Kids judo class

"Judo is a kind of wrestling that was invented in Japan a long time ago by a guy named Jigoro Kano. Kano was a very good wrestler. The kind of wrestling that we do is the same kind that Kano did long ago."

That is the history that we reviewed tonight as the kids warmed up with skipping, galloping, and laterals and then moved on to logrolls, lowcrawl, inchworm, spiderwalk, crabwalk, and hipheist. These five year olds were doing hipheist great! Amazing what they pick up! We had a good, long session of kneeling knockdown (newaza randori) which led us into practicing a head-and-arm takedown (suwari kubinage) into a scarf hold (kesagatame). From here we moved into standing toestomp (tachi randori) which gave us an opporunity to work on snapdown as a response to someone fighting bent-over where you can't get to their feet. Everyone did great with snapdown and at the end of class they each took ten falls from deashibarai (front footsweep) with me sailing them and then letting them down into a proper back/side fall.

Of all that cool material they said that the backfalls from deashi were their favorite!