The Principle of Ju

I need to relax more.

Seriously, not that I don't get a great workout at practice. Although I'm starting to Plateau. I have to exercise outside the dojo. Right now the randori workouts, although strenuous is quite not long, or intense enough. I still need more rounds. Tonight was a bit cramped. We had over 20 people in the dojo, and randori in that small of a space tends to get tight. You do end up being hyper aware at times, and a lot of people engage in wall judo. Using the walls to your advantage, but seriously, the dojo can really accommodate only 10 people or 5 pairs safely in standing randori. You can push it to 7 (14 people) and that's the max without bumping into each other. You do tend to develop peripheral awareness, so you don't throw or run into people during randori. It also means that I sat out 3 rounds of standing and 1 round of ground work.

Which brings us to randori. I have no idea why I go into a notch below competition mode, and so am not really learning anything. The only thing I'm really getting into is grip fighting and defensive stance, and where does that get me? I still get thrown, but it's not improving my attacks. I have to attack and counter-attack.

That brings me to the second that Phil taught me tonight. Which was move the body. You move the body to set up the throw. It's like boxing, with the footwork. It's like a light bulb going off my head. I have to really move my body to set up an attack. Judo is not a static sport, it's a dynamic one.
I also at this point really need to supplement my judo training with working out at the gym. I do have a gym membership that I hardly use. I got to use it. I probably could take some yoga classes to loosen myself up. Then go swim. And then perhaps do some interval trainings.

When I did use to do interval training, my judo improved. I stopped, figuring I was going 2-4x a week judo/jujutsu and dragon boating. Now that dragon boating is over, I figure I have to really supplement my workout. Dragon boating was a lot of fun and a great workout. It's also very intense interval-like training.

I'm reaching a plateau, and need to change my habits to break through and reach a higher level. I'm starting to slowly creep up the scale again. I'm floating around 207 lbs as opposed to 205lbs and I don't think that's muscle weight. Again my goal is to fight at 90kg, which is 198 lbs. I should go walk around at 200-202 lbs and I can drop enough to fight at 90kg.

Oh and no more late night burgers!

BAAAD.

p.s. Photos courtesy of John aka MajorConfusion from my dojo.

Seattle Dragon Boat Festival.

4th out of 21 teams. Blechh.

3rd place boat was .07 seconds faster than us. 7/100ths of a second over 500m!

Anyways, it sucks. Especially when it's so close. It feels good to win or at least medal. I know it's obvious.

Uggh. Anyways, it was a decent two days and had sort of fun, but the after-race feeling just sucks.

Into the Night - Last Practice before Seattle Dragon Boat Races.

Last Night was the last practice before this weekend's race... Literally. It was almost dark when we came into the dock. Although the sunset was just majestic giving Mount Rainier a reddish hue during twilight on Lake Washington. It was definitely a Kodak moment.

This weekend's race is here: seattledragonboat.com

So. We practiced 4 x 200m. 3 x 500m and 2 x1000m. It was all fun. I love it because it's just sprints. We'll see how it goes.

I felt great and kept up with the pace. In fact, I really did feel good on my left side. The only problems I had was when I switched to the right side, I did not paddle as well.

One thing I noticed at the faster pace is the recovery. I need to bring the paddle up higher so it does not catch the water. It happened a couple of times.

Other than that it was cool, although I could clearly see the person in front of me tiring out a bit, as she was delaying her exit and not reaching forward enough which cut into my stroke. I really feel a difference between the beginning of the season and now. I really think that weekly practice helps and my overall level of fitness is much better.

Anyways, I love sprints, as I can put it all out there. The 1x1000m is going to be rather rough, but I'd like to really think of it as a golden score overtime in judo. Either way, the races are less than 3 minutes a piece with the 1000m being 7-8 minutes.

Today I could really feel my whole upper body a bit sore. I'm going to take it easy today and paddle like crazy tomorrow.

Oh, and I did stop by the dojo after Dragon Boat practice to check out the practice. It was rather sparse. I think people are still beat up from the Fall Classic. Tracy was there and her knee is all messed up from the tournament. I assume Grant is out with the bruised rib. Kurt still has cauliflower ear and it looks like it's just been drained. He also sustained a toe injury that night. Lynn had an ankle injury. And of course, everyone has the normal bumps and bruises. I saw Jake did an awesome te guruma on Aaron. That was some awesome technique. We almost refer to it as "gorilla judo." I simply sat on the sidelines, even though my gi bag was in the truck. I wanted to practice, but I didn't want to get injured before tomorrow's 2-day race. It's going to suck being injured in a small cramped wet cold boat. So yeah, I just sat out and watched practice.

