The more I learn, the less I know...

Sunday afternoon, Auburn Bob invited me to work out at Ippon Dojo in Tacoma. It was a good workout. Did some newaza and tachi waza randori. Afterwards there was someone in the club working on no-gi grappling. Did that too. I haven't done no-gi in a long long time, and it was a much faster game, much different. No gi opens up faster turns, rollovers, etc... Basically it's still the same, although the convenient handholds (the gi) is not there. However the basic moves are still the same. Hadaka Jime (Rear Naked Choke) still works. Ude Garami/Juji Gatame/ still works. The difference is that you can slip in and out of a hold that is not tight. There's more clinches and stuff in no-gi. It's different but good.

It was a good workout. I'm just hitting a plateau in my training.

Basically, I'm starting to know, enough of WHAT I AM NOT DOING.

1. Working out every day with one day a week to rest and recover. Improve my cardio, strength and flexibility...

2. A balanced healthy diet. Not a SEE-FOOD diet. I see food. I eat.

3. Attend practice consistently and on time.

On the technical side here are some things I need to work on:

1. Grip and Throw. What I do now, is grip, grip, grip. I would have that awesome grip for a half second, but guess what, I wouldn't throw, and that fleeting moment of an awesome grip is gone. You get a great grip, throw. It doesn't open up that often, so seize the opportunity.

2. Transition Control. I need to control the transition phase, where you knock someone down, not enough to get a point, but enough that he is on the mat. Take advantage of it, establish a superior position and attack. Sometimes, I get the deer in the headlights look, because, well, I don't train as much in transition as we do the two main phases. The stand-up and the ground work. Transition Control is key. I know Aaron always emphasizes transition control, and it's finally coming together that I need full control throughout the fight.

3. Repetitive/Telegraphic Attacks. When I fight someone, it shouldn't be like the AT&T Commercial, "reach out and touch someone..." I need to vary it up a bit and not telegraph "hey I'm going to do this next..."

Anyways, just gotta plug away. It is after all a journey and there is no magical end. Actually, I'd get absolutely bored if there weren't any challenges. That's the beauty of martial arts, there's constant learning. It's not like a book where you read from cover to cover and that's it. There's more to it...

New IJF Rules Explained

These are the new IJF Rules that are getting looked at this year. With some explanations. Here it is from their IJF website:

REFEREEING

Decision of the IJF Executive Committee in Rotterdam from 21/08/09

Introduction

The IJF’s wish is to defend fundamental judo values.

Within this scope IJF particularly devotes itself to preserve and develop education, physic and mental trumps of Judo.

« Judo is a physic and mental education system ».

From the other side, IJF would not like to change Refereeing rules during Olympic qualification period. For this reason it will proceed in this sphere with necessary experimentations and their testing before the first January 2010.

The experimentations will be tested during World Junior Championships 22/25 October 2009 in Paris.

Refereeing rules

Leg Grips.

All direct attacks with one or two hands or with one or two arms below the belt are not allowed.

PUNISHMENTS: First attack: - Shido

Second attack: - Hansokumake

Grips below the belt are authorized only after a sequence of techniques if it’s real and sincere.

Grips below the belt are authorized in counterattack.

These counterattacks are allowed only within a sequence (continuity) of techniques started by the opponent. The principles of Go No Sen and Sen No Sen.

For better understanding of the new rules, while giving a punishment referees will explain it by an appropriate gesture.

Refereeing system

The contests will be refereed by only one referee without 2 referees at the corners.

The “Care” system with 2 cameras filming the contest at 2 different angles will be set up to help the one unique referee.

Control and supervision of the “Care” system will be done by the IJF Refereeing commission

Golden Score

Regarding Golden Score part of contest of maximum 2 minutes, the entire marking of refereeing table resulting 4 minutes of initial contest, will be conserved during this period except the contest duration.

At the end of Golden Score and if no advantage was marked, the referee will take a decision for the period of initial contest and its Golden Score part.

Commitment Issues

I stopped by the Budokan on Tuesday night for a good workout. Since this was the last workout for people going to the US Open, no technique was shown, and basically it was a full session of randori after warm ups. Everyone brought up their game, and it was a lot of fun to randori knowing that it was the last workout before going to the US Open for those that are going.

I was tired, beat, and yet I keep on going. It's not the training commitment I'm talking about, it's committing to a throw. I'd go in for an attack, yet not follow through. I think I need to practice on the follow through.

What I probably need is just some open mat time and continuous repetition of the throwing motion. I need to attack more, and I end up just stalling all the time. Practice some more uchikomis, then throws on a crash pad, and then some more throws.

Spider Guard or Daddy Long Legs

I stopped by Seattle Jujutsu on Monday night for a workout. It was pretty good. Worked on a lot of newaza that night. I've been mainly working on guard passes.

In randori got into spider guard or daddy long legs. It was interesting. Its different, I'm protecting my arms and learning to post and pass guard. Not bad.

The technique of the night is a rollover using your shin to cut at a 45 and do a rollover. Hmmn, it's hard to explain in words. I'll see if I can pull up a youtube somewhere.

Not much to say, except that it's a good workout.

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.

A nose is a nose...

Remember, when I said, I only seem to bleed when wearing a white gi? It also happens when wearing a blue gi too.

During randori, my nose bled when it hit the back of someone's skull. It was only a nosebleed. Anyways, I had to sit out for the rest of the night because it kept on bleeding. I tried to get back in for one round, but it started bleeding again.

No biggy. I actually prefer nosebleeds or cauliflower ear as it doesn't affect future training. Nosebleeds will stop, cauliflower ears can be drained and taped. It's not a worse injury like a knee, ankle, or shoulder injury. Basically momentary discomfort.

People are getting ready to fight at the US Open in the Budokan, so randori has been stepping up a notch. Also, some explanations on the new rules that were implemented. A big emphasis on continual attack. Always attack, attack, attack.

Other than that I don't remember much really...

Monday Night Workout.... and San Miguel Beer

So, it was a rather slow night, I stopped by Seattle Jujutsu for my Monday Night Workout. Tonight there were 5 of us and a visitor. It was quite an intimate class. Started with doing light uchikomi.

The standing technique was a variation of the body drop or valley drop from an ankle block? This one passed by me through a haze. I need to review the technique as I have a vague understanding of this. It was a cool technique when done right. I just need to review it again that's all...

Then we went onto newaza. It was back to basics night and we went over the kesa gatame hold. It's amazing how bad habits develop over time, and it was a good night to go over the basics. First of all in kesa gatame you want to be a bit more forward and lift your opponent's shoulder off the mat. Secondly there must be constant rib to rib pressure. It must not feel comfortable. My leg position needed to be a bit more forward. My inside hip has to be forward, and not only that with contact with the mat. It's important that I maintain pressure.

I pulled this photo from judoinfo.com

In this picture I was actually doing it like that. To improve it you must reduce the space and make it tighter and be more forward with greater pressure.

We then worked on juji-gatame from the scarf hold while maintaining pressure during the transition. As always the key is maintaining pressure on the head. From a Kesa you can go to a jujigatame near side or far side. We practiced both that night.

And as always, Aaron broke down the bio-mechanics of the juji-gatame. It's important that you have control of the shoulder for the juji gatame to work. Basically, isolate the joint that is the next joint up from the joint that you are trying to lock. Once isolated, then you can apply with great control and precision the lock you are trying to achieve.

We then proceeded to go into randori trying to eventually trying to get a juji-gatame with the principles shown. One of the things learned tonight was flow. Just flow with it. Roll, roll, roll to wherever direction your opponent is taking you and that the armbar keeps on working. As always maintain control of the shoulder, roll where you need to be and you should all be good.

I did get an armlock last night using my legs, which was pretty cool. Seen it done a few times, and haven't really practiced it as much, but the opportunity presented itself, and so I took it.

Brad brought in some San Miguel Beer last night and it was good to actually drink some San Miguel after practice and chew the cud.

Sunday Night Open Mat... and fresh baked cookies.

So I stopped by Sunday Night at Seattle Jujutsu. Matt and Lana were running open mat. There were a few observers with some people from the club coming back with a visitor or two. There were perhaps 8-10 people in the club that night. The night's open mat was just newaza randori.

