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I know this isn't a judo forum, but you'll see why this is relevant in a second....
My background is jujitsu (integrated with sambo and shootwrestling) and I anticipated that my unorthadox style would throw some wrenches into the machine.
I was right. I dominated every match I was in. I didn't get thrown once, I executed two shooting takedowns, and the other fifteen or twenty times I was on the ground it was because they tried to throw and I simply grabbed my opponent and pulled him down into my guard. I wasn't sure if they would get points for this, luckily they didn't because it clearly wasn't a successful throw.
What I found was clearly in my favour was that when I went down I put them in my guard instead of giving them my back (the judo way). Not only did they not know how to deal with my guard, but I effortlessly turned them every time.
And every time I did this they, in turn, spun over and gave me their back. This frustrated the hell out of me because in jujitsu this is the equivalent of an instant loss. If you go for a choke and they fight it, you can put your wrist bone into the senstive base of the nose (where the philtrum meets) and painfully jerk it into the skull. If this doesn't work because they have some bizarre, amazing pain threshold, keep doing it with the molars or the eyes until you've got your choke. It doesn't take long.
Here, in judo, you can't touch the face, so I had to worm my way under their chin without pulling on their face. I found this amazingly frustrating because I wasn't used to it. I'm going to master this because every match I was in I wound up on the guy's back at least three or four times.
Anyways, other pertinent information. I never got a single point scored against me, I don't think I ever scored a single point, but I did get shido penalties in two of my three matches.
Also, I weighed in in the 100kg* category at 103.2 kg. This is the unlimited weight category and I was clearly at the ass-bottom of it. The lightest guy I fought was 105 kg. This didn't turn out to be any sort of handicap, though, because judo is so much gentler than what I'm used to. I fought one guy who was 116 kg (about 28-29 pounds heavier than me).
In poundage, my weight in mid-afternoon is 216lbs. Because I'm heavier in the mornings and I was weighed in the morning (the only one who was weighed, because our coach made us show up six hours before we actually had to fight) I actually weighed around 226lbs. When I fought I was at my usually measured weight of 216, I would definitely have been in the lower weight category if I was weighed then. This angered me at first, but it turned out I was in no way hindered by this incredible disparity. I'm used to large opponents grabbing me, tossing me around, making me carry their weight, etc. Judo, I found, is a very easy, gentle art. Not exhausting, not brutal, almost pleasant.
Anyways, the first guy I fought was Greg Moore (the guy who was 28-29 pounds heavier than me). It was my first authentic judo match ever and so I got the bowing wrong. For this entire match, whenever someone yelled yuko (as I had him in it twice before he turned to his stomach) I would stop and look questioningly at the ref. Eventually, I just learned to fight until I heard matté.
We fought, he tried to throw me, I kept taking him down and mounting him, he kept going to his stomach. The match ended when he tried a throw and I just grabbed him and fell to the side. This match I legitimately lost, he got me in kessie (kesa gatame) and I didn't escape in time. The thing was, he got me in such a sloppy kessie that I didn't realize I was in one. We landed on our sides and he had my arm tucked under his armpit (it was kessie without him holding my head in his armpit). With him still holding my arm, I climbed onto his back and started working a choke on him, wondering why he wasn't fighting it as much as he should have been. That's when my coach started yelling, "You're in yuko! Get out, you've only got a few seconds left!" So I suddenly realized that this terrible kessie was being counted as a pin. I abandoned my choke, which I almost had, and fought wildly to escape (too wildly, I could have gotten out of it if I didn't panic), but he won with the pin.
It was a legitimate loss, I hate to admit it, but he beat me. Somewhere in this match I got a shido penalty for... something. I'm still not familiar with the rules.
I wasn't out of the tournament, though. We were allowed two losses.
I didn't fight for a long time after than and I was worried about cooling off, so I just did some shadowboxing in the corner (which you can do by yourself, but you can't shadowgrapple and turn it into a workout -- everyone thought I looked like an idiot for shadowboxing at a judo tournament. Screw 'em.)
And I have to emphasize again how easy it was to control the match. In jujitsu, I'm usually the lightest guy in the unlimited division so I'm used to carrying the weight of and being shaken by bodybuilders, really fat men, man giants, etc. That was very useful experience here, I can't stress that enough. Even though they were all larger than me, some significantly so, they didn't use it to their advantage.
