The Wall

The week is nearly over allready but it still feels like its Monday, sometimes the days here just blur into each other.
Lately things have been pretty good, after our hazing period of a couple of weeks the Kidotai/Riot Police Judo team have accepted us into their ranks and are suddenly really friendly and helping us out a bit with our Judo. This coincides nicely with me figuring a few things out and starting to play alot better all of a sudden.

Today the Kyoto Riot Police Judo team had a team fight against a Riot Squad from a neighbouring prefecture, each team putting forth 1 fighter for each weight category starting at -66 and going to +100's. We were able to watch from our teams side which was cool, the fights were really good to watch, these guys all have pace and go at it with 100% for the whole fight. There werent many big ippon throws, our side won over all, mostly through Hold downs, Small points and penalties to the opposition. While it wasnt dramaticly exiting it was still good to watch especially their grip fighting & posturing for a dominant position. Our side didnt actually put forth their strongest team as alot of the toughest guys are injured or preparing for a big competition.

After the competition we did just 6 rounds of randori(sparring) because the guys were probably a bit knackered from the competition. The K1 Muscle man has returned recently (I think he trains out of a neighbouring prefecture riot squad that comes over regularily for training camps) In the last couple of weeks he has improved heaps, he fights like a mad man and uses all these throws and pick ups that look like something in pro wrestling. He actually tried to Toombstone me.

Yesterday after training in the morning (16 rounds of randori) which were really grueling and ego destroying. I probably only got one or two throws in the whole time, the other guys were feeling much the same. We more or less felt like we had hit a wall with our training and stagnating, just going in and getting smashed and being helpless like a beginner. I think it was more an issue of over training or just not enough recovery time since we have been arriving at training feeling like we allready have trained and allways running on empty.

So after training we went to lunch at a neighbouring Universitys cafeteria with Bill Vincent who had came along & a couple of guys from the Kidotai, one of whom took some time a year or so ago to teach Judo in Australia for a few weeks. While he wasnt overly impressed with Australian Judo he felt that the Australian women more than made up for this. Yoskie, one of the riot cops that came along used to attend the University and train Judo there, so he called one of his Kohai (Judo Junior/Slave) from the university and got him to meet him to give him his cafeteria discount card, I cant wait to get some Kohai to run around for me...I'll have to train my brother cameron to behave in this manner upon my return. Everytime he refuses and order I'll choke him out and he will revive to see me waiting there patiently for my task to be carried out. Bill picked up the bill for lunch which was really good of him and much appreciated.

After lunch we felt really burnt out still from training so decided to take the afternoon off to recover a bit, I hate not going to a training but we were all on less than empty energy wise so it was the smart thing to do. Seeing how I trained really well this morning and felt more powerfull than I have in weeks it was definatly the best choice.

Tonight after training I think we are going to dinner with Kasuga Sensei and the Rits Judo team. Recently Rits High School has been training with us as a training camp for them so the dinner may be something to do with them surviving it.


Getting Lee to upload his Digital Camera pictures soon so will post them all.