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.

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.

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...

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.

Secret martial arts techniques passed along in a Turkish Bath House

Okay, not exactly. It was around 97 degrees on Monday. It's getting hotter. I think this week, Seattle is just getting closer and closer to the sun. Or so it seems.

So, of all things, what do I decide to do? Go into a sub-basement gym, with limited airflow, put on luxurious bathrobes and roll around with a dozen random sweaty guys. At the start of practice the temperature was already 105 inside the dojo. In the end, we pushed up the temperature to about 115 degrees with oh, 100 percent humidity. Needless to say, afterwards we mopped up all the sweat and gave the mats a good dosage of bleach.

So what secret martial arts technique did I learn in an environment akin to a Turkish bath house? Actually there isn't really, after all, with the myriad instructors that I've had, it always boiled down to this. Come to practice and work out.

I keep on reading books, watching videos, looking at forums, and swapping stories. In the end, all that is only complimentary, the biggest thing about learning is one thing: Mat time.

And so, on a day like yesterday, I could've been inside an air-conditioned mall wandering aimlessly ogling at the consumer psyche that built our resource hungry consumption society. Instead, I decided to work out, with good friends and good people.

So practice started with warm ups. Then we moved onto uchikomis. Then practiced throws. After throws, we went to the technique of the night. The technique of the night was a single wing choke or okuri-ire-jime.

Aaron then went to teaching different variations when in position, and how body mechanically one can tranisition to different moves such as a juji, ude garami, knee bar and heel hook.

I like how he teaches, because he focuses on the body mechanics and principles of leverage/isolation/anatomy that makes a technique work rather than just showing the technique.

After the technique of the night, we went to light newaza. Newaza was a killer, and it was during this time, I'm learning more about conservation of energy and the judicious use of burst energy. Essentially, Maximum Efficiency with Minimum effort. It allowed me to grapple longer and look for gaps in my opponents defense and then exploit it.

I'm currently working on the different variations of guard passes. However my personal guard position is not that strong, with my strong position being on the offense, passing the guard, or defensiviely in a turtle. I need to work more on my transitions, and not be just static but dynamic in my thinking, and looking for openings.

Consequently what I need to do is really strenghten my core, improve my endurance, and refine/hone my techniques. This will allow me a ready access to techniques should the opportunity presents themselves. Basically, be prepared.

And so like anything in life, you have to work for it and earn it.

Monday Night Practice... another nice sunny, hot day....

It was another amazingly gorgeous day in Seattle. Sunny skies, nice 75 degree weather, no humidity. You can't beat Seattle in the summer. So headed to practice at Seattle Jujutsu.

Just normal practice, with the expanded mats, did the normal warmup routine, then uchikomi, some light randori, and then worked on two techniques.

First technique was juji-gatame, or the armlock, with this variation making it much tighter, with the arm at 45 degrees, and the knees immobilizing the shoulder joint and elbow. Here's a clip from Human Weapon on a normal juji-gatame.

Sometimes, I really feel like Bill Duff, when practicing a lot of these moves. Can't wait till next season starts. It's one of the best shows, but I digress.

So, yeah this variation of the juji you step over, across, and control the arm at a 45 degree, making it super tight. Aaron also demonstrated that if you lift the person on his side, that he has less power than if he is on his back. So, lift, hold, step over and then lock. It was good practicing the technical aspects of it all.

We then transitioned to light newaza with one person standing, and the other in a turtle, a very common position. One of the things that my training partner, Brad, showed me is how to get an omoeplata from a turtle. I've seen it before, but not necessarily popular in judo competitions. I did see it at the Junior World Team Trials in Spokane, where one of the competitors tapped out to an omoeplata. I hardly practice it, because technically, it's an immobilization of both the elbow and shoulder joint. And in theory, you're only allowed to lock the elbow joint. That, again is in theory, but I saw it in the Judo Junior World Team Trials....