Next I fought the 105kg guy. This guy was super aggressive at first, but soon he found that he couldn't do anything with me and he'd frequently find himself in the bottom of pileups. I tried a flying armbar because the opportunity wasn't quite there and looked like quite a fool, but screw 'em. Finally the guy lost confidence in his aggressiveness and this gave me the edge to dump him on his ass when he tried to throw me. I mounted him, he rolled over, and I started digging under his throat. I'm sure this is illegal, but I did it anyways, I kept spearing his adam's apple with my fingers as I dug under his chin. The ref didn't see it because he was curled into a little ball. I wasn't accomplishing anything because I wasn't getting my arm across any further, but I did it anyways and soon we were stood up again. Now the guy went in to throw me, I blocked the throw and shot at his leg, lifting him up and crashing down on top of him. He rolled onto his stomach again and this time I was expecting it. I had my arm in there before he could completely curl up and choked him out. Half of me thinks that he didn't fight it as hard as he could have and that he gave up instead of having me gouge his adam's apple again. I did not get a shido penalty in this match.
My next match was against Greg Moore again, the guy I fought the first time. Now in this match I cannot count the number of times I put him on the ground (none by technical judo throw, mind you) and got his back. I couldn't choke him out once, though, because his big, ungainly girth protected his pudgy neck nicely. I began to gas out at the end of the match, tired of heaving his bulk around, but he was clearly out of energy as soon as the match began. Up until the final half of that match, I was still in my prime. Somewhere in the match I acquired a shido penalty.
Now the final twenty or thirty seconds of the match that are important. We fell to our sides again and he got me in that sloppy kessie again and this time I knew what was happening and had the alotted time to calmy work an escape. I wedged my knees between myself and him, not really sure what kind of an escape would present itself, when he lifted his head up to see what the hell I was doing. I spun as best I could with my arm locked up and hooked my leg around his face. I pulled him backwards, bringing the heel of my foot to the ground, now using my trapped arm to curl around his. If you can't picture it from my description, know that I pulled him backwards down into a technically perfect armbar, the best I've ever done in my entire life. He had his cuff grasped and so I kicked his other hand away, falling back into a perfect submission with his now free and vulnerable arm. I had just begun my descent backwards when the ref called matté and the horn sounded simultaneously. And of course the guy won the match because I was hit with that single shido penalty for... something.
Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Especially when the guy went on to win the tournament!
Oh, I was so upset at myself. If I had just snapped his arm back a little quicker... if the match was just a few seconds longer... god, I'm still pissed off at myself.
Despite that amazing frustration, I'm very happy. I'm going to train very hard for the next two months and hone my unorthadox judo style. There was no reason I didn't win every match today, and I'm very confident than I just have to perfect a few specific skills before I'm golden.
And that was my first judo tournament.
My background is jujitsu (integrated with sambo and shootwrestling) and I anticipated that my unorthadox style would throw some wrenches into the machine.
I was right. I dominated every match I was in. I didn't get thrown once, I executed two shooting takedowns, and the other fifteen or twenty times I was on the ground it was because they tried to throw and I simply grabbed my opponent and pulled him down into my guard. I wasn't sure if they would get points for this, luckily they didn't because it clearly wasn't a successful throw.
What I found was clearly in my favour was that when I went down I put them in my guard instead of giving them my back (the judo way). Not only did they not know how to deal with my guard, but I effortlessly turned them every time.
And every time I did this they, in turn, spun over and gave me their back. This frustrated the hell out of me because in jujitsu this is the equivalent of an instant loss. If you go for a choke and they fight it, you can put your wrist bone into the senstive base of the nose (where the philtrum meets) and painfully jerk it into the skull. If this doesn't work because they have some bizarre, amazing pain threshold, keep doing it with the molars or the eyes until you've got your choke. It doesn't take long.
Here, in judo, you can't touch the face, so I had to worm my way under their chin without pulling on their face. I found this amazingly frustrating because I wasn't used to it. I'm going to master this because every match I was in I wound up on the guy's back at least three or four times.
Anyways, other pertinent information. I never got a single point scored against me, I don't think I ever scored a single point, but I did get shido penalties in two of my three matches.
Also, I weighed in in the 100kg* category at 103.2 kg. This is the unlimited weight category and I was clearly at the ass-bottom of it. The lightest guy I fought was 105 kg. This didn't turn out to be any sort of handicap, though, because judo is so much gentler than what I'm used to. I fought one guy who was 116 kg (about 28-29 pounds heavier than me).
In poundage, my weight in mid-afternoon is 216lbs. Because I'm heavier in the mornings and I was weighed in the morning (the only one who was weighed, because our coach made us show up six hours before we actually had to fight) I actually weighed around 226lbs. When I fought I was at my usually measured weight of 216, I would definitely have been in the lower weight category if I was weighed then. This angered me at first, but it turned out I was in no way hindered by this incredible disparity. I'm used to large opponents grabbing me, tossing me around, making me carry their weight, etc. Judo, I found, is a very easy, gentle art. Not exhausting, not brutal, almost pleasant.
Anyways, the first guy I fought was Greg Moore (the guy who was 28-29 pounds heavier than me). It was my first authentic judo match ever and so I got the bowing wrong. For this entire match, whenever someone yelled yuko (as I had him in it twice before he turned to his stomach) I would stop and look questioningly at the ref. Eventually, I just learned to fight until I heard matté.