Things I was working on:

1. Passing the Guard

a. Guard Using the knee to the half guard then from the half guard to a scarf hold (Kesa Gatame) or shoulder hold (Kata Gatame). Relatively successful.

b. Guard passes using an arm to get underneath one leg. Bad Idea, very prone to triangle choke (Sankaku Jime) or straight arm bar (juji gatame). I'll make sure to scratch this off the list, as it did work sometimes, the bad thing about it is that I'll be prone to arm bars or triangles. I think I'll just chalk this up to bad haits, and probably worked because of my opponents most likely using the guard as a delaying tactic, as opposed to the guard as an attack position.

c. Keeping myself posted up, and keeping my arms out of reach to prevent armbars.

d. Defending against sweeps. Have to lookout for sweeps.

2. Reversals.

a. I executed a few reversals, mainly by bridging or shrimping.

3. Hadaka Jime (Rear Naked Choke)

a. I worked on this but, I have a hard time in getting the arm and the right angle.

b. I managed to get on my opponents back, bring him backwards, and executing control. I just have to work on the final aspects of the choke. I do have control on rolling someone so that they're back is to me and execute control. The hard thing is to actually fish in there to get the choke, but usually the opponent tries to fight the arm going around their neck.

4. Positional adjustments.

a. I was doing okay in getting the initial position, and I'm quite strong in position, going from a scarf to a shoulder to a north south and a side hold. I just have to maintain pressure, and at the same time, slowly attack to get a bent armlock (ude garami). From a pin (oseakomi), I only know submissions from the side hold (yoko shiho gatame); and consequently, I'd hate to give up my strongest pin (north-south) to a side pin to execute a bent armlock. Or I could attack and go post his shoulder up and then execute a straight armlock (juji gatame).

Overall it was a fun night at open mat, and there are some things I'm working on in newaza mainly, guard passes. A lot of people keep a closed guard, some people keep a relatively open guard and others keep a butterfly guard.

I have decent pins, and for me, easier to execute than the more technical submission. As an oseakomi for 25 seconds will get you an ippon; consequently the pins are hard to break from, and I just have a habit of stopping at a good pin. Now the bad thing, is that I'm not that good in transition from a pin to a pin. The transitional pin and mobility is where I need to work on. And it's a good habit, as I look "beyond" a pin and look for a submission. I think this thinking opens up a whole array of options. Now that I think about it, I'm actually starting to connect what Bert from the Budokan told me about the "weave." The "Weave" is to go for a pin, go for an armbar, go for a pin then back to an armbar or armlock..... and the key is transition from attack, to attack, to attack, to attack... And to attack from different angles... Wow. I finally made a connection. He's been saying do the "Weave" for over a year now, and I finally get it.

I think that stepping back and looking at things from a "generic" grappling standpoint is good. Looking through things in a context of rules is quite myopic. As always, competition rules change. However the big picture is to maintain control, and not only just control to maintain the status quo, but control to push things forward. And that's the big picture, always look ahead.

And Sarah stopped by the dojo to visit and dropped off some cookies! Fresh baked. Wow. Eating freshbaked cookies after a workout is just plain delicious. Yummy.

Chicken Wing! And no, not the KFC Wings...

... I love KFC Wings. They have this new $ 5 dollar fill up box, and you can get lots of wings. I just love wing places in general and there are some really really cool places where you can get wings. There's the wing dome, and of course the infamous Jersey Shore Wing place with the Nuclear Wings where you have to sign a waiver to eat the wings. I ate those wings, and never again will I do it again. That was more painful than being peppered sprayed. (Yes, I have been pepper sprayed before, and you get this nifty certificate that you keep in your training folder). As hot wings coming in was hot, but more importantly was HOT COMING OUT! That's all I have to say about that...

Wow, all that wall of text of digression. Now to the training part of the night, was:

1. Control the head.

2. Grab a hold of the wrist.

3. Get a key-lock.

4. Get a chicken wing.

Option A: Use wing to roll opponent so that they end up in a triangle pin.

Option B: Use wing to roll opponent the other way, pivoting ending in a cross body hold.

