Ground cycle #1 pointers

Great return to judo practice tonight after being out for a week or so. Rob and Iwarmed up with some ROM and moved into groundwork cycle #1 with some minor adjustments to what Rob was doing:

• Even though it's a pretty elementary drill and top man is not looking for armbars, bottom man has to actively work to protect his arms from being entangled and locked. Bottom man continually moves his arms as top man shifts so that they stay free and viable and so that they act as feelers.
• Also, when pushing back to base from your belly, you don't want to do a push-up type action. Rather, pull one knee up as far as you can and use you arms to slide your butt over that shin as if you were pushing your butt over a roller (your shin is the roller). I can push back to base this proper way with a 350 pound guy on my back, whereas it's hard to do a push-up with anyone on your back.
• Third thing was the crawfish action at the end of the groundwork cycle. Bottom man has to immobilize one of top man's arms against the ground or else he will float with you. Top man has to watch out for putting an arm around bottom man's waistline/beltline because the turnover is almost trivial for the bottom man in this situation.

We did a lot of randori, both newaza and tachi into newaza. Rob did well there and got me in some positional asphyxia deals a couple of times. I got him with a good jujigatame (cross armbar) once and a good jujijime (cross choke) another time. We finished up with some repetition of kouchigari (one of the divine nine). We both agreed that if we worked with this intensity daily we'd each weigh about 20 pounds less.