Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Throwdown and Competition Judo

I rented a movie last night called "Throwdown" the tag line was in the world of Judo, failure is not an option . It looked cheesy, but the fact that it was about Judo and not Jujitsu caught my eye. First off, it's a TERRIBLE movie, don't rent it. There's no plot and lines don't make sense dubbed or with subtitles. It's like they took 600 lines for a movie, put them in a hat and had actors just recite whatever they picked out of the hat. The Judo wasn't bad however. Lots of shoulder and arm throws, 1 hip throw, good groundwork, but not one single foot sweep. It reminded me of a time when Vincent (a competition Judo guy who used to come train and play at Pat's) and Pat did some randori. Vince is very competition, hard style oriented....and Pat's the exact opposite. Me and Bryce were working out and we both stopped and watched as Pat and Vince whirled around the mats. In fact, it was the only time I ever remember seeing people walk by and stop to look in the window for a second or two to watch. It was kind of surreal to see a 5'7-ish muscular rigid guy trying to throw a 5'10ish(?) heavier set (or full of Ki if you will) guy who's dancing around trying to do foot sweeps. The contrast was very dynamic. After watching the movie it made me curious...I've never seen any competition guys go for foot sweeps. I know they aren't worth as many points, so are they not taught as much either? Hopefully someone with some insight into that particular world can enlighten me.

1 comment:

Patrick Parker said...

Hey, dude. i like your blog and i especially love the picture of kano above. I'm not sure i've seen that one before. Seems to show a lot of the man's personality.
I also enjoyed reading your remembrance of the infamous Pat vs. Vincent match. Vincent is a lot of fun and a hell of a judoka. old school for sure. One of jacques lagrande's folks from new orleans. I do recall trying to stay away from his hipthrows at least as hard as as he was trying to stay away from my deashi and kosoto.
Keep up the good writing and keep up the practice and I'll look forward to seeing y'all sometime around April or May.