The chicken wing was highly effective, although it's effectiveness is determined by control of the head. If you lose control of the head then you lose the technique and they can simply (gasp) sit up, and the position is reversed, and they have your arm and shoulder. So as always, control the head, and the body follows.

Funny thing, today after I was reading this, I read the Growing Judo 2009 August Issue, and well, that was the technique of the month. Actually the USJA publication actually explains it better with pictures! Take a look it starts at page 5.

http://www.usja-judo.org/GrowingJudo/GrowingJudo2009_08.pdf

That's about it, the rest of the night was spent doing randori both newaza and stand up. I have to work on placement of my feet and balance, as I was horribly prone to foot sweeps. UGGH.

Casual Friday .... the martial arts apparel blog entry!

Hmmmnnn, adventures in washing your gi. So, I have sprawled across three chairs, three stinky gis. I have to get washed, and haven't. I know it's bad. I only have one Gi left that is clean and hanging in my closet, and it's my competition blue gi. I just used my competition white gi Thursday night.

And yet again, everytime, I break out my white gi, I get blood on them. It was funny, one of my friends, Ferdinand, told me, I never see you in your white gi. Well, for good reason. It usually gets blood on it. I don't know why, it just is. Anyways, it's usually minor and not that much, mostly from random cuts on fingers, nose, or lip. Usually we stop and say yeah someone's bleeding. And tape it up, use distilled bleach or peroxide for clean up and call it good. I usually don't get blood on my blue gis.

So, looking into my martial arts closet, I have 2 white gis (1 double weave for competition, 1 single weave for dojo use only), 2 blue gis (1 double weave for competiton -shrunk to fit/within regulation, and 1 double weave that needs to shrink some more) and 1 ASA Kurtka for sambo. I use my Kurtka now and again. It's great for training in the summer as it is a lighter weight and the best thing is wearing shorts with them. Of course with all this stuff comes compression shorts and rash guards to round out the equation and my very valuable mouthguard. Which I tend to misplace during times when I most likely and definitely need them, such as practice involving dozens and dozens of throws in a night, or my last competition, where my mouthguard went MIA just before the fight.

And of course gis cost roughly a hundred bucks or so (and I'm rather cheap, some gis cost 200 and really high end tailored one cost 300 bucks.) I get mine at Hatashita Sports https://www.hatashitasports.com/index.php You can talk to the lady on the phone, size you up. You can order half sizes and have a split order of pants and gi tops. The split sizes are cool, my last order was a 5 top with a 4.5 bottom. I think I can move down to 4.5 top and a 4.0 bottom. I have the Fuji Double Weave. It's cheaper than Mizuno, fits me okay, and for my purposes suits me well. For the Sambo Kurtka I got mine from the American Sambo Association (ASA). They are pretty cool and I heard they are getting some new kurtkas from Bulgaria. http://www.ussambo.com/store.html

Now the funny thing about the gi pants is that they usually end up too long. I don't know what universe the gi pant model is from, but the majority of people practicing this sport are fairly stout and usually on most occassions don't have a runner's build. I need to shrink it down in the dryer on high heat several times to get it down to size. Then again, I could just go to a seamstress and get it rehemmed. Also, those annoying gi pants waiststring, how the center migrates or how you can sometimes lose one end of the string. Those gi pants waiststring never seems to stay put, and heaven forbid you lose one end into the pants, trying to fish that out is a royal pain.

For the other stuff, I just get my rash guards and compression shorts from Under Armour although pricey, gets the job done.

But grappling is an affordable sport. You just invest in some good gis and you can use it for a couple of years. Besides, you just end up building your gi collection little by little and it's more of a necessity really. I plan on training at least 2 days a week, at most 5 days, and usually hit it 3-4 times a week. Getting your gi washed/dried and ready for the next day takes time, as it takes around 2 hours to get a gi dry, usually have to run it twice in the dryer on high heat twice. And of course washing machines/dryers don't usually like gis as they are fairly heavy, and amazingly heavy when wet. So if you are quite busy, you'll end up running through 2-3 gis a week.

I started with a generic single weave white gi, and I still have that that I break out on occassion for dojo use. This one is good, and is lightweight enough that you can use it for most martial arts. It's sometimes fun to try out some other martial arts, and just having a white gi with your white belt allows you to do that. Oh and that is why, it's good to have one with no patches. We don't need no stinkin' patches! That way you can fit in and use it for other things....

