Homemade Cookin!

This week has been mostly a wash, mainly because I've been gorging myself with homemade food. My mom is in town and has been feeding me lumpia and other delicious home cooking. The crockpot has been simmering with curry chicken, giniling, adobo, spare ribs, menudo among other things.

Seriously. I'm gaining weight as I type this. She has also brought in some moon cakes. Nevertheless my freezer is stocked full of lumpia and I could survive off this for awhile. I'm sure FEMA would designate my refrigerator as an emergency resupply point with the amount of food ready to go could literally feed a small army. Or me healthily for the next month or so.

As for working out, I missed my Monday Night Workout because I ate a whole plate of lumpia and brought enough to share. There is no way I can workout with that much food in my belly. Regardless it was a lot of food, and it's a rare delicious treat at that.

Tuesday Night, I rolled into Budokan to workout. There were about a dozen people. Warmups were really good. This was the first time that I actually felt that I could do cartwheels. I cartwheeled across the mat in continous motion, that finally got dizzy at the end of my cartwheel thing. I know 8 or so years of judo (on and off) and finally, been able to do a cartwheel. Most of the other attempts at cartwheel, were just that attempts at flopping your legs over your body while standing on your hands, which mainly resulted in your butt sticking in the air and with your legs doing a clockwork motion.

The technique of the night was mainly gripping. With a quick exercise in grip fighting. The rest of the night was just spent in standing randori. Lots and lots of standing randori. I would fight for 2-3 rounds, take a round break, 2-3 rounds, take a round break... and so on and on.

So a lot of people are gearing up for the US Open, which is a "C" level elite tournament that's going to be held in San Jose in a couple of weeks. And so the emphasis on the night is Randori. Also on the mat was Matt Walker, who is the #2 Ranked +100kg athlete after the Olympian McCormick. Matt is headed to Brazil with coach Bert Mackey for an international competition in a few weeks. So he is getting geared up and ready.

Most everyone going to the competition is on the peak cycle, with next week most likely going to be on a taper, and take it easy right before the US Open.

So being one of a few bigger guys in the dojo that night. But tonight it was basically Matt, Jake, Kurt and myself. So we took turns randori with Matt. I ended up randori with him basically 4-5 times.

Here are the lessons learned.

1. Vary your patterns. Matt caught me in a good foot sweep (deashi barai) that was timed perfectly. I tend to be repetitive in my patterns of attack.

2. Move the body. Matt weighs close to 250lbs. I have to actually use good judo to move him, apply kuzushi and then throw.

3. When fighting a relatively bigger opponent, use your lower center of gravity (in this case my smaller size and speed) to execute techniques.

4. Stiff Arm. In a Stiff Arm competition, one with the longer reach wins. Don't get caught in this trap.

It was actually great to randori with the #2 guy in the country. I'm learning quite a bit on what to do and not to do. And with someone that is stronger and bigger, I now have to actually rely more on technique and strategy to beat them.

Things to work on.

1. Expanding my different footsweep techniques. Applying footsweeps from different angles.

2. To go with the flow. If I'm pushed, I pull; I'm pulled, I push. Fighting strength vs. strength which works on weaker and less technical opponents does not work all the time.

3. Commitment. I have to just commit to a technique. Once I have a grip, commit and throw. This just means that I must commit without fear of getting thrown.

4. Repetition of simple techniques. I just simply need to keep on practicing so that my footsweeps, throws are all second nature.