Anyways, I digress, I still need to work on my turning the person over in a turtle techniques, mainly getting my hooks in, doing the roll into the different variations of the rollovers. I have to control the head, and I have to gain more flexibility, and well lose a little more padding in the middle and be more limber. A lot of newaza needs core strength, and I have to work on that. As it's mini-crunches, tucking of the legs, rolls, etc... I think having a better base, will help me in these things. I used to be much better in shape, but that's another story for another time. You can only look forward...I did have some good bridging and shrimping techniques, and that was good.

We then moved onto the leg lock techniques of the night, and we worked on the knee bar. We practiced the knee bar however from the cross body hold also known as yoko-shiho gatame. From yoko-shiho gatame, move your inner leg so that your foot is underneath your opponents hip, then lock the leg between your legs and pull back. The key being that you have to be close to your opponent and that your control his hip. Anyways, it's been awhile since I did leglocks, so take this with a grain of salt, and I'll need to practice this a couple more hundred times to get it right.

So there's a dozen of us, all drenched in sweat, the musty odor of sweat, and the heat, well, after awhile you just don't smell or feel it. I ended up drinking 2 liters of gatorade and needed more.
It was a good workout.

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!

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 .

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...

Witnessing a Shodan Grading at Seattle Jujutsu

I was fortunate enough to get to watch a Shodan Grading at Seattle Jujutsu. For those of you not familiar, Shodan is the first black belt rank, or rather the first step into becoming a serious martial arts practitioner.

Black belts in the grappling arts usually take a lot of years, usually 8-10 years to qualify for grading. I'm sure there's faster and longer, but the typical grappler, usually puts in a good 8-10 years of constant practice before being considered.

Seattle Jujutsu is run by Aaron and he runs a really good club. Andre, who has been a student of Aaron for over 8 years tested for his black belt. From what I understand, Andre, is his second black belt to be personally trained by him. Vince, Andre, and Yoshi all started at the very beginning 8 years ago.

The test had a lot of meaning in the journey, and it was great to see the whole club there. All the black belts were there: Aaron, Vince, Lana, and Elena. The test consisted of the curriculum demonstration (representative, but by no means all inclusive), a question and answer section discussing philosophy, a teaching demonstration, randori, and finally shiai. The test lasted close to 3 hours. It was a combination of both mental, physical, and internal toughness.

One thing that Aaron did was to make sure it was all inclusive and solicited input from all the members of the club. And that he treated everyone from the oldest to the newest member with the same respectful equal manner.

It was quite an experience to watch, and a rare one at that. At the end, there was the symbolic passing of the only brown belt in the club to the next senior student. The club is very traditional that only the sempai, should he choose to, wear the brown belt. Almost always, the brown belts in the club still wear their white belt. As the years go on the white belt gets to a darker and darker shade. Eventually the student earns a black belt, and wears the black belt. Over time the black belt loses it's dark luster, gets lighter and lighter over time, eventually almost looking like a white belt. It's the circle of all things.

The new black belt join the dan ranks, and the journey continues. That's what I love about this sport, it's a journey, there's no destination, and that getting belts are momentos in a journey and not the purpose. The journey goes on...

Sunday Open Mat

Sunday night was Open Mat.

It was cool as it was rather unstructured. I ended up doing 30 minutes warm up. 30 minutes uchikomi.

And then an 1 hour of newaza randori. There was no clock, so kinda moved and rotated around. I worked on guard passes and reversals. We did a lot from the knees, and consequently my knees are sore.

I still need to work on my guard. I'd rather not be in guard as of now, but I need to work on the guard more. I'm decent at passing the guard and executed some good guard passes. My posture is pretty good.

It was a rather fun night. And 1 hour of mat work is a great workout.

It was fun as there were some bigger heavier guys out there and its a lot of fun to roll around.

One thing, either I wasn't trying hard enough, or my cardio is improving, or I'm just relaxed. I didn't gas out. There was still plenty of gas in the tank or am I learning efficiency? I have no idea. It seems I'm rather relaxed now and when someone gets me into a position, I try to think tactically and change up or do something. It's weird, it's starting to become more of a cerebral exercise for me as well as a physical one. Sure it's demanding on the body, but I tend to think more.