And for training camps.. well thats when you need to bring some more gis as the last thing you want to do is to roll with someone with a stinky gi. And of course, that is one cardinal rule about grappling. BE CLEAN. If I had a hard sweaty day at work, I shower before I practice. My old roommate always puzzled about this. She said, "You're going to work out and you are taking a shower before?" I replied, "Why yes, I'd like to be clean for working out and I'm sure my training partners are doing the same thing. " She said, "so is it like a date?" I said, "no, it's just in practice you end up with close body to body contact.... ." She said, "Well it is like dating then... good dates end with body to body contact..." I said, "Only if it's a good date..."

Oh and I went to practice twice this week. Once at Seattle Jujutsu Monday and Thursday at the Budokan. It was good. I forget what I did. It was sooo busy this week. I'm tired. I actually fell asleep at 7PM on a friday night, hence the reason I'm awake at 1 in the morning. Practice was more of the same. I was noticing that my endurance is slowly getting better. My left ankle still bothers me. And that there was a funny post workout incident involving dancing...

Frequent Flyer Miles

Today's practice at the Budokan was all about throws. Lots of it. Figures, the day I can't find my mouthpiece is the day that we do dozens and dozens of throws.

After the normal warmups, we go through uchikomis where we practice our different throws. I was working on tai o toshi which, I desperately need work on.

Anyways, after the uchikomi we alternate throwing each other 20 times for a couple of times.

After that we get grouped in threes. On the sparring square, one each end, and a person in the middle. Then you go through a round of speed throws. Just attack, and throw one side, run to the other, attack and throw. You throw from the grip. Attack, throw, attack, throw, attack, throw.

You'd think that being in the middle would be fun since you are the thrower, but after a dozen or so throws, running from one side of the mat to the other gets tiring. You start out with nice beautiful throws like seio or ogoshi, uchi-mata, sode tsurikomi gosh.... Then you go to the more simpler foot sweeps as you run out of steam. Just getting up was an exercise.

Anyways, getting thrown lots was a different experience. I mean lots. And throwing lots. It was a good practice, as it lets you finish you're attack. Just the execution of it all. It was tiring and I was beat. That was one of the rougher practices I've been to. Overall, I think I've accumulated some air time that night...

Foot Sweeps, sticky foot... Arm Locks and chicken wings...

It's Sea Fair weekend in Seattle. It's been wicked hot as of late. And I think all Seattle-ites are not used to the hot weather, myself being one of them. Now if we were in Texas or Death Valley, yeah that's one thing, but this hot beautiful weather is just amazing. Not quite yet acclimatized to it, but nevertheless, went down to practice Sunday Night.

I was rather early, so I spent some time hanging out at Cowen Park. Which is a park catty-corner between Green Lake Park and the U-District. There's lots to see and it was a nice shady place to feel the grass underneath you. I remained rather cool and just chilled out at the park. I was enjoying myself, then headed to the dojo for practice.

The usual warm ups, then practiced deashi-barai.

(http://judoinfo.com/images/animations/blue/deashibarai.htm)

I always had trouble with foot sweeps, as I usually don't keep my feet straight and I usually don't power through with my hip. It is one of those things that I'm not too good at, as this technique requires timing. I'm not in tune with timing. It's a good attack and one to prep for another technique. In order for it to work as a preparatory technique one must commit to it. I also have commitment issues, but that's another story altogether. Then there's the technique of the "sticky foot" which Lana showed me, and which I have seen previously, but haven't permeated deep down to my subconscious. I need to practice this more.

After the foot sweeps we went to the arm lock portion of the night, and worked on the major variations of ude-garami also known as a kimura for those who practice BJJ. There are many many variations of ude garami, the main point being is the immobilization of the shoulder joint so that you can torque the elbow joint. Unlike the juji where it's a straight arm lock, the ude garami is bent and is more of a torquing motion. It's amazing as to how many different ways you can apply ude garami, with Aaron showing many of the ways.