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.

Knee in the ear!

More Juji-Rolls from turtle. More practice. Rolling from the left, roll from the right, front roll, rolling backwards. Lots of fun practice. Jamming the knee to the ear, controlling the head, either by pushing it in or hooking it in.

We then practicing breaking the resistance of the armbar by pushing in the other shoulder.

Tonight's randori was a bit more aggressive than usual. It's a good thing, but you can see there's more aggression in the air. I have to move more and watch out for the uchi-mata. I did some good randori, my grips are getting better, although a lot of people are realizing my normal tactics, so I change it up a bit.

Of course, competition shiai is much more intense. Practice was over rather quickly though. I don't know the rounds do sometimes melt away. Did 4 rounds newaza and 5 rounds standing.

Overall a good night.

Fall Classic / Ladder Tournament / Junior World Team Trials

Just got back from Spokane.

I think I'm getting better at Matwaza. The science and art of moving mats. I'm fairly proficient at it, considering, I helped move 30 x 6 = 180 Swain Mats back and forth from the dojo, to the truck, from the competition, to the truck, and from the truck back to the dojo.

Being part of the technical staff, it was the first time that I truly understood the intricacies of running a high level tournament, and there was a lot of work involved, mostly from volunteers.

Let's see:

a. Technical Staff - Running tables, brackets, Texas Card Matches, Scoring, and of course moving mats.
b. Tournament big-wigs. They had to corral all these people.
c. Referees - Some of the referees came all the way from different parts of the country.

Now of course there's the whole logistic thing on the competition side, but that's another story.

I did see some great judo, especially at the Junior World Trials. It was intense, never before have I seen the real intensity of competition judo. After all second place doesn't get you a trip to Bangkok.

Some of the best judo I've seen was by Arm Lock Girl, Sarah Black. I forget where she's from, she had some awesome newaza and she armlocked 2 girls in a row. The coolest thing was she would see a newaza opportunity and take it, it was very natural, and always showed progress. There weren't that many times that she was stood up for not making progress. If she couldn't get an armlock, she'd go into an oseakomi, get an oseakomi call, go for an armlock, transitioned to an oseakomi, do a rollover, get a pin, and then go for a choke. She was very natural and fluid. I noticed a lot of judo players see a turtle and say... okay turtle stop. Nope. She'd go in for the juji roll, if not a juji, then a choke, if not a choke, then a pin. She was amazing.

One thing I learned at the Fall Classic was protect yourself at all times. A medal is not worth it. One of the fighters was caught in an omoplata with the opponents legs. He tapped, and the award was given to the person who performed the omoplata. Yeah, in theory you're only suppose to do locks on the elbow joint... but, the omoplata was fairly deliberate. I'd tap too. I've tapped before in neck cranks, but arguing about a point is useless. Just remember to protect yourself, and tap when you need to. A piece of metal that goes into a closet is not worth it, unless of course it's an Olympic piece of metal. But let's be serious about it, there's only a dozen people in the country that are true contenders for it. Myself, not being one of them. Yeah, it's okay... Telling me I'm not Olympic material is not going to break my heart.

Anyways, gotta get ready for practice.

16 Hot Wings for the Price of 8!

Well that's what I pretty much ate all day. Our judo club went to the Wingers restaurant. The volunteers were gorging as we were taunting our only competitor at the Wingers restaurant who was trying to make weight. The other competitors weren't with us and were probably taking it easy just getting ready for this morning's fight. It's 5 in the morning and I can't sleep. So that's why I'm typing. Which reminds me, I hate cutting weight. So my fatty self should really get going into losing that final 7 lbs. to get under 198lbs. I'm floating at 205. I can lose 5lbs. water weight, but I'd hate to cut it that close, and running in sweats and sauna time is really not that fun.

I haven't done squat working out yesterday. Today, I'll be helping with the Fall Classic Tournament. After going to the Neil Adams Camp, I see quite a few familiar faces running around the tournament site.

Perhaps after the tournament today, probably go for a run or something. I did bring my sneakers for that occassion.