Saturday, October 12, 2013

Very nice Judo class

          Today I had 4 people attending and about a dozen on-lookers. The community center has recently developed a girls volley-ball class and it has taken off like wildfire. Saturday mornings now have dozens of people milling about that are either there for volley-ball, parents of someone there for volley-ball, or boys watching girls play volley-ball. That class ends right before mine begins so I occasionally get 1 or 2 onlookers but today I had more despite an invitation for them to join in.
          In class we covered de ashi harai, then ko soto gari. I think the girls that came last night are loosening up, but I need a way of incorporating more falling into class because they are still apprehensive about it and I don't want them getting hurt. I used the advanced foot sweep as a way of also working falls by having each person throw their partner 5 times on each side. After beating that to death I looked at ko soto gari and how it is more of a prop than a sweep.
           The last half of class we spent on the ground. Last week we went over Mune gatame and the escape, and I showed kesa gatame. Today we looked at the bridge and roll from kesa then a simple escape from guard and mount. The last 5 mins of class I chained all the positions together so that someone would escape from mount into guard, then they would break guard and move to kesa. After that, whoever was in kesa would escape from kesa and move into mune where their partner would bridge out of it. It was a very fun class and everyone seemed thrilled to see how this can be chained together.
         One of the participants, Julio, is a guy from the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu place who asked me after class to help him with side control (mune gatame), and kesa gatame because mine is much tighter than his. I showed him how to transition and keep his hips down and a ball exercise Pat showed me that helped tremendously. I think Julio has a lot of potential and seems to be willing to listen to what I'm saying and try to incorporate Judo's merits into his BJJ game. All in all, a great class.

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