Northern Wind

The next step in this whole experiment was to think about a second follow-up throw, building this into more than a series of foot sweep drills, per se, but combination drills. I got a chance to play around with some ideas this morning, and came across some interesting ideas. Foot Sweep Series 1: Uke retreating As a brief reminder, this is the section where we sweep and catch uke's foot, hold it for a brief moment, until he pulls his own foot free and pulls it into a backward step . These, then, were the throws we did after this first step: First Follow Up Throw The main 3: 1) (foot pointed forward) O soto gari/guruma 2) (foot pointed at uke) Sasae tsurikomi ashi 3) (foot pointed away) O goshi Additional possibilities: 4) (taking a shortened step, elbow up) Harai tsurikomi ashi 5) (foot in between uke's, turned in) Ko uchi gari 6) (from a right footed sweep, step in between uke's, kick feet out) Uchi mata 7) (from a right footed sweep, step in between uke's, let him cycl...

Alrighty, here are the videos of me going over the foot sweep drills I've been writing about. Sorry, the volume isn't that great because I'm a long way away from the camera and don't have a mic (it wasn't planned). The link to the original blog post is followed by the corresponding video. Foot Sweep Drill - Part 1 Foot Sweep Drill - Part 2 Foot Sweep Drill - Part 3 (Someday soon, I'm going to try and film the rest of the series, but I'll probably have to do it myself.)

Nick Lowry sensei has begun posting a number of videos through the Kaze Uta Budo Kai on YouTube, and they're wonderful. I can't wait to see more. To my surprise, I also found this section taken during the Shochugeiko over the summer when I went over the ashi waza combination drills I mentioned earlier ( starting here ). The lovely and talented Matthew Ghata is my uke. (It's always so strange to see oneself on video, isn't it?)

Yoko wakare This time, we'll look at several options when you sweep at uke's foot and he pulls it away and you miss. Originally, we looked at putting the left foot down next to uke's left (toes pointed across the line, or toward uke's rear) and then getting kosoto gari. Then we put that left foot down turned toward uke and slipped into tani otoshi or a sit-down variation of sukui nage (or even gedan ate for the aikido players). Lastly, when we put the foot down turned even further in throw to uke's front we got either ashi guruma or o-guruma. Another possibility (again, assuming I swept with my left and uke pulled his right foot back out of the way), is to put my left foot down right behind my right heel (on the balls of my toes). Basically, you turn and end up in a classical tai otoshi . I'm always wary, though, of just spinning around willy-nilly in front of uke, so I feel like I'd better have a very real kazushi first. I think what prompts me to take this...

Having looked at 3 throws off of catching uke's foot with an initial deashi harai foot sweep from 3 scenarios (uke pulls his foot back, he pulls it out of the way and you miss, and he braces against you or even pushes you back), it's time to look at a few other possible entries that several of us have been playing with. At this point, these ideas become more and more nebulous; I'm not going to claim that anyone of them (or even the ones I've presented previously) will work all the time (or even a majority of the time). This is all, mind you, simply experimental. But as long as we keep with principles, I think we'll find ourselves wandering down a good path. First, we return to the idea of uke stepping back, pulling his foot free from ours. With the first set of throws from this condition (tori sweeping with his left foot), we let uke pull our foot with his until ours landed near his back foot (as a reminder, I'll post the original illustration). Now we're go...

Okay, let's wrap up the last part of this series, at least in the basic sense. Once I've finished this, I'll go back to each of the 3 entry conditions and talk about a few more possible throws that several other people came up with during shochugeiko and even since then. In the first part , we caught uke's foot and we waited for him to pull it back; then, we rode that backward, exaggerated step into 3 throws based on the foot position of our landing foot. In the second part, we talked about another 3 possibilities if uke pulled his foot away and we missed our initial foot sweep, again, based on 3 possible positions of our landing foot. This time, we catch uke's foot again, but now he's bracing against us or even forcing us to go backward, and we have to step back. Just as in the case with the first section where uke's recovery step was exaggerated, which prompted us to make a larger than normal step, tori's going to also take a larger than normal step b...

Only one other person showed up for judo this morning, which gave me the time and opportunity to review in my own mind (let alone with another person) the various aspects of this drill that I and many other explored during shochugeiko (a big old thank you to Scott Weaver for being such a willing guinea pig!). As I mentioned in the last post, we've found a number of interesting possibilities stemming from these three conditions: 1) deashi harai where uke recovers by stepping back; 2) when uke pulls his foot out of the way; and 3) when uke pushes back forward). But to start with, I'm sticking with three basic throws based on three basic foot positions for each of those three situations. The last post dealt with the idea that uke , once his foot has been caught, pulls it free and steps back. This time, we're working under the assumption that uke can see the foot sweep coming and attempts to pull his foot back to avoid tori's sweep. With the first situation, where ...

[NOTE: As of July 13th, I've modified the foot placement image in this post to something I think is a little more accurate.] We have a drill that we do toward the beginning of most judo classes based on deashi harai . I don't have a video of it (there's a major effort under way to make a large number of instructional videos for Kaze Uta Budo Kai, so I'll let the folks in charge of that take care of that), so a written description will have to suffice for the time being. Basically, two partners stand on one side of the dojo floor and take their grips. The first partner (tori) steps forward and makes a sweeping action as the other person (uke) steps back, catching and picking up his foot (I believe most of the judo world does deashi with uke advancing, but we tend to execute it as tori moves forward). Tori holds the foot for a beat, until uke essentially pulls his foot away. When he does, tori promptly sweeps with the other foot and picks up uke's trailing foot. The t...