yuuago | Judo adventures 2.14

The judo club has new mats! They're firm but comfortable, very stylish-looking in black and red, and fit into our raised floorspace perfectly. The ones we had before - vintage ones from the club's early days - functioned all right, but they were kind of tired-looking and didn't quiiiite fit the dimensions of the flooring 100%, so the ones toward the edge were shifting and creating a trip hazard. Now that problem is solved.

I was quite surprised to see those when I came in to class today; IIRC ordering new mats was mentioned when I went to that board meeting a few months ago, but I didn't know they'd actually gone and ordered them. Anyway -

Attending: Me, L, M, M2, A, + teenagers Kz, SJ, H, V-chan. V-sensei instructing.

V-sensei had us do 100 uchikomi to start. Partnered with V-chan for a bit, then switched out with A. Tried a variety of setups, since he didn't specify.

After that, we practiced two-handed gripbreaking combined with setup for throw. So: opponent has your lapel. You use two-handed method to break their grip; bring their hand down. Immediately after (or simultaneously if possible) go in to do the movement for a throw. I found that koshi-guruma worked well for this, ditto osoto-gari. IDK, we played around with it a bit.

Next, setups down the mat and then full throw on crashmats. A wasn't feeling up to doing any actual throws today, so I did alternating with SJ and V-chan. There was no specific on which throw we should do, so we tried a variety - the typical ones, but also some uchimata as well. V-chan continues to impress me a lot with how strong and fast and efficient she is... I'm really glad to have her in class again. :V

Ended with a few rounds of randori. We did it with two pairs on mat, and everyone else sitting out for that time. I did a round with Kz, and went splat a lot. Though there was one occasion where I managed to manhandle her into an ogoshi. After that, did a round with SJ. That kid is really strong and really intense and tbh I'm just glad that he didn't throw me around too much; he doesn't know how to dial it back. Finally, a round with M2. I almost managed to do some kind of sacrifice throw (not sure which one) but didn't quite pull it off. Went splat a lot. I was pretty tired by that point.

I'm really glad that I went to class today. My morale has been kind of low for non-judo reasons, so it was nice to have a distraction and throw some people around.