I no longer keep score in randori as you should but thinking more and getting movements done. I could stall out, but anyone can stall out, you know? Might as well work on your technique. Be that getting into a turtle and escaping, reversing a turtle, guard passes, switching newaza positions, positional control, trying armbar to oseakomi, to arm bar. I think I get more enjoyment out of trying to squeeze out as many different techniques (executed properly of course) in randori.

It was fun and I'm craving more. Hopefully Amy can get some time so I can practice with her grappling group. I finally got a set of wrestling shoes so that I can practice grappling with different people and different areas. Wrestling mats are very common and many places require wrestling shoes, so getting a pair of wrestling shoes just expands training opportunities.

I have some racquetball scheduled today at 11 AM and am planning to get some laundry and stuff done. Didn't launder last night's gi and need to do so.

I have to watch what I eat. I ate some greasy Chinese food and pot stickers yesterday. I gained like 5 lbs. from coming home and only working out 2x in 2 weeks. Anyways, the Rainier Cup is on Saturday and I really feel I haven't trained much in the last 2 weeks. I need to work on my judo game with judo rules, as I've been training lately in jujutsu and sambo rules. So my gripping needs work, throws, fits, etc...

I'll still throw myself into the Rainier Cup and just have fun. Oh and my fatty ass has to fight at -100kg, not enough time to get under -90kg without killing myself in that short amount of time.

Anyways, the dojo I worked out in last night was featured in this video:

Back home in Jersey, the Scarlet Knights & Rutgers Kodenkan

http://www.geocities.com/rutgerskodenkan/index.html

I traveled back to the Shore Area and got in touch with my roots. Ah the smell of Bagels, Pizza, and my all-time favorite snack. Mallomars. If you haven't had a Mallomar it's made by Nabisco and it's basically a reverse S'more in a box. It's made in Hoboken, and I haven't seen it out on the West Coast. Thank Goodness, because my fat chubby butt is inhaling a box of Mallomars in between typing.

So, now that we got the foodie goodies out of the way.

I was fortunate enough to get in touch with Sensei Barb Gessner, who teaches at the Rutgers Kodenkan. She's a 6th Dan Jujutsu and 5th Dan Judo and she graciously allowed me to practice with her club at Rutgers. We met at the Upper Gym at the Rutgers' "Barn" and at the Wrestling room for the advanced class.

Rutgers Kodenkan teaches Danzan Ryu Jujutsu which to the layman (that's me) looks like judo with some harder aikido-esque moves. There's also more emphasis on self-defense techniques. The goshin-jutsu part of their curriculum looks similar to the goshin-jutsu kata of judo and tomiki-aikido.

The falls are quite different, and as an art, they emphasize practice falls a lot. Sure my ukemi could use some work, and I haven't got my gymnastics/acrobatics part of my judo to a high enough level. One thing that they did work on the forward fall, which I hardly practice in judo. We did it once or twice this year. And although theoretically, you should "fish" out of a throw in competition judo, I'd rather get thrown properly and give my opponent an ippon rather than do a "Matrix-esque" move to land forward. Since I don't do it often enough, I need to practice it more to do it under live conditions, rather than pull one out of my butt during competition and hurt myself. It was really good to learn the forward fall with Rutgers Kodenkan, as I surely don't practice it enough. And if I do fall forward, I tend to go towards a forward roll anyways.

It was great to learn some Danzan Ryu Jujutsu. The jujutsu I'm studying now at Seattle Jujutsu is Yabe Ryu Jujutsu, which is pretty much judo.

The Danzan Ryu Jujutsu throws were the same exact Judo throws with the same names. There were some names a bit different, like they called Morote Seio Nage a bit differently. Then they had self defense combinations which used a counter followed by a judo or aikido technique.

