New Student, old ideas

Today we had a new judo student. Paul is a (perhaps) middle aged guy who did Judo as a kid and who has dome some isshinryu recently. We warmed up (or calibrated - see the earlier posts on this) and practiced some backfalls, side falls, and forward rolls. He did great! Then we worked on the kito principle using some suwari (suwari kubinage and suwari hizaguruma). This got us into kesagatame and munegatame so we could discuss these positions and beginbuilding the situp escape from kesagatame.

From standing we used kosotogari as our excuse to practice some more ukemi and talk about tori's responsibility to help uke fall properly. This also afforded us an opportunity to talk about how to engage by occupying the center with your hands as you approach. This gives us an advantageous inside gripping position and provides an automatic block/parry. The Gracie guys (I think) call a variant of this the cowcatcher or the wedge.