptive flowing prose with human anatomy, so here's a video to illustrate the point.

So after we finished the two techniques of the night we moved onto light newaza or ground randori. Changed partners a few times. The dojo was crowded so have to be careful when flipping somebody from a turtle on their back with an arm-lock. It was good to engage in randori. I practiced my guard passes, and transition to osea-komi. I just have to work more on my arm-locks, mainly ude-garami and juji-gatame.

Those are a few things that needs to be worked on. Other than that things are going well, and it felt great to be back working out again.