yuuago | Judo adventures 3.34 - Green belt upgrade!

I was upgraded to green belt tonight. It felt really good to ditch the split orange/green and move up to full green. I worked really hard on this, so I'm very happy about it.

Attending: Me, C, E, G, and Ry-sensei's son, Ro. T-sensei and Ry-sensei instructing.

We started out with morote-seoinage. I partnered with G. She still seems pretty shy and nervous, but hopefully she'll relax a little once she gets used to being in the adult class. She seemed to pick up the throw pretty well once we started working on it, though.

Also worked on ouchi-gari. We don't work on this one often, so I found it tricky - like, I kept instinctively going for other throws rather than the correct one. We worked on a technique where you step to the side and pull your partner around as part of the setup for the throw, and that does help a bit. I think I might have an easier time doing this one on a different uke - G is just a bit too small.

We also worked on left-handed ogoshi as a counter for a high grip. So like, if somebody has their grip super high, kind of at the back of your neck - T-sensei suggested we use that as an opportunity to turn in for the left ogoshi. It worked out pretty well when I tried it, though this will require more investigation.

T-sensei really does like the alternate techniques; I guess it's because being competent at doing things on both sides basically doubles your options and gives the element of surprise.

Anyway, on the subject of grading, T-sensei mentioned that the club is going to be moving toward a policy of no more split belts for adults. Works for me, honestly. It was kind of weird that our previous instructor did it that way, anyhow.

No more classes for the rest of the week! I'm glad for a bit of rest, if I'll be honest; I'm beat.