27 July 2008

Growing Judo in Roswell

Okay, I have a small problem. I am probably the world's worst recruiter. I'm not a great records keeper.

What does that mean for me? That means that I have to find a way to recruit students, of various ages, for my classes. I'm hoping that my brochures will be able to go through the various schools in the Roswell School District, so that I get at least a few students for my classes.

My goal for the fall semester for my judo club is to have between 10 and 20 students in my kids and adults class, each. I hope I will have success. If I'm successful, things should be really good. If not, well, antibellum status quo.
I do have some good points. Without too much ego, I'm a fairly good coach, teacher, sensei, or whatever you want to call it.

I think I should grow. With growth, new mats.

Teaching Judo

I went down to another dojo on Saturday. It is a great club with a really good instructor.


I like to go down there because, well, they have more people in larger sizes and a greater variety of ranks than I.

This time when I went down I showed them some of the things that I learned at the Judo Forum Summit and Camp that I went to in Carlsbad, CA.

I showed them the uchikomi warm-up run, step-away seoi nage, and tsugi ashi/ayumi ashi o uchi gari to ko/o soto gari. They appeared to learn what was taught and had some good experience doing it.

18 July 2008

Sasae tsuri komi ashi

I was working on stka (I'm not writing that long thing right now) with one of my students on Wednesday and had an epiphany about how stka works! (I may be worng but it seems to work for now.)

When uke is holding his body rigid, leaning upon you, and refusing to allow you to enter into them, you step wide and pivot. As uke's body leans forward from your withdrawal, your foot is placed in front of uke's advancing foot, stopping its forward motion prematurely. This action causes uke to continue in its forward motion, but rather than a further forward base, the body rotates about an axis much further back. I don't know if that made sense, or will make sense in a week. Suffice it to say that you move out to the side as they are leaning on you, block their foot, and the rotate over their foot into ukemi.

09 July 2008

Collecting Judo Videos

The internet is full of videos of judo, especially YouTube. There is a big problem with that, however, and that is finding and keeping the videos that are worthwhile to you. Every one of us has a different definition of worthwhile. Personally, I'm trying to find stuff out there that will make it easier to retain, teach, and develop my students. I'm also trying to find things that will help me be a better competitor, kata-ist, player, and coach.

Therefore I introduce to you, probably one of the easiest tools I have found to do screen captures. It's called CamStudio. Some of the best things about it is that it is Open Source (that means anybody can get it for free), it's incredibly easy to use, and it's got everything you need without needing more. If you want to do voice over recordings of videos, it will!

There are some negative things, but that may just be my lack of understanding rather than a flaw of the program, of which one needs to be aware. The big one, is that it doesn't record the audio of the video you are recording. That's really the big flaw.

Here's the link for CamStudio.

08 July 2008

Fun and Games

Back to the Judo Forum Summit and Camp.

So one of the cool things I learned from the camp was that games are really cool and everybody will do them! Kids, adults, teenagers; everybody!

The games were varied and I'm not sure I got all of them, but of those I got two of them were brought to us by Ronda!

Both of these are based on Freeze Tag. The difference between the two is the way one is unfrozen. In one, the frozen are unfrozen by doing three uchikomi to them. In the other, they are unfrozen by doing a jumping spin in front of them.





Unfortunately, for me with so few students, you need a fair number of students to do it to good effect. However some of the other things I got from the camp don't require a lot of people!

Oh! Another cool warm-up was, what I'm calling, "Partner Carries." Basically the way this works is one partner carries the other in a variety of carries (seoi nage, kata guruma, and I'm sure it could be extrapolated with a host of others).

07 July 2008

O Uchi Gari

One of the most common throws I've noticed is O uchi gari. I've heard this likened to the Boxer's jab in that it is used to setup almost every throw in judo. While I don't know exactly about that, I've not used it that way, yet, I did find a fair amount of interesting videos that are quite useful. Some are useful because they are good quality stuff and some for the opposite reason.

To begin:

Yamashita showing O uchi gari
Kuzushi


Tsukuri


Kake


The whole ball of wax


Jimmy Pedro (the audio is almost impossible to hear)


Spartak Judo

06 July 2008

Judo Forum Summit Clinic and Camp

I've decided to try this blogging thing. Perhaps it will help me to keep track of what I've thought about and am planning.

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Let's see, where should I start? I think I'll start with judo.

A couple of weeks ago (20-22 June) I had the opportunity to go to San Diego (Carlsbad, actually) for the Judo Forum Summit and Camp 2008. I haven't been to any judo camps for nigh onto 14 years. This was nothing like the ones I'd been to previously.

Instead of people I know and who know me and who know my dad, everyone was new to me, at least in person. There were Olympians, World Champions, Kohaku holders, and people from all over, including Australia. It was an incredible experience for me. I probably stuck out more as a country bumpkin than I'd like to admit. But I do live in Roswell!

So many things were going on! I was split between what do I do for me and what do I do so that I can teach my students! I hate having that choice. I chose things to teach. They help me too, but I'm getting a little past the prime of competitive judo.

Some of the things that were covered were grip fighting with Jacob Flores, Coaching with Paul Nogaki, Tai Sabaki and correct nage waza with Jin Iizumi, Ne Waza with AnnMaria DeMars, Games with AnnMaria and Ronda, Conditioning, and a variety of others that I didn't get near enough to remember.

I can hardly wait to figure out how to afford to go to the next one! It was an incredible experience.

I did learn somethings about myself, however.

1. My shoulders need work, I couldn't last very long in the gripping practice, expecially the randori.
2. I desparately need to work strength training and endurance training.
3. I've got to learn how to grip fight, a green belt, no matter the competitive level, should not be able to control randori with me.
4. I need to work ne waza, especially escapes.
5. I am never going to send my children to school at the Army-Navy Academy if NMMI is a viable option.
6. If it weren't for the price of gas, real estate, and the psychotic vehicle laws in California; it would be a really cool place to live.
7. I have got to compete.
8. I have got to work on financing mats for my club.

It was a really wonderufl experience overall, despite having to fly.



People I met:
Ronda Rousey, Olympian and all around neat-o person.
AnnMaria DeMars, World Champion, incredibly smart statistician, neat-o person, and Ronda's mom.
Jacob Flores Jr., really neat-o person.
Jacob Flores, Sr., neat-o person, Dr.
Rick Hawn, Olympian, neat-o person
Paul Nogaki, really interesting person, learned more than I believe he was trying to teach. also a really neat-o person.

(okay, pretty much everybody was a neat-o person, so I'm going to stop putting it on. If you're name is listed, figure yourself neat-o.)

N. Karl Maluf
Jess, from Denver Judo
Aaron Kunihiro, mean seoi nage, I liked it, too bad my arm was killing me.
Jin Iizumi
Ian, Rei-Boot
and a host of others whose names slip my mind

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Things to keep in mind:
1. Shut up and pay attention. You'll learn more if you're receiving and processing than talking and outputting.
2. You do not know everything and no one else does either, but that doesn't mean that you can't learn from someone else.
3. Sometimes you just have to work through something to get it.