We fought, he tried to throw me, I kept taking him down and mounting him, he kept going to his stomach. The match ended when he tried a throw and I just grabbed him and fell to the side. This match I legitimately lost, he got me in kessie (kesa gatame) and I didn't escape in time. The thing was, he got me in such a sloppy kessie that I didn't realize I was in one. We landed on our sides and he had my arm tucked under his armpit (it was kessie without him holding my head in his armpit). With him still holding my arm, I climbed onto his back and started working a choke on him, wondering why he wasn't fighting it as much as he should have been. That's when my coach started yelling, "You're in yuko! Get out, you've only got a few seconds left!" So I suddenly realized that this terrible kessie was being counted as a pin. I abandoned my choke, which I almost had, and fought wildly to escape (too wildly, I could have gotten out of it if I didn't panic), but he won with the pin.
It was a legitimate loss, I hate to admit it, but he beat me. Somewhere in this match I got a shido penalty for... something. I'm still not familiar with the rules.
I wasn't out of the tournament, though. We were allowed two losses.
I didn't fight for a long time after than and I was worried about cooling off, so I just did some shadowboxing in the corner (which you can do by yourself, but you can't shadowgrapple and turn it into a workout -- everyone thought I looked like an idiot for shadowboxing at a judo tournament. Screw 'em.)
And I have to emphasize again how easy it was to control the match. In jujitsu, I'm usually the lightest guy in the unlimited division so I'm used to carrying the weight of and being shaken by bodybuilders, really fat men, man giants, etc. That was very useful experience here, I can't stress that enough. Even though they were all larger than me, some significantly so, they didn't use it to their advantage.
Next I fought the 105kg guy. This guy was super aggressive at first, but soon he found that he couldn't do anything with me and he'd frequently find himself in the bottom of pileups. I tried a flying armbar because the opportunity wasn't quite there and looked like quite a fool, but screw 'em. Finally the guy lost confidence in his aggressiveness and this gave me the edge to dump him on his ass when he tried to throw me. I mounted him, he rolled over, and I started digging under his throat. I'm sure this is illegal, but I did it anyways, I kept spearing his adam's apple with my fingers as I dug under his chin. The ref didn't see it because he was curled into a little ball. I wasn't accomplishing anything because I wasn't getting my arm across any further, but I did it anyways and soon we were stood up again. Now the guy went in to throw me, I blocked the throw and shot at his leg, lifting him up and crashing down on top of him. He rolled onto his stomach again and this time I was expecting it. I had my arm in there before he could completely curl up and choked him out. Half of me thinks that he didn't fight it as hard as he could have and that he gave up instead of having me gouge his adam's apple again. I did not get a shido penalty in this match.
My next match was against Greg Moore again, the guy I fought the first time. Now in this match I cannot count the number of times I put him on the ground (none by technical judo throw, mind you) and got his back. I couldn't choke him out once, though, because his big, ungainly girth protected his pudgy neck nicely. I began to gas out at the end of the match, tired of heaving his bulk around, but he was clearly out of energy as soon as the match began. Up until the final half of that match, I was still in my prime. Somewhere in the match I acquired a shido penalty.
Now the final twenty or thirty seconds of the match that are important. We fell to our sides again and he got me in that sloppy kessie again and this time I knew what was happening and had the alotted time to calmy work an escape. I wedged my knees between myself and him, not really sure what kind of an escape would present itself, when he lifted his head up to see what the hell I was doing. I spun as best I could with my arm locked up and hooked my leg around his face. I pulled him backwards, bringing the heel of my foot to the ground, now using my trapped arm to curl around his. If you can't picture it from my description, know that I pulled him backwards down into a technically perfect armbar, the best I've ever done in my entire life. He had his cuff grasped and so I kicked his other hand away, falling back into a perfect submission with his now free and vulnerable arm. I had just begun my descent backwards when the ref called matté and the horn sounded simultaneously. And of course the guy won the match because I was hit with that single shido penalty for... something.
Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Especially when the guy went on to win the tournament!
Oh, I was so upset at myself. If I had just snapped his arm back a little quicker... if the match was just a few seconds longer... god, I'm still pissed off at myself.
Despite that amazing frustration, I'm very happy. I'm going to train very hard for the next two months and hone my unorthadox judo style. There was no reason I didn't win every match today, and I'm very confident than I just have to perfect a few specific skills before I'm golden.
And that was my first judo tournament.
. You basically lucked out because you were in the heavies also. Like in JJ, many of them lack technique , opting for power moves, so you didnt sail. That "sloppy" Kessie will become your worst nightmare in a higher level comp. If you got caught in that one during a takedown, a bette player will land you into a perfect one from Haraie or Tae Otoshi and you wont make it to his back.
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