There’s this one dude at judo that does only one thing when it comes to newaza: He pulls you into his closed guard, then squeezes you while he tries to break your posture and collar choke you. He’s done this every time I’ve sparred with him and whenever I happen to see him rolling with someone else.

My first thought about this always is, besides not getting better at the rest of the game, isn’t that super boring? It could be that he’s just not all that interested in newaza. But it could also be that it’s actually effective, at least with the lower ranks, who are the only people I see him sparring with.

Every time I’ve gone up against him, he’s trapped me and neutralized me for five minutes. The guy has some strong-ass legs. I know I should just tap and move on, but his insistence on always going for that means I’ll probably just end up there anyway. It also compels me in the way that a video game that stopped being fun hours ago somehow forces you to try to beat it.

I was up for taking a shot last night. I’ve made some progress in the past by at least avoiding full closed guard. In half guard, though, he uses the same strategy. He pulls you in, and he also squeezes your one trapped leg as hard as humanly possible. There are a few guys at the dojo that can make you tap out doing that, but this guy’s leg placement was slightly off. So, it was unpleasant, but not out and out painful. After a while, though, my hip did start feeling weirdly numb.
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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.

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I got in a really good workout tonight. I got exhausted, but it was a really good exhaustion. Good exhaustion is fairly rare. I’m not really sure what constitutes good exhaustion. Mostly, I know it when I feel it. But let me try to break it down anyway. Here’s some characteristics:

• It’s productive. For example, you’re completely out of breath because you’ve just shot four or five attacks in a row, not because you’ve been holding on for dear life and the muscle tension wore you out. And some of those attacks were decent, not totally deformed bullshit that would never work even if you put the strength of the Incredible Hulk behind them. Maybe one of them even worked!
• You’re excited. For whatever reason, you believe that, hey, maybe I can throw someone tonight. You’re not thinking, I haven’t scored, I’m never gonna score, I suck, and I’ve never been to Compton.

OK, actually, cancel the unordered list. The difference between “good” exhaustion and “oh, please let it all end now” exhaustion is the presence of hope. I bet Obama is able to push it to the limit in his workouts all the time!

It’s rare, but tonight was one of those nights when I felt like I was actually getting better at judo. Most of the time, I feel like “Hey, not bad for a guy with mild motor skill retardation,” but I definitely don’t feel like I’m as good as I should be. However, I do usually feel good for just making it through the workout, which is quite demanding. I’m telling you, though: It’s way better to feel like you’re getting better technique-wise and sparring-wise than it is to feel like you’re just getting more stamina.

When you do feel like you don’t suck completely, it is a little easier to continue to try to set up and shoot throws even after you feel that out-of-gas burn in your chest. Hope is indeed very important, even in fighting.

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This really cocky new kid showed up at judo last night, at the fundamentals class. That doesn’t happen very often. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone come in with ‘tude.

I don’t think he’s brand new, or he’d be working on his breakfalls and rolls with his own instructor instead of working out with rest of the class. However, he hadn’t been around long enough to lose his inflated sense of ability. The kid, who I’d guess was eighteen or nineteen, went on about how he was a natural, talked up all the high school wrestling he did, and generally screwed around a lot. He kept trying wacky moves instead of working on the technique being taught.

The head instructor of the judo club happened to be teaching that night, and he noticed. The sensei’s a friendly guy, so I wondered how he’d deal with this. However, he teaches a lot of classes, so I should have been able to guess that this was not really a new situation for him.

First, he agreed to roll with the kid during a water break. He ran over him, but while he stopped to talk to someone, the kid jumped on his back. The sensei took it with good humor and turned around and choked the kid, with what looked like ryote jime.

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