Here's some more info on Ude Garami: http://judoinfo.com/quiz0297_2.htm

The thing is like anything else, you have to isolate the joint, and immobilize the joint further up the body. Meaning, for any arm lock you immobilize the shoulder, and then apply the arm lock. Same thing with leg locks. Immobilize the hip, then apply the knee bar/lock. For ankle locks, immobilize the knee, apply the ankle/heel hook. I guess it's all about human anatomy. I should take an anatomy and physiology class, as a lot of the principles is bio-mechanics.

The last part of the night was newaza randori. It was a good one, as I was getting to be in better shape, true that my technique may be less than perfect, but I found I was quite resilient last night. Going into the second hour of working out you start learning the efficient use of burst energy, when to apply it, and well how to most efficiently leverage your strength against your opponent. For some reason the dull aches and pains of prolonged activity, spurs the deep recesses of your mind for the most efficient use of limited resources.

Perhaps, is this what they really mean all along about one of the tenets of judo about maximum efficiency? Seriously, is it only after pushing yourself to your physical limits do you start learning about efficiency. And when pushed, your limits grow larger, where limits are simply places where you haven't gone before, but can?

Anyways, it was good working in newaza and had a good solid time working through different body positions. I'm still weak in my guard position, and learning through trial and error the different ways to pass guard without getting arm locked. Ah, forgot to pass on the key focus on last night's newaza, and that was try for an ude-garami submission. And there are many ways to achieve this. The best randori partner for the night was Greg, who was visiting from out of town. He had some excellent techniques from the guard position and it was quite an amazing thing to work with him.

So that was that. I was tired and I spent the night after I came home icing my left shoulder, more of a precautionary measure. As I tend to lead with my left most times. For some reason, even though I'm right handed, I've developed this amazing grip with the left hand. Well mostly because, a lot of judo players are right handed and usually don't mind it too much if you achieve a left lapel grip. I usually like to grab the crease of the left upper shoulder of the gi, as it lets me have more control, and you can usually get a good chunk of gi cloth. Consequently, even in newaza I tend to use my left hand more to probe my opponents defenses. Hence sometimes, my left arm sometimes gets trapped, leading to an ude garami.

Anyways, it was a fun night. I'm tired.

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.

Big Bad Buddha Belly

.... ah, so I've been sidelined with a knee injury. And so, I've taken this as an excuse to gorge on all the Holiday Goodness, including turkey, cookies, burgers, tacos and everything else that is sugary, greasy and oh so decadent!

It was also an excuse not to post on my blog. I don't know, it's tough to post on a blog especially when you haven't done jack and squat with regards to fitness. 

I'm back fully recovered so you'll hear more from me.

So tonight, I finally practiced at Seattle Jujutsu after a long hiatus. It's been so long that I almost forgot how to roll around, throw, and I'm not so limber anymore. I wasn't as gassed as I thought I'd be, but it finally felt good to actually practice a few throws and actually feel the knee all better.

I still wear a soft brace and I'm quite careful with it. I practiced for about an hour into the two hour practice, doing some uchikomis and throws. I had to bolt at 8pm because I committed to meeting some friends before the Holiday mayhem. It was all good, and I felt that it would've been a wonderful night of practice. I do miss rolling around Seattle Jujutsu.

So, why the Big Bad Buddha Belly, well being injured gives you excuses. And when I was feeling great, I had none and was pushing myself.  I could for example have gone swimming which woudl be gentle on the joints and do some yoga and lower impact stuff.

I'm really debating about continuing soccer for the next season. The commitment required and the benefit is just not enough for me. I love hanging out with friends. I like doing active stuff with friends. But the potential for injury is quite high!

Seriously, I went to a Sambo Summer Camp and we did leg locks, knee bars and heel hooks all weekend long. Guess what? I didn't get injured, while someone was actively attacking my knee joint or ankle joint.

In all my experience, joint problems usually don't result from locks. It's from the sudden jarring movement from other contact. Now a semi-contact sport like soccer is much more dangerous in my opinion, and everyone in my club agrees. At least with full contact you know when you're going to get hit, can easily relax and go with the flow. 

Anyways, I'm quite excited that I'm fully back up to speed. My knee feels great and it's recovered. Thank goodness!

Tuesday Night at the Budokan

It was another practice at the Budokan.

