Judo adventures - Class 27

[yuuago]

It was bitterly cold again, so once again we had a small class. Me, J, Se, and R-kun. Sensei was there briefly; said he thinks there'll be someone new next class, another one of the parents who wants to try. But if the weather's like this, I doubt it. Anyway, for the actual instruction, it was T-sensei again today.

Started out with groundwork. We did some variations on flipping someone over to get them into a position for pinning/compression/strangling. Unfortunately the names for the specific techniques escape me. Basically they involved threading under to get a hold, grasping the gi, then drawing them up and over - and by then you don't need to adjust much in order to compress + strangle, because for the most part you're already in the right position. I was working with J for this, and we found that even if your technique is sloppy, it's generally possible to get to a point where you can compress your opponent in some way, even if it isn't the specific way we were meant to do it.

Throw practice after that. T-sensei basically told us to practice whichever ones we wanted; try at least three. So, I worked on the ippon-seoinage and ogoshi - he says I need to focus on going lower when I execute the throw, especially when I'm with J. After trying that for a while, I get what he's getting at.

And then he taught me a new one - which wasn't the plan, but anyway - he got me to try morote-seoinage. Process is: grasp the lapel (my right/opponent's left) + opponent's sleeve (my left/opponent's right), then pull forward and up while turning in low (as you would with the ippon-seoinage). I rather like this one; and also, T-sensei seemed really happy with how I managed it. Said I had the gist of it after only two tries. There are some tricky parts to it, need to mind the wrist movement and so on, but... yeah, I like that one.

J was trying a throw we hadn't covered before; he said it was one Se taught him. He mentioned the name, but I didn't catch it, nor the technique - but it seemed to involve grasping the sleeves in an atypical way and using that to execute the throw. Whatever he was doing, it seemed tricky to do, especially when we were throwing from stationary position rather than in motion, aaaand because of this he kept accidentally throwing me on the base mat instead of the crash mat. Ow. (I'll be fine, through.)

Now that I give it some thought, I wish I'd offered to change up partners after a bit; he should have gone with Se for part of the throwing, since it'd be easier for him to practice certain techniques on someone who knows what they're doing. It's harder for me to work with the guys who're much bigger than me (which is all of them except J), but it's not a big deal, especially if it's just for a section of the time. Maybe if this situation comes up again, I'll suggest it.