Thanks to Sensei Rick Woolverton for another great Saturday adult judo class. We worked a couple combinations starting with an Osoto-Gari or ashi-waza attack, and ending with Uki Waza or a Yoko Wakare variaation right into osaekomi-waza.
We also introduced a nice motion drill, similar to the setup for okuri ashi barai, but ending with hane hane or harai goshi. As a drill, it allows judoka to work a moving overshoot setup in a predicable environment.
Nice sized Saturday class @ 7 judoka, Andrew and Bob were a perfectly matched pair, as were Leslie and Bernadette. Matt Lawton worked hard, and was a good practice partner for me.
Wow! Some great “firsts” during the Adult Judo Class tonight.
Easily the most significant 1st of the night, is “1st Randori” for Felicia, Justin and Andrew. Impressive work you three! Honest throws and good falls from each of you. Wow! Thanks to Sean, Matt and Leslie for being great training partners for our “greenest” judoka. The’re now “broken in” (but not broken).
Our newest judoka, Leslie is settling in, and her previous judo training is really starting to show. Tonight was Leslie’s 3rd judo class at Checkmate, and her 1st Wednesday night class. Welcome!
Our three beginner judoka learned their 1st ne-waza, and 1st shime-waza: hadaka-jime (rear naked choke.)
All that is in addition to warmup, ukemi, and practice on ogoshi, ouchi-gari and osoto-gari! Pretty busy class!
It’s a pleasure and an honor sharing the mat with such a great group of people!
The adult judo class concentrated on Harai Goshi this week. Harai Goshi is one of the 40 throws from the judo Gokyo. It is a popular and quite effective competition technique, as well as being useful in a self defense context.
Harai Goshi is classified as a hip (Goshi) throw. Although the grip is different from ogoshi, the hip placement and contact are very similar. While learning the throw, it can be useful to grasp around the waist as in Ogoshi, while adding the leg sweep. This helps to emphasize that Harai Goshi is executed with uki loaded fully on the hip.
To execute the technique, Tori breaks uki’s balance towards uki’s front right corner, while quickly turning and loading uki onto the hip. As tori is turning and loading uki onto the hip, tori’s reaction will be to begin sliping off and around the hip to the front right. Tori foils this by sweeping the leg back. The sweeping leg also helps to guarantee uki is rotated onto his back.
It is important that tori sweep the leg as low as possible, trying to brush the toes on the mat a the bottom of the sweep. Failure to do so gives uki the opportunity to grap the sweeping thigh with his hand, which at best will thwart the throw, and at worst result in a spectacular counter throw.
Additionally, while it can appear that the leg “lifts” uki, it does not. Lift is accomplished primarily with the hip. The leg is more of a guide, and perhaps a counter weight which allow tori to pull uki explosively, and to follow through.
In the video, Sensei Rick, Sean Carmack and Matt Lawton and myself demonstrate Harai Goshi.
Sensei Rick Woolverton demonstrates a drop morote seoinage moving attack. Parts of the video is slowed to 210fps (9x slowmo). 9x slow-motion is barely enough to capture Sensei Rick’s technique!
Sensei Rick’s execution features:
excellent control
strong pull
full commitment to the drop
solid upright finish, with obvious transitions to submission if required
Congratulations to Chris Davis for earning his Jujitsu Orange belt from Master Leigh Rossi on 5-2-2011. Chris received special recognition from Master Rossi for his dedication and hard work, and will wear one of Master Rossi’s personal rank belts!
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