We practiced rollovers from the turtle. I'm a bit rusty.

Anyways, did standing and groundwork. Overall a decent time.

So, it's been tough trying to recover with my knee. It's quite sensitive and it still hurts. A knee injury affects and permeates your whole life. I guess the point of it is to overcome adversity and keep on going. It's tough, especially knowing that it's hard to get involved and life in general is tough. I do like judo and fighting. My knee seemed very mobile and it was working.

I just have to get going on my other activities, since I let my knee injury stop me from living life to the fullest.  I know now that life goes on, and I should've been going to the pool or something like that. When you stop working out, everything just piles up and you become rather lazy.

It's easy to become lazy. So, I gotta keep on keepin' on.

Sunday Night at Seattle Jujutsu

With my knee passing the test of Thursday Night Practice, I feel that I can engage in more active sports. Besides that my fat ass is literally growing. I put on some compression shorts the other day and my belly hung over it. I've gained 8 lbs. since the knee injury and I have to do something about it. Blechh.

It's easy to fall into, "Woe is me, I'm injured..." trap where you don't do basically anything for awhile. 

It sucks in a span of a month. 

Anyways, practice was ran by Lana. She did moving uchikomi drills. It was fun to do an hour and a half of uchikomi to practice and refine some tachi-waza. 

We did some old school ouchi/kouchi drills, as well as combos between seio, kouchi/ouchi, and other drills. 

Overall it was a great night. It was great to get back and have the blood moving again. I took it rather easy and it was great that I can actually do the uchikomi .

Back in the Saddle. Thursday night practice at Budokan.

Thursday Night practice at the Budokan, was a bit of post hangover recovery. That is, that people were back to practice after the Continental Crown.

Well the Continental Crown was a huge affair with the whole weekend taken up setting up and tearing down the venue, the prep work, and of course the matches themselves. It seems the club is getting tighter, mainly there are a lot of volunteers making the tournament happen.

Thursday Night was typical practice with warm-up, technique and then randori session. My knee has been getting better, and I finally deemed it possible to actually engage in newaza randori.

The technique of the night was an oseakomi pin, which was a bit unorthodox. It involves grabbing the arm passing over the top and pinning from the side. The pin was quite effective, and can easily transition to straight arm bar, or an ude garami. Otherwise it was a good pin.

You can see the technique in this Youtube video at minute 0:45 to 0:48. By the way this is one of my favorite judo video compilations of all time...

I engaged in a bit of standup randori for only one round.

Other than that everything was peachy keen.

Continental Crown...

Wow my brain is fried. I was doing the score sheets for Mat I in the Continental Crown. There were over 100+ matches on the mat and it all went smoothly.

Actually it went rather smooth, and the action kept on flowing. The whole table was doing great, especially with the scoring, texas match card wrangling and the runners. I was glad Dave was there to double up and recheck my work, as it's very important to do so. Especially with people crowding around seeing who was dong what.

At one point we were down to 3 people in the table due to different schedules, with just a score board operator, texas match card handler and myself with the draw sheets.

It was all rather good with the Texas Match Cards, I like that as it makes things simpler. The score sheet was rather simple, after awhile it was either blue or white. It was rather clear and the matches moved fast enough that you had to be rather quick. Over all, even though there were a 103 matches on my mat, I basically saw maybe a dozen of those matches. I know it's hard to believe even though I was in front of the matches, but trying to figure out who will be fighting who, calculating scores on the fly, and ensuring everything was accurate was quite important.

Round robin pools are the hardest as you have to calculate scores based on wins and quality of wins. You also have to do the calculations by hand and ensure accuracy. Looking at it now, yes, it's rather simple math, but things get blurry, when you have parents, coaches, referees asking you what the score is, who is fighting next and so on. The matches moves by so fast, that you have to keep people on deck and everything on track. There were also scratches and forfeits.

Being an Elite "E" level tournament, had to keep everything very accurate to ensure everyone is on track.

The double elimination one is much easier to keep track of, as person x goes hear and person y goes there. Winner goes here, loser goes there, and if loser loses twice, he's eliminated.

