Judo adventures 3.22

[yuuago]

Attending: Me, R-sensei, and his two kids. T-sensei instructing.

At first it seemed like it would be just me and T-sensei, because C and SJ were at tournament. And that was fine, because I mainly wanted to work on form anyway, so that mostly just involves a whole lot of uchikomi. But then R-sensei showed up late, so I had a partner. Which is good because like... I don't like hauling T-sensei around too much, because he has problems with his knees and back and such. Plus it's easier for him to troubleshoot my throws if he's watching rather than being uke.

We worked on movement, sweeps, kuzushi, etc. Throw form was ippon-seoinage. I kept running into issues where I'm being told that I'm not pulling enough, but from my perspective I'm pulling as much as I can. So I'm not sure how to change that. Might need to adjust my grip in certain situations.

T-sensei and R-sensei observed that I do ippon-seoinage better when I am turning the opposite from usual - that is, rather than turning to my left for the standard method, I keep hold of the lapel with my right hand and turn toward my right for the left-handed throw with right-handed grip. I think it might be easier for me to grip with the right hand at the lapel than with left hand at the sleeve like you do for the standard.

Did some morote-seoinage as well. I have a tendency to grip too high, which makes that one not ideal. Will need to work on adjusting.

Also worked on uchi-makakomi as well. Apparently I have been under-rotating. I wonder if it's because I keep worrying about tripping over the crash mat. At some point I'd like to do some systematic testing of that - do it with the crash mat, and then without, and see if it's any easier. Will need a suitable partner, because this is not a throw that I necessarily want to do on every partner, since it involves falling on someone and I don't want to squish people.

Worked on uchimata a little. The kids don't know that one, so T-sensei gave them the instructions and I partnered with one of them and we worked on it for a bit. Kid seems to have the gist. T-sensei was happy with my form for that one.

Next weekend class, we'll have a special guest! When T-sensei was teaching judo in the NWT, there was another instructor working with him. This guy is from Japan; he'll be visiting for a little bit next week before he goes back to Japan, and has agreed to help out with next Saturday's class. So, I'm really excited about this, and looking forward to it.