28/09/2005 - Judo

Class #1

28/09/05 – Judo, University of Warwick

I finally got round to trying out the University of Warwick Judo club today – as with many other MAs at Warwick, its one I’ve been meaning to try out since my second year in 2000. I had a chat to the instructor and some of the senior belts beforehand, and they seemed a friendly bunch. I’d already spoken to the instructor (who is only a brown belt, but more importantly has 12 years experience; I find the latter a rather better indicator) at the Sports Fair, trying to establish how much submission work they did in class – he claimed about 50/50 with throws. This initial class didn’t really give me a good impression of that (and some of the club members warned me that I shouldn’t take it as representative of a normal class, which is of course sensible as like the ZSK session I mentioned earlier, it was the first one crammed with freshers), as it involved things like a bit of ‘British Bulldog’ to show how to turn someone from their back, and a bunch of demonstrations by the grades (throws etc).

I waited patiently for some groundwork as we were shown the basic hip throw, and hoped that the demonstration of some locks would provide me with what I wanted. They did show some armlocks, but not what I was used to (but then, I’m only used to armbars from the guard and the mount). Chokes also cropped up, but only using the gi collar, which I guess isn’t surprising for a judo class.


The class finished up with a demonstration of randori by various grades. Again, I was hoping I might see some submissions, but only throws were in evidence. Its something I’ll have to put up with, as throws don’t massively interest me – what I want is groundwork. However, judo is probably the most I’m going to get at Warwick Uni, as there is an irritating lack of grappling styles; the only other class that claimed to do groundwork was something by the name of ‘Kempo Ju Jitsu’. Apparently, they finish up classes with 20 mins of rolling (though starting from knees, which I’m not fond of), which sounds promising. I’ll be checking it out later this week on Saturday (once I’ve fed the guinea pig back in Brum that morning!).