Judo adventures - Class 62

[yuuago]

Attending: Me, J, M, M2. V instructing.

Very small class today, but y'know, sometimes I prefer that. Means there's a larger amount of one-on-one instruction.

I can't remember if we've had V as an instructor before, rather than assistant. Anyway, since every instructor approaches things differently, it's neat to work with someone different for a while.

Started out with setups for osoto-gari. Focus on correct form and control. After that, we did a slight variation of koshi-guruma - different foot placement, stepping further so your right foot is on the far side of your partner's; I typically don't favour this kind of variation, often end up tripping over my own feet, but this one wasn't too bad.

Next, he got us to do the osoto-gari setup, but reaching around to grab the belt rather than gripping the lapel. V likes this variation because it gives a lot of control.

After that - a few variations on grip breaking + using the momentum from that to grab the belt and go in for a throw. There were a few different ones, but the one most successful for me was breaking my opponent's lapel grip. Grab their sleeve (my left side/his right), grab my lapel beneath, pull sleeve toward left and lapel toward right; this gives an opportunity to draw your opponent to your left, get your right arm under/behind, and go for the throw. I'm probably describing this poorly, but anyway, it worked great on J, so. :V

It did make it clear once again, though, that my upper body strength sucks, and my grip strength sucks. So that's something I need to... work on... I guess. Will have to poke around for some ideas.

Also: V was showing us some videos from a competition he was in; a few where he won the round, but then one where he lost. According to him, "Ah, here you see, this is where I started to believe in myself." And then ten seconds later, he was down. ;p "So, don't believe in yourself!" - Don't get overconfident. But I was quite amused by how he put it.