Well this past weekend the wife, kiddo, and I packed up the car and made the 6-7 hour drive from Fairbanks, AK down to Anchorage to compete in the 54th Annual Alaska State Judo Championships. This was the first Judo comp for all of us. My wife and I have less than a year of once a week judo, and the kiddo has had maybe 5-6 classes total, so suffice it to say, our goal was to have fun, get competition experience, and learn. I would say we definitely accomplished all 3 of those!
After spending most of Friday in the car, we woke up on Saturday and headed down to the Dena'ina Center in downtown Anchorage, AK at around 9AM. After some initial confusion, and then having our teams kids pulled aside for having improper gi's (they had cheap karate gi's), which led to some frustration on my part (and an exasperated "This is not a karate gi" from my 6 y/o daughter (LOL), we were able to borrow a gi top that our teams 3 kids were able to share.
The tourney got off to a fast start. They had 2 competition mats set up, and the kids were very quickly doing their thing! As I was "Coach Dad" I didn't get to watch a ton of the kids, as I was focused on my own, but what I did see was very impressive. Some of these kids were GOOD! Something about seeing an 8 year old who is clearly way better than you at Judo will put you in your place. Soon enough my daughter's name was called and we walked out to our mat.
Gotta say I'm still beeming with pride 2 days later after seeing that! Not sure if you can hear me trying to coach her through something that she hadn't been taught before, but she could, and she really tried to follow advice! Very coachable kiddo :) But the best part? The BEST part was her smiling happy attitude, despite the loss. A positive attitude she carried with her for both of her matches, win or lose, my talks to her in advance about doing this to have fun were heard and heeded!
Match 2 she was put up against a boy who seemed to be certainly more experienced than her 5-6 classes. A quick throw and a pin later, my daughter was up and smiling again. Her only disappointment was, not that she lost, but that she didn't get to go again.
About 5 hours later (it was a LONG day) my wife was up next. We are both blue belts in BJJ, who have started cross training once a week in Judo. In fact, one of the primary reasons we did this Judo tourney is because a couple months ago my wife participated in the 2013 AK State Gi BJJ Championships, and did not do as well as she could have. She seemed to get the first time competition deer in the headlights syndrome and wasn't able to relax and perform the way I know she can. So here we were to get more competition experience. She did AMAZING imho, against a Judo brown belt. A LOUD Judo Brown belt...
After some confusion, I was last up. I ended up having to go up against a slick brown belt. Needless to say, I didn't win, but I had a ton of fun in the process of getting ipponed twice, and I learned a lot. Watching my performance I see I did alot of things wrong. My stance was low (hunched over) and my legs were spread too wide, at one point I broke my grip and reached down for his leg before correcting myself and re-gripping), something I don't do typically in judo randori. I suppose I reverted to my base a bit, which, incidentally, is not a good plan in a judo competition (especially if your safe place is the guard). My plan was go for foot sweeps and the one combo that I like (uchi mata to the one where you hook their leg and drive forward, taking them to the mat, Ouchi Gari I believe), and then to (hopefully) out position on the mat and focus on pins (I feel pretty confident with my ground work). Possibly my plan should have been to defend the throw, and just try to drag it to the mat, as you'll see I hadn't practiced falling into non-ippon, match continuing, positions. Anyway, here are my 2 matches:
Ipponed once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Fbl...ature=youtu.be
Ipponed twice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqaXE...ature=youtu.be
After spending most of Friday in the car, we woke up on Saturday and headed down to the Dena'ina Center in downtown Anchorage, AK at around 9AM. After some initial confusion, and then having our teams kids pulled aside for having improper gi's (they had cheap karate gi's), which led to some frustration on my part (and an exasperated "This is not a karate gi" from my 6 y/o daughter (LOL), we were able to borrow a gi top that our teams 3 kids were able to share.
The tourney got off to a fast start. They had 2 competition mats set up, and the kids were very quickly doing their thing! As I was "Coach Dad" I didn't get to watch a ton of the kids, as I was focused on my own, but what I did see was very impressive. Some of these kids were GOOD! Something about seeing an 8 year old who is clearly way better than you at Judo will put you in your place. Soon enough my daughter's name was called and we walked out to our mat.
Gotta say I'm still beeming with pride 2 days later after seeing that! Not sure if you can hear me trying to coach her through something that she hadn't been taught before, but she could, and she really tried to follow advice! Very coachable kiddo :) But the best part? The BEST part was her smiling happy attitude, despite the loss. A positive attitude she carried with her for both of her matches, win or lose, my talks to her in advance about doing this to have fun were heard and heeded!
Match 2 she was put up against a boy who seemed to be certainly more experienced than her 5-6 classes. A quick throw and a pin later, my daughter was up and smiling again. Her only disappointment was, not that she lost, but that she didn't get to go again.
About 5 hours later (it was a LONG day) my wife was up next. We are both blue belts in BJJ, who have started cross training once a week in Judo. In fact, one of the primary reasons we did this Judo tourney is because a couple months ago my wife participated in the 2013 AK State Gi BJJ Championships, and did not do as well as she could have. She seemed to get the first time competition deer in the headlights syndrome and wasn't able to relax and perform the way I know she can. So here we were to get more competition experience. She did AMAZING imho, against a Judo brown belt. A LOUD Judo Brown belt...
After some confusion, I was last up. I ended up having to go up against a slick brown belt. Needless to say, I didn't win, but I had a ton of fun in the process of getting ipponed twice, and I learned a lot. Watching my performance I see I did alot of things wrong. My stance was low (hunched over) and my legs were spread too wide, at one point I broke my grip and reached down for his leg before correcting myself and re-gripping), something I don't do typically in judo randori. I suppose I reverted to my base a bit, which, incidentally, is not a good plan in a judo competition (especially if your safe place is the guard). My plan was go for foot sweeps and the one combo that I like (uchi mata to the one where you hook their leg and drive forward, taking them to the mat, Ouchi Gari I believe), and then to (hopefully) out position on the mat and focus on pins (I feel pretty confident with my ground work). Possibly my plan should have been to defend the throw, and just try to drag it to the mat, as you'll see I hadn't practiced falling into non-ippon, match continuing, positions. Anyway, here are my 2 matches:
Ipponed once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Fbl...ature=youtu.be
Ipponed twice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqaXE...ature=youtu.be