January 2009 – extricate.org

Randori: Encouraging movement, keeping it upright

I was getting a bit more practice tonight in terms of assistant coaching. This is quite a good introduction as the main coach handles the lesson plan and…well… to be honest they handle pretty much everything, leaving me to wander giving advice when the students put it into practice.

When it came to Randori, some of the physical differences between some of the players came to light. Now, these are juniors, and although some may be roughly the same size, there can be a great difference in age and therefore strength.

Thus sometimes a player would be pretty much pulling their partner all over the place, forcing them down, and it was not uncommon for a throw to occur by means of sutemiwaza.

Sacrifice throws are an important part of any judoka’s toolkit, but executing one on a player who is clearly weaker and smaller than you does not prove much.

Some of the advice I felt appropriate tonight was as follows:

To a player who had thrown their partners several times with sutemiwaza (as above): No more sutemiwaza for you tonight. Use other throws. Encourages broadening horizons. Seconds after this, the player executes a beautiful O goshi. It had the “Ooooh” factor.
To players dragging smaller ones around: Reiterate the point of Randori. Emphasise technique and subtle breaking of balance over RARRRRGH. And, just as importantly, to their partner, give a few tips as to how to handle someone who is stronger (Stay upright, keep moving, attack!).
To hip-blockers. Hip-blocking is a totally valid way of blocking a throw, but to attempt Tani Otoshi afterwards when their partner is clearly stronger is not good. Try stepping round instead and attack. A player tried this after having their Tani Otoshi countered each time, and managed to throw their partner repeatedly with Tai Otoshi. Beautiful.
To the wrestling stance! Two players end up bent right over wrestling. Normally the only throw attempts that result are sutemi waza. Emphasise standing up more, brings out more opportunities (back to movement here!).

All of this is Judo 101 and common sense. But I feel it does have to be pointed out quickly when spotted before bad habits set in. I speak from experience. I know very, very well how reliance on sutemi waza and counters stunted my Judo growth. Now I try and be more upright I am always thinking to myself, “I wish someone had made me do this earlier!”.

Safeguarding and Protecting Children

spc_book

The majority who are involved in Judo are children. You can apply this to sport as a whole. As a result, child protection is a big deal. While it seems child abuse is more prevalent nowadays, that aspect is due more to the media and greater public awareness.

It’s a requirement for coaches in Judo to go on the sports coach UK Safeguarding and Protecting Children workshop. I went on one of these courses, hosted by a combination of the British Judo Association and the British Army.

It was a good course, and essentially goes through everything from the definitions of abuse, the signs, through to the actions to take. The key is to do something if there is suspicion. It is not down to us as coaches (or others involved in the sport) to decide whether abuse has occured, but ignoring the signs is wrong.

The other side of the coin is to protect ourselves! For example, not being in the position where you would be alone with a child: Avoiding one-to-one coaching, or giving a child a lift home. THankfully, Judo is very open as a sport: Clubs are typically run by quite a few people, and parents always made welcome to view sessions in their entirety.

A lot of this stuff is naturally common sense. Good practice would be having at least two coaches on the mat. Dubious practice might be inviting Gary Glitter to coach a session on his own. But it was good to go through it all and get the materials, so if a situation ever arises, I know who to talk to next. Note that clubs should have a dedicated Welfare Officer who have more advanced training (“A Time To Listen”, via the NSPCC).

There is some crossover here with Long Term Player Development (LTPD). As athletes are at different ages different types and levels of training are more appropriate than others. It is important to avoid pushing too hard, as this in itself could be abuse (Think ‘pushy parent syndrome’, berating their child for crying, or losing at a competition). Not to mention ‘helping’ a child meet their weight category with the likes of saunas and wearing bin liners when training!

Very early days for me on the learning about coaching front. I am already thirsty for more.

First adventures with the new Judo rules

I have now refereed for the first time using the new Judo rules. This was at a junior event for orange belt and under but still handy to get a general feel of how they are working out.

First of all, the new ‘on the edge’ ruling is excellent for promoting positive Judo. A very quick summary here is that as long as one player has something touching the contest area, the action may continue (No “Matte”) and a throw which starts from there may be considered for scoring purposes. It kept contests moving and reduced interruption. Perfect. It does need decent sized safety areas to be truly effective and happily these were in place.