One thing was that the class was more instructional, which is really cool, as some moves are quite nasty when applied in a live situation. A lot of the moves that I was learning last night is specifically banned in judo/bjj/sambo competiton. Mainly small joint manipulation, i.e. finger and wristlocks. Since I mostly study Kodokan Judo, with an emphasis on competition, I mostly do randori and haven't had the full breadth of the Judo curriculum which does include atemi-waza and self-defense techniques (goshin-jutsu kata). Besides, the Judo Curriculum emphasizes randori techniques at the kyu levels. Nage-no Kata and Katame-no Kata, which you need for 1st and 2nd dan respectively. The other historical katas are required for the higher dans, and so hardly really get taught.

I helped teach the kid's class with Steve (a black belt in jujutsu). I was asked to help teach the techniques that I do know. Mainly parts of the gokyu. I helped teach seio-nage, o-goshi, kesa-gatame and yoko-shiho gatame.

The senior class, I got to witness a promotion test, which was really cool.

I was then taught how to fall. Mainly to refine my ukemi, which does need work. I was grateful to be shown some more ukemi, which you more or less learn by getting thrown around. My ukemi is actually rather decent when I do get thrown with force speed and control. However my static ukemi/acrobatics is not that good. And I can't roll on my right as well or do cartwheels on my right.

It was different being a brown belt in class where there's only two black belts. I'm not used to that. At Budokan Dojo, I'm one of two or three brown belts amongst a dozen or more black belts.

It was also my very FIRST time as a bona fide Assistant Instructor. For that I'm very grateful for the opportunity. Sensei Barb let me teach a few things. Oh and we played a game at the end of class, which I learned from Neil Adams at the Neil Adams camp. It was tag, with the "caller" calling out different body parts to tag. It was a lot of fun! and perfect for kids. So I would call out "left shoulder" and you'd try to tag the left shoulder. I'd call out "right shoulder" and we'd try to tag the left.

At the end of the evening we practiced some randori. I randori with Steve and Cahill, the newly promoted guy. It was fun. We did some standing randori and then some newaza. It was fun doing some randori, and it was great to get the blood flowing! I haven't randori since Monday, and so was itching to get some good mat time.

I focused on techniques in Randori, which was cool. Randori was a great back and forth of throws/counterthrows and good to work on their techniques and mine as well. There were a few leg sweeps/grabs that was new to me, which was neat to work on. I also tried a few takedowns that I hardly get to practice like te-guruma and some leg/ankle picks. They haven't seen drop seio and drop kata-guruma, which they picked up rather fast.

A lot of the stuff they were doing were classical kata judo, which is cool, and I was amazed that there wasn't much time spent on grip fighting, and they focused more on the classic sleeve lapel grip. I tend to also do a sleeve lapel grip, although I tend to just maintain contact with my left on the lapel and have my right hand free to grip/throw. I like this more because:

a. It frees you to attack from different angles. With a left hand lapel grip, you can do:
1. Same side attack (i.e. ippon seio, kata-guruma, kouchi/ouchi, o-soto, etc...
2. Opposite side attack (i.e. morote seio, o-soto, uchi-mata, tai-otoshi, etc...)

b. Once I have two hand contact, I throw, as a general rule. In most competitions, it's hard to get two hand contact, so once you do get it, throw!

Grip fighting aside, it was cool not to spend oodles of time on grip fighting, as it is generally considered "negative judo" and grip fighting should be coupled with an attack, attack, attack...

That's the thing, even though the most awarded wins awarded in Olympic Judo is shido, it's more aesthetically pleasing to win by an ippon or submission.

Overall a great time at the Rutgers Kodenkan!

Monday Night Workout

It was Monday Night and went to Seattle Jujutsu Club. It was a lot of fun, we started out goofing off and dong a series of parody tapes. So class started about 15 minutes late.

After warmups, we did uchikomis.

It was pretty much open practice.

We did grappling with Mongolian style folk wrestling rules, which means basically only your hands or feet can touch the mat, any other part of the body means that you are down. Emphasis was on body grips, as the Mongolian folk wrestlers wore skimpy outfits. It was a lot of fun. Sometimes bullrushing works. And I did a fairly sweet ogoshi that was really cool.

Then we worked on positional newaza, I was working on body position, guard passes and reversals. I executed some sweet reversals when the pin wasn't that good.

We then did 10 rounds of 2 minute newaza. 2 minutes is fairly short, and the time went by rather quickly.

Overall it was a decent night. I'm learning to post more and watch my body position. I execute my guard passes with due diligince, taking great care that I don't get into a position to get arm-locked. My moves are more deliberate. I also think my conditioning is fairly decent as I wasn't gassed out, mind you I may have just been taking it easy. I don't know. I feel that I wasn't gassed while others were.

Kettlebell!

This afternoon I worked out with Vince and Brad at Seattle Jujutsu. We mainly did uchikomis which was just great. Sometimes, I just really need to work on entrances and exits. My body is still beat up from much of the week as I haven't really taken a rest at all. I was thinking of going to Wednesday night practice, but I thought better of it, as I was a running a bit ragged so I bagged it. Quite Ragged in fact.

Tomorrow, I've got Dragon Boating and Judo scheduled, so it's going to be rather rough.

After class we did a kettlebell workout. WOW! Kettlebells are awesome. Did some movement and they were very natural. I was beat tired afterwards.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2002/0929/fitness.html

Above is a link from a Seattle Times Article about Kettlebells.

Bamboo Bar & Grill Happy Hour - $5 Macho Nachos

Well, Wednesday Night, what could I say. I had a late dinner with Pedro a friend of mine from high school. We had some Macho Nachos at the Bamboo Bar & Grill. It was some good times.

Anyways, tonight's training was simply oseakomi techniques. It was good as it refreshed some of the basic holds. I was partnered up with a new guy who it was his 6th practice, so I showed him some of the basic holds. We went from Kesa, Kata, Yoko-Shiho, Kami-Shiho.

We then went into newaza randori for maybe 4 rounds. It was a rather short practice, mainly because I was late. Other than that it cool. I was working on defending the turtle, sweeps, and passing the guard. I need to lock down my pins much more as I had a pin and had it let go because he shrimped out of it.

Racqueteball!

I haven't played racquetball in about a year. Booked a reservation at Bally's in Renton. Played with Katherine who is a 3.5 in tennis. She hasn't really played racquetball all that much.

We had some awesome rallies. Final Score was 2 games to 1. She picked up the pace rather quickly. We played for about an hour and a half and it was great! I just started remembering my different serves. The Z-Shots. The kill shots. The Corner Shots. The Lobs. And the dreaded left back corner serve. She had some cool ace serves to the left back corner. And her forte' was the drop shot to the front wall. She has a lot of finesse.

My right knee was still bothering me, but it was fine. I wasn't running as much and it really forced me to think tactically, my court position, and pure efficiency. I'd just hate to run for the sake of running you know?

Overall it was a lot of fun.

Then my friend Amy invited me to come to her boxing class at the SPD Training Facility. It was a super nice facility with a nice rubber surface for the striking portion. Not too grippy, but has enough give for different striking techniques. Various training bags. Heavy Bags and Muay Thai Bags. They have a few training dummies and a Wing Chung wooden trainer. They have a cool competition mat area for grappling with brand new zebra mats.

The class was rather informal and it was very chill. We did some basic warm-ups. And then we started with footwork drills. We moved onto basic jabs and crosses. Then added a few more strikes/blocks/fades and step asides. We then did a muay thai clinch with knee strikes and a push with a punch/side kick combo. It was a lot of fun. It was pads, and we did about a total of 12 3-minute rounds with each round alternating pads/gloves. I really think my judo/jujutsu randori has helped me in my stamina as I wasn't really gassed during the punching part of the drill, or perhaps Amy was taking it easy on me. I did end up pushing Amy just a bit as a stream of expletives came out of her mouth as I kept on flashing a jab, then a jab/cross combo over and over again. It was an overall fun workout, that was a lot of fun. At the end of class we did some conditioning, mainly sit-ups. 50 crunches, and 25 left/right elbow knee crunches. My left ribcage still hurt from Monday, so I couldn't really get my left elbow to my right knee. We then did hold your partner's ankles and lift you legs up to touch the hands drill. And the hands were positioned that not only you lifted your legs, but you had to lift your hips off the deck. We did 20 of these.

