The Leg Squeeze

One "move" that I regularly encounter when sparring new guys in the gym is the leg squeeze. While on the bottom, the leg squeezer will attempt to catch the top player's head between his legs and squeeze. Once latched on, the leg squeezer will invariably try to cling on like this for the rest of the round. I wish people wouldn't do this and I'll explain the reasons why.

It's highly unlikely to lead to a submission unless your opponent is very new.

By stalemating with your opponent like this, neither of you learn anything. There are many more effective escapes you could employ.

It's not good for your neck and could potentially result in injury. No-one wants a neck injury.

Last but not least, it's not going to make you any friends. Trust me, higher belts will be face-palming inwardly when you try this.

Thanks for reading!

Ne-waza Issues

Our club does a fair amount of ne-waza so I often find myself up against good judo guys on the ground. Under judo rules I am sure that I would lose the majority of these encounters. As a BJJ guy, I am trained to be quite comfortable off my back. Unfortunately, some of these positions count as osaekomi (pins) from which my opponent can score points and finish the match.

The next biggest issue for me is the turtle. Judo guys go for this all the time and in shiai (competition) this would likely cause the referee to call a stand up. Not good for me. So I need to work out some effective anti-turtle manoeuvres.

I have noticed that I tend to leave my arm out when being thrown, which could be disastrous against a good juji-gatame (arm bar) expert. To counter this, I need to let go of my opponent's gi and improve my ukemi (breakfalling).

Finally, I am finding that people stand up when I catch them in sankaku-jime (triangle choke). My conditioned response to this is to hook the leg; however, I am informed that the ref will again call a stand up if this happens.

Nihongo ni tsuite (On Japanese)

As some of you may know, I used to live in Japan and use Japanese on a regular basis at work and at home. This has been a big help to me in understanding the techniques. I know that Japanese is not exactly an easy language but I think it's well worth learning the names of the techniques.

Some of the basic vocabulary I have heard in the class.

Hajime - begin

Matte - wait/stop.

Seiza - kneeling position

Ki wo tsuke - straighten your posture

Sensei ni rei - bow to the teacher

Mokusou - "silent reflection"

Note that hajime (begin) and jime (choke) are quite different.

OK, that's enough for now!

Judo 06/03/10

I had a great judo session on Saturday.

I managed to get about 10 hours sleep on Friday night so I was feeling great.

We went through some uchikomi (drilling throw entries) on some new techniques, ko soto gari, seoi otoshi and a new one, sumi gaeshi.

In randori, I managed to pull off some footsweeps (ko uchi gari and ko soto gari) and some counters to hip throws (tani otoshi). I have not yet managed to pull off any throw where I turn my back on my opponent (seoi nage, tai otoshi etc).

The sensei, Raki, caught me with a beautiful tomoe nage at one point. I swear my life flashed before my eyes.

I feel like my level has improved immensely since I started, despite this only being my 6th proper training session. Most of the credit here must go to my co-worker, Sean, who teaches me Judo at lunchtimes in the car park under our office, much to the amusement of the smokers who stand outside watching us.

RIP (literally) my favourite rashguard

A white belt tore the sleeve off my favourite rashguard the other day. That thing had seen me through literally hundreds of training sessions. I am gutted.

Other than the gi, please do not grab your training partner's clothes when rolling.

Code of conduct

Gavin has kindly posted a code of conduct I wrote up on his blog.

It is common sense but I have often seen people do such things as go to the toilet barefoot and come back on the mat, try and kill their training partner, joke around during drills etc.

http://north10-bjj.blogspot.com/p/code-of-conduct.html

If you have anything you would like to see added, just let us know.

Introduction

Hi all,

I am a 32 year old grappler, living in East London. I'm currently dividing my precious leisure time between Judo (white belt), MMA (complete amateur) and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (purple belt).

I created this blog to act as a companion to my training partner's blog at http://north10-bjj.blogspot.com/

I plan to share general thoughts on training and grappling. The blog title is supposed to reflect a more thoughtful approach with a view to avoiding injuries and successfully training long-term.

Thanks,

S