At the end everything went smooth. I like the tournaments with the Texas Match Cards as a fighter as everything is rather definite, you know you have match 53 and you're blue, afterwards you have match 58 white. So you know you have to be in your blue gi and then change to your white one afterwards. As a scorer, I like the Texas Match Card as it keeps a record of your wins or losses, as well as you can set up who is fighting who on the table and know who is up next. You also know that if an athlete gives you his card that he is checked in, knows when his fight is and which color he is. It's a lot more work on the prep end, but makes things so much smoother.

The funny thing is you start recognizing people all around. It's a small small world. The referees, the parents, the athletes, the volunteers. Familiar faces all around. It was a fun tournament. At the end of the night, I was tired. I was up early, up late last night and did scoring all day. When I came home, I crashed hard.

Anyways, I'm still hobbling a bit, but my knee is getting much better. I could do some things, but I think I can come to practice next week if I take it easy. All this sitting around makes me antsy. Looking forward to some good practices next week.

Listening to Auburn Bob's Advice

.... So I have been taking it easy.

I didn't go Thursday, Sunday and tonight's Judo Practice. Last night was soccer and I simply watched from the sidelines and watched.

It's really tough for me to sit on the sidelines. It sucks even more being hobbled. I skip/hop from place to place It sucks. I do need to go to the gym somehow and not push myself because being fat sucks. I've totally eaten about 3 lbs. of Halloween Candy. All that excess. OUCH!

Sitting down and being sedentary is just not good for my health. NOT so good.

Anyways took pictures from last night's soccer game. It was fun to watch, but I'd rather I was out on the field. The smart thing was that I didn't bring in my gym bag. Which forced me to sit on the sidelines and support the team. My Defensiveman, Ted, his outer left knee was bugging him and I saw him hobbling after the game. Not good.

I really think that my circle of friends and myself are getting older. I don't know. When I was much much younger, say 10 years ago, not as many injuries floated around, and if it did, people would be sideline for about a week or so and then back in the game.

Then again, I've only been hurting for a week and a day and it sucks. I have noticed significant improvement in my knee. It's coming to the point that it's almost mobile, I'm just going to take it easy because it's not as painful and I could easily push it to the point of breaking again.

For now, just enjoy these pictures:

Wednesday night newaza randori

It was Wednesday, so I headed over to Seattle Jujutsu and get my knee still moving. I'm still hobbling. So I needed it to take it easy.

I got a good warm up and did some newaza randori with Vince and Matt. Vince and I worked on overcoming the high 4, passing the guard and then a good clockwork positional drill. It was good randori with Vince. He showed me some fine tuning on my ude garami. Ude Garami should be at 90 or 45 degrees. He also did an ude garami from the guard position, very similar to what Mark did at the Budokan Tuesday night. It's another angle where I can get attacked on. Aaron also showed me how to do a better guard pass by having my hand between the legs back of the hand up on top of the lower leg, as it leverages the lower leg open.

I then did matwork with Matt. He has a very loose open guard. He controls my hips with his feet. Which is quite important. Matt worked on a collar choke going around in a circle. (forgot the name, although very popular in competition judo). He mainly worked on defending/attacking from the guard while I worked on attacking the guard. He then pointed out that I had a good pin, but my transition from pin to submission, I would let up and give him space, therefore letting him go. So I need to practice on my transitions from pin to submission. Still maintaining control and not giving up space.

So the main lesson of the night was to work on maintaining pressure and close contact when going from a transition from a pin to a submission.

My knee is still doing alright but I'm still hobbling. I went to breakfast with some friends, one of them a nurse. She told me it might be my MCL that got strained and to rest up for a bit. I'll take that advice.

I should call up Regence and schedule an appointment, but most likely they're going to say, Ice up, Motrin and rest. At least that's what they did last time for my shoulder. So I know it's dumb, but I'm a stubborn guy, but I'll play the wait and see game. If by next week it doesn't get better it's probably serious.

I'll just take it easy. Go warm and easy. Maybe take a yoga class or two to keep it limber but not strain it. I think soccer for next Monday is out.

Oh.. and Halloween is tomorrow. Perhaps I could get a cane, a fake beard and a cardigan and go as an old man? I already hobble, so I won't be faking that...