It was a lot of fun. I had a great time, and I do miss my boxing/muay thai workouts. I'd have to get back into it. It's just that I don't have a lot of time, and hopefully this Wednesday workout with Amy becomes a regular thing.

So then my right knee was starting to really bother me, after I removed the tape after class. Taped up it was fine. Without it, it just didn't have the support. I just have to lay low on it. And going to the doctor will just mean, getting it looked at and then recommending ice and motrin. If it bothers me next week, then that's another story.

So, with that. I stopped by a store to pick up some water and head over to Seattle Jujutsu to watch the class. My knee was still bothering me. I went over there to watch. There were 2 new faces in class. And the familiar ones. Ah the technique of the night was working on hizagatame. Some more technical pointers, such as the feet on the scapula works better than knee on hip. One of the things I noticed was the rolling of the hips to apply pressure, rather than just closing your knees. Also cupping the elbow with your hand helps to locate the elbow and apply pressure on it.

The rest of the night was spent in randori. I just watched some sweeps, reversals, shrimps, and the normal randori stuff. It was good to watch a bit as I noticed how people moved to try to keep a steady base. A common theme seems to be control of the hips. If you control the hips either from the guard or in the guard, you can either pass the guard or have control the person in your guard. Hmmn, just an observation.

Anyways, it was an overall fun day. Although I do need to take some more motrin for my knee. My knee is just throbbing. Cool thing is that I no longer feel pain in my left ribs, either that or my knee pain eclipses my rib pain. I do sometimes feel some pain in my right shoulder due to the upper bicep tendon tenderness. I think I just need to soak in a hot tub for awhile.

Sunday Okuriere

Traffic. Seattle. Sunday afternoon. Who knew? Seriously, I listened to KOMO 1000 news traffic update 4 times before I got to practice. Now it's only physically 15 miles from the dojo to my house. It took me 40+ minutes to get there! I was going to be a bit late, but I was seriously late. Still had an hour and a quarter of workout done at Seattle Jujutsu, but late nevertheless.

I do need to take it easy, but for some odd reason I'm compelled to take more and more martial arts. If I'm not practicing (such as last Monday/Tues/Wednesday) I'm actually checking out dojos. And I have seen quite a few dojos in Seattle. I've seen the West Seattle Martial Arts School on Wednesday and the Seattle Kung Fu Club on Friday afternoon.

Actually to make a list, here are the Seattle Dojos I have visited:

Budokan Seattle - Judo
Seattle Dojo - Judo
Seattle Jujutsu - Judo/Sambo/Jujutsu/Grappling
Zenyu Dojo - Judo/Defensive Tactics
West Seattle Martial Arts - Okinawan Karate/Basic Self Defense Judo Techniques
Evergreen Tang Soo Do - Tang Soo Do
Lee's Martial Arts - Tae Kwon Do
Aikido of West Seattle - Aikido
Seattle Kung Fu Club - Kung Fu (Don't know which lineage)
Tenzan Aikido - Aikido/BJJ
Marcelo Alonso BJJ - BJJ/Boxing/Kickboxing
Rodrigo Lopez BJJ - BJJ
Ring Sports United - BJJ/Muay Thai/Boxing
Guru Johnson's Gym (Don't know the exact name) - FMA (Now defunct, Johnson went to Hollywood to become a stuntwoman)
Shaolin Kung Fu Group (Practices at Hiawatha) - Kung Fu

I digress. Tonight's technique of the night was oku-ire-jime. I'm not that good with this choke, as it's hard to apply. I'd rather apply hadaka-jime or the rear naked choke. Perhaps, because you don't have to search for the gi. Oku-ire-jime (sliding sleeve choke) is still a hard choke to apply.

Photo Credit: http://www.judoinfo.com/images/okurieri.jpg

Did this from the standard position with person behind you. Then from the hi4/turtle.
Then we did newaza randori with 2 minute rounds. I think I sat in for 8 rounds or so with various people. Then practiced some newaza randori with BJJ guy after class.

