Judo yesterday was fairly enlightening. It was taught by this rather stern, formal instructor that makes me self-conscious because he’s always calling people out on their mistakes – rather ungently – but he definitely knows his stuff and teaches it well. Here’s some information I want to retain.

Tsurikomi goshi always seemed unusable for me because it seemed so awkward. Here’s some insights into it that made it seem much more accessible:

• You don’t have to keep your dominant arm (the one on uke’s collar) completely straight. I already knew this, but trying the throw with my arm bent tended to turn it into something along the lines of morote seoinage. The key is to try to straighten that arm, but don’t lock your elbow out. (You can actually break your arm doing that.) Trying to straighten your arm somewhat has two possible effects. It makes you bend down lower and/or pulls your opponent up higher, which are both important to the throw’s success.
• You need to block your opponent’s right knee (assuming you’re doing the throw right-handed), preferably on the outside, with your hip. The knee, not the hip. I don’t know if I never knew this or if I heard it and forgot, but it’s crucial. From a physics standpoint, your hip acts as the fulcrum, and your opponent is the lever. The lower the fulcrum is, the less force you need to exert on your opponent’s upper body to pull him over. That’s why it’s good to have your hips at knee level. The reason it’s ideal for you to be on the outside of the knee is so that they can’t simply step around to their right side.
   
  
   
  The situation on the right requires less force to pull the lever over the fulcrum than the situation on the left does.

• The kuzushi for this throw is indeed in the upward direction, which seems pretty daunting. Pulling a guy straight upward, even if it’s just an inch, is prohibitively difficult. Fortunately, it’s much easier to do in while in motion than it is starting from a stationary situation. You usually set the throw up by pulling the opponent in a circular direction toward you. Pivot on your left foot while pulling him or her toward you in a circle with your right hand. At the end of the circle, it’s not hard to nudge the opponent upward slightly, as he or she will usually be working on resisting coming toward you.

(more…)

Boogie Down Productions – Dope Beat

It really is a dope beat.

 
Back when I played Dungeons and Dragons, in the nineties, conventional wisdom said that the most rewarding aspect of role-playing games was the role-playing. That is, pretending you are some dude with a sword that’s on a quest to do some magical shit. Dragon Magazine was always putting out tips about getting your players to get more into character. Artier, more “grown-up” games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Ars Magica leaned even harder on that stuff.

My friends and I were into role-playing for about a year, albeit not in a very high-minded way. The roles we usually played were that of greedy, law-disregarding assholes that happened to be more powerful than the people around them. We basically played a simulation of what would happen if fourteen year olds really did have weapons and magic. We turned villages against us and backstabbed each other because that’s gritty stuff that real people do. Role-playing!

(more…)