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.

Fitness training

While typing the last post there was one other thing I wanted to mention but I felt it warranted a separate post. In Judo and especially in Aikido I know we have a tendency to get lazy in the exercise area as our technique develops. While this does mean you'll have to continually have better technique then someone more fit than you, it reminds me of a Japanese proverb and a story. The proverb goes "experience should always fear the strength of youth". The story was about a match between a boxer and a taekwondo practitioner. The taekwondo guy was expecting to win because his legs had far more reach and power than the boxer's arms. The boxer trained like he would for a heavyweight match. When the time came for the match the taekwondo guy scored a clean kick to the boxer's head and the boxer staggered back. Thanks to his hard work, the boxer shrugged it off, then stepped in and beat the taekwondo guy mercilessly cause the taekwondo guy was out of shape, had no stamina, and got lazy in his training. Now I know Aikido and Taekwondo are drastically different, but because we train our minds on how to deal with certain situations doesn't mean our bodies shouldn't be prepared also. Judo's a better example because if you don't get uke to submit in the first few minutes, it becomes a stamina match. I've just noticed in our race to perfect technique I've felt a lack of conditioning in getting there.

First off....

I'll start with a shameless plug for Pat's site. Ok I'll start off this page like I do every practise I have with Bryce when he doesn't know what to go over....hip throws. He went over something with me yesterday that I've never noticed before. The entry for hip throws can occur one of two ways. First off, there's the competition way where you pull or in any way offbalance your opponent and you step into them as they're falling on you. The second (and my favorite way) feels like taiotoshi in my opinion. You pull your opponent and sidestep while holding onto them so that as they rise again they in essence wrap themselves around your body and onto your hip. The timing's much harder but it feels a lot smoother. Bryce was telling me that You don't dictate which one of these you'll use, uke does. If he pulls, you step into him. If he comes forward, you offbalance and perform the second one. Well if anything, this Blog will make me better at giving word descriptives.