One guy that I did roll around with a couple of times was a bit new. He's also a lot smaller, so he's a bit feisty. I think he needs to relax more. I could see it, that he's just not comfortable yet, and hangs on for dear life. There are some techniques in randori that just get to a stalemate, and either attack or open up, so that techniques can be practiced and learned. We just got into a stalemate, which is fine; however it doesn't improve on our technique. I just need to work on my guard passes. When he gets me into the half guard he just clamps down on my half guard leg so hard. I'm just careful that I don't fuck up my knee, which can be easily done if he clamps on hard and twists. I'm very cognizant of that. Then for the choke, he does a good thing and controls my hips with his feet. However he squeezed hard with those legs on my hips. OW! It's all good. I just think that with him weighing about 130 lbs (soaking wet) more like 120 lbs, and myself weighing 205 lbs. that he gets a bit antsy. I just don't really like fighting tiny guys. Usually I'm the smaller and more compact guy in fights. Granted I'm not svelte at 5'7" and 205 lbs. but I'm usually one of the smaller guys in a dojo. I'm also used to fighting the 100Kg+ guys. They're more predictable. He's the smallest guy that I randori with. He just needs to calm down more. He's a good guy and means very well. I'm just not used to fighting with him, and I'm EXTRA careful with him so I don't injure myself. I think he'll do well, once he gets more techniques down so he can do a finishing move in randori rather than fighting to a stalemate. Sometimes, I let him have something after the halfguard. He doesn't try to get back to a full guard. He just stays there in the halfguard and clamps down. Do a sweep? An armlock? Transition to a full guard? But please don't clamp down on my knee and stay there.

I've talked to him a bit and he listens, which is cool. We'll see what happens. As always. Protect yourself at all times. And of course the major tenet of judo: Mutual Benefit and Welfare. Protect you and your partner. I just want to make sure that I can walk the next day and not have major knee injuries.

Anyways, it was an interesting practice today. Oh and I talked to Adalia today, which was so cool. We talked about how gi's get so stinky so quickly. I wash mine every day, if you must know. I have two double-weave gis, and they're starting to show their wear. I have two old gi's that need pant bottoms, which I need to order from hatashita sports. The cool thing is that I'll get two more pant bottoms, and one more blue gi. That should bring my total gis to 2 competition gis (blue and white). 2 Dojo gis (with the new pants that need to be ordered) and 1 new blue gi! So that will be a total of 5. And I can rotate through my two old gi's for training. One is a doubleweave and the other a singleweave. The singlweave is nice for training in the summer. Right now I'm using my competition gis, and they're starting to get ripped. They're perfectly sized and fits me very well and are within regulation. Once I get the new pants and blue gi I can use those for training.

I'm excited for the upcoming Neil Adams Clinic. Hopefully Hatashita Sports can fly over my new gis before then, as I don't want to have stinky gis for the 4 day clinic. I think I can map out laundromats in Whidbey so I can wash my gis everyday. Washing the gi is a MUST.

Anyways, I'm off to bed. I still need to really plan out my training schedule other than judo, so I can seriously lose some poundage. I'm floating at 205 lbs. and I think I'm at a plateau .

Hizagatame

So the technique of the day at Seattle Jujutsu was hizagatame. Worked on the finer details on this armbar. Armbars is all about techniques and finesse, well since injury can or may occur. We're very gentle and always have good control. It is after all, the "Gentle Art."

We also worked on transitions. This was great, as we hardly do training in transitions. We usually do tachi-waza or newaza, but hardly ever work on transitions from standing to the ground with control. I worked on morote seio to kamishiho. And Osoto to kesa.

It was an overall good day at the dojo. Although I was feeling it. I taped my left toe (hangnail). I taped my right ankle (general soreness). At the end of the night I was icing my right shoulder. Don't know how I tweaked it, but it sucked.

Spent the rest of the day watching the olympics at NBCOlympics.com. It's so awesome to have streaming video of judo.