What a Twist!

If you read either my blog or Andy's, you should notice the mostly the same lessons as we tackle the same issues or cool instances that crop up during our training. As he said in his post we briefly went over ko soto gari again to make sure he had it. I wanted to try uki goshi but that the time of class I just could not get the timing right. Andy's a lot taller than me so the problem I ran into was when loading him on my hip, he could just take one of his stork legs and plant it. I knew it was an off-balance problem I was having (more on that at the end of the post).
I decided to show him ko uchi gari instead which turned out better for the both of us. We got into a discussion over techniques and I ended up showing O uchi gari too. I was amazed to find out that even though that throw has notoriously escaped me, while telling Andy about it I was able to break it apart in my head and re-piece it together so that it made more sense to me. Of course that was great because then I could relay that info so that it made sense to him (hopefully).
Moving on, we did tegatana and talked about short steps about should width before moving on to the event of the night which was Nijusan. Andy wanted to switch it up a bit by having uke pull his arm back before moving in and then extend it as he was stepping. It felt more akin to a strike and changed my perspective a little. It also made the off balances more exaggerated. Each time we threw the other in one or two steps. It's funny how a little change in motion can drastically alter the parameters of what can and will happen. I'll let Andy go more into detail about that. Just before a Judo thing I wanted to work on, we practiced avoiding a punch (don't worry Pat, we went slow) from same hand same foot, then from uke having the opposite forward so he could twist into the punch. The same hand same foot thing happened almost just like Nijusan, but the opposite foot and hand punch was astonishing to watch. As each of us did it whoever was Tori could easily (and I mean EASILY) step in and shomenate their partner before the swing was finished.
Lastly, the Judo. I don't watch UFC a lot, but I occasionally see a match starting to happen as I'm scanning channels and I'll watch, along with kickboxing, Mui Thai, whatever. I like watching people move and seeing what works for them. The problem I notice more often than not in the UFC (and let me just state here I don't want a hail of posts arguing over if MMA is effective or not....it IS is most circumstances this is ONLY MY OBSERVATION), is that when someone is on the bottom, guard or not, they just turtle up while the guy on top beats the tar out of them. So I had Andy put on some gloves, get in the mount, then the guard, then with me in the mount and in the guard, and had him punch at me to see if I could get out. Yes in each case is the short answer. You'll most likely get hit once or twice, but with a little practice I know you can cut it down to zero nine times out of ten. Either way, when I had Andy in the guard he didn't get a chance to hit at all due to my shrimping and moving his hips as he tried to punch. He lost balance every time. Try it!

One Last thing....as I was watching tv and walking towards the kitchen to make a sandwich I figured out what was wrong with my uki goshi....or at least something I could do to make it work for me. Instead of trying to throw Andy off my hip or "clip him with it" as Pat used to say, I learned I could load him on it (even just a little) and turn a little more away from him rotating him around my body until it threw him. Not the proper way I'm sure, but it worked for last night. I plan on more study with it.