No koka! Most contests were ended by Ippon. A minority were decided on other scores. Only one contest I was involved in went to Hantei and was a clear unanimous decision. No koka meant that the sort of scrappy stumbling throws where one player just about was pushed onto the ground is not going to score now. Great!

First penalty is now a warning. I also liked this in action. A few times I had to give this penalty for negative posture, typically stiff-arming to excess. Once given the player opened up and the Judo started to happen. The contest was subsequently ended by players obtaining the scores through technique, as opposed to a score from a penalty. I did not have to give a second penalty to any player throughout the day.

Giving penalties more quickly for negative Judo (drops with no kuzushi, forcing a player down etc). This sort of thing is not so evident at junior level. Warnings were given for ineffective Tomoe Nage attempts, but then the same player did some cracking Ippons later on with the technique! I am reserving judgement on this one until I have refereed some senior contests with it.

A good start!

Judogis – Don’t be thick

Judo4Parents has a great entry giving advice on How and when to buy your child a Judo suit (Judogi).

This got me thinking on my ‘adventures’ with Judogis over the years leading to my current preference on thickness.

I started off with a ‘cheap as chips’ beginners’ gi from Blitz Sport. This served me well but it was so thin that it suffered from terrible shrinkage. The gi top, in particular, ended up looking like I was wearing a t-shirt.

I then moved to heavyweight gis. The likes of the Dax Moskito and Adidas Champion. I’ve used them for both training and competing. Great quality but definitely incredibly thick.

I’ve now switched to a compromise. I love gis now which are lightweight but have enough material to be solid and therefore not suffer too much from shrinkage. Examples are the Fighting Films Master Gi (Re-branded Tagoya) and Mizuno Ichiban.

Upon consideration, here are some reasons as to why you really should be using the more lightweight sort of gi:

Be kind to your Uke. In training, the heavyweight gis are hard to grip (and are designed to be this way). This is no fun for anyone.

The fact that your gi is harder to grip should not be the reason you win in shiai. If this is part of your shiai strategy then think more about what competition is all about. Besides, your gi shouldn’t be saving you from strangles: Your technique should.

The lightweight gis are more comfortable and promote quicker movement than lumbering around in a thick gi. If you want to get more of a ‘sweat on’ then consider an underlayer (I know, not very traditional) or just train harder!
Thicker gis take much longer to dry! Certainly don’t be tempted to ever stick a gi in the dryer.

Any thoughts?

First steps in coaching (gently, due to broken toe)

I had my first steps in coaching last night, albeit in the role of an assistant coach during the session. This is obviously the sensible way to start – There is no way that I can possibly claim to have the experience yet to take a session on my own.

In fact, the UKCC Level 1 Coaching Course that I am going on soon is classed as “Assistant Coach” level, so it will be perfect. Slow steps!

My steps are particularly slow at the moment as I broke one of my toes at the weekend. Unfortunately, despite attending two judo sessions over that weekend I can’t give some story here about some amazing thing I did. Instead, I broke it when falling down the stairs. Sigh.

So, how did the coaching go?

It was the junior class and I would say the average age was about eight or so. The numbers were lower than normal but this made it easier, as we had just the right number for each coach on the mat to work with a pair.

Children are a marvel to work with. So distinct in their personalities, and even in the warm-up I became very aware that I really did have to be setting as an example, as they were watching!

I think one of the main challenges for me was explaining the Judo exercises we were doing in the right language. Getting the points across by way of demonstration and talking it through. Part of me was wanting to start talking about the fundamentals of a throw (kuzushi etc) but I realised that these are very young children and everything has to be done at the right level.

So I can’t wait for the coaching course and, of course, much more experience to start learning all the tricks.

I stayed on for the senior session, where I was training myself. Chris Doherty, Regional Technical Officer, was there to show some exercises, which were great. He is also a big fan of the fundamentals, which I suppose you would expect from someone in his position!

Plus it turns out he is a tutor on the Bath course I have applied for. Excellent.

Toe very painful. It stunted a lot of my Judo and I was forced to find workarounds. Forward throws were pretty much out. Especially ones involving bending the knees. Newaza was not so bad as I could try and keep the toe out of harms way, and it was nice to try and find an advantage when a “foot down”!

Worked on Ko Soto Gake in tachiwaza randori, as once my foot was hooked behind, the toe was out of danger! In a way, it made me work harder to complete the throw as I didn’t want to back out as it could injure the toe. Hmmm. I should be careful…

New Judo rules – Leg grab interpretation

The new IJF rules are now in effect in the UK. I have yet to use them myself but have been studying them, so I do look forward to it. First competition for that is this coming weekend.

I did make an error in my initial study of one aspect of the new rules, with regard to leg grabs.

My own interpretation was that grabbing the trouser cloth was allowed if absolutely simultaneous with an attack.

Elaine Down (BJA Refereeing Commission and IJF Referee) has been kind enough to clarify this correctly (Emphasis hers):

At no point can tori take hold of the trouser (actual cloth) to execute a throw – simultaneous or not..

A shido penalty will be immediately awarded when tori ‘grabs‘ the trouser (cloth) when this action takes place.

Exception: Whilst the throw is taking place and tori losing his grip or cup of uke’s thigh or calf and is holding the trouser cloth on completion of the technique. (This would only mean a momentarily time that tori holds the cloth – if at all). No shido will be given.

It is going to be very interesting seeing this in action. Note the above is referring to the cloth – cupping the leg, as per Morote Gari or Kata Guruma, is still permitted.

Also remember that grabbing the trouser cloth for defensive purposes is also an insta-shido.

Tell the user what is going on!

At work I rebooted my desktop to be delightfully told the following by Windows on startup:

“Installing managed application: Symantec Endpoint Protection”

Or words to that effect. So far, this is doing well with regard to this post’s theme of telling the user what is actually happening.

However, the UI is pretty bad here in that the message is static. There is no indication that anything is actually happening behind the scenes. At this point, the user is not able to actually do anything other than wave the mouse pointer around.

This is not usually a problem when the actions behind the scenes complete quickly. In this case, I was staring at the same screen ten minutes later, with my eyes flicking to the hard drive activity light.

I rebooted as I was not convinced anything was happening and this time just logged straight in. It did not try installing again.

I spoke to the guys behind the scenes and was told I should have waited for fifteen minutes instead.

Some very much common sense guidelines in this area that really should be followed:

When something big is happening behind the scenes that takes control away from the user, provide a progress indicator! This is pretty standard for normal installations. The same should happen as the “Managed install” level. I wonder if this is fixed in Windows 7?

Okay, the first one is not fixable in this situation. So, sysadmins who are looking after these things: Tell your users about the install! A simple email about what is going on, saying to wait for fifteen minutes, and everything is okay would suffice. Always avoid just rolling out arbitrary changes which impact everyone without proper notification.

Microsoft Songsmith + Auto-Tune = World Domination

Microsoft are not stupid. Their video advertising campaign for Songsmith is horifically tacky but it has gone viral and the download sites are taking a bit of a hammering.

I am still downloading the product to check it out but it strikes me that Microsoft may have cunningly found a way to recoup some of the money they may lose as a result of the EU chasing them again. If they combine the product with some form of Auto-Tune (automatic pitch correction, some modern releases are smothered in it), they will probably make enough money to buy the world.

By the way, be careful when looking up examples of Auto-Tune. Once you get the feeling for the shimmery-ness (technical term) it adds to recordings, you can’t miss it! Well, when it is abused, anyway. This is similar to not being able to un-hear the major compression abuse, such as on the new Metallica album.

Syncing iPhone with Outlook – Calendar time warp

I am now the happy owner of an iPhone 3G. Full review to come, and in particular, I am going to compare and contrast with the HTC Touch Pro that I owned previously.

I was having a problem with syncing the iPhone calendar with Outlook. All my appointments were making the journey but they were being time shifted seven or so hours.

My time zone was correct on both the iPhone and the PC, but I missed something: There is seperate time zone support in the Calendar application.

If you have this problem, here is the fix:

1. Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
2. Scroll down to the ‘Calendars’ section.
3. Go into ‘Time Zone Support’, and ensure that the Time Zone also matches where you are. Mine was set to California!

For reference, the general time zone for the device is set as follows:

1. Go to Settings -> General -> Date & Time.
2. Adjust “Time Zone” to suit.