JUDO: Drilling combinations

I arrived at judo practice tonight somewhat anxious to get started. Training started as usual with warm up and stretching then going to ukemi and turnout drills. After which we began to drill using combinations.

When it comes to combinations there are basically two kinds of combination techniques in judo, renzoku-waza and renraku-waza. Renzoku-waza is a combination of two or more techniques in the same direction, where the first technique begins to break the opponent's balance and the second technique finishes the job. An example of this kind of combination would be uchimata into harai-goshi, where both attacks take the opponent to his left front corner.

The second kind of combination renraku-waza is a reaction combination, where the first attack provokes a strong defensive reaction, inviting the attacker to switch direction to exploit this defensive effort. For example if you attack with o-uchi-gari, causing the opponent to step back and push off with his arms, you then switches to ippon seoi-nage exploiting his opponent's defensive push to throw him forwards. The switch of direction might just as easily be from left to right as from rear to front. One can attack with right uchimata which the opponent must block strongly to prevent himself from being thrown; You release your left-hand grip on the opponents sleeve and spin under the opponent's left arm with left seoi-nage.

At the higher levels the first attack may become just a threatening feint designed to provoke a defensive twitch, but for the first attack to provoke such a reaction it has to feel dangerous. Your opponent has to be convinced on a subconscious level that if he does not react strongly he will be thrown. Tori’s job then is to convince the opponent, through his grip, footwork and body movements that he intends to do a particular throw and the opponent must be made to react.

My body was no longer sore after all I had a week off of training due to labor day weekend and so we had no practice on Monday of last week since it was labor day. So I was feeling pretty good. I knew in the back of my mind once things got back to normal the soreness would be back so I took alot of comfort in the fact that I wasn't sore.

Watching the instructor of the class it was evident he knew his stuff when it comes to high level judo play. This reassured me that I was in the right place and during training there was talk of upcoming tournaments. I wondered if I would be ready for one of them. My intention is not to just compete, but to win. Anything less would be unacceptable.

After we finished with the combinations, we spent some time on working on techniques that some of the lower belts would be tested on for their next rank on Sunday.