Tag Archives: koga

Koga vs Mike Swain

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Most judoka know who Koga is and most American judoka know who Mike Swain is.

Mike Swain made history in 1987 by winning the Judo World Championships, the first American to do so. He faced off against the 20 year old Koga in the quarterfinals of that tournament, and threw him twice for what I would argue to be an ippon (but both times was called a wazari). In their next two meetings, Koga ended up the victor, but this single match to me represents a great accomplishment, and even if you didn’t know the two people fighting, it’s still a fun match to watch. I couldn’t find it on YouTube, so I decided to upload it:

And of course, as if you needed proof, here’s a highlight of Koga later in his career.

Travis Stevens Seoi Nage

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As I said in a previous post on this forum, Travis Stevens is one of my favorite judoka to watch. He goes for big throws and has a complete game (including submissions and pins). Too bad in that post I put a video of one of his throws being countered with a powerful ura nage. So I decided to make up for that and make a video highlighting his Koga-esque seoi nage:

He plays righty stance with the left lapel grip and right wrist control. Basically, everyone know what’s coming. It’s either ippon seoi nage, koshi guruma, or a belt grip. But it still works. From the belt grip, he goes for a hip throw or sumi gaeshi. This is very similar to what I do, except of course he throws top level players in the world for ippon with it.

Classic Ippon Seoi Nage

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Let’s be honest here, this “blog” is not about “training and competition” any more than Playboy is about the articles. It’s really just a place where I ramble on about seoi nage on every other post. It’s the throw which I’ve chosen to center my judo around, and it’s the throw that I have come back to for comfort when the world feels like a sad and lonely place. I put Koga’s “A New Wind” video on repeat, open a cold beer, and let my troubles slip away. Okay, not really, but close…

This post is just a quick comment about a revelation I got from a guy that came in to judo yesterday. Name was Bennett, green belt, and hasn’t done judo in a while. We were working on seoi nage the whole class. Bennett started doing fits. He pulled my sleeve like his life depended on it and stepped far in front of me on the turn. At first, I thought this guy was just another clumsy novice whose technique has gone rusty and so he tries to make up for it with drastically over-exaggerating the kuzushi and tsukuri of a classic seoi nage. That’s what he was doing, and he was a bit rusty, but when he started throwing, the technique felt flawless. I felt light as air. It seemed effortless, and these were the least painful seoi nage throws I’ve ever taken.

Kuzushi Judo Off Balance

His pull was strong, and I was letting it happen as a good uke, but as I walked home I realized what everyone has been telling me: that this kind of pull is the key to throwing good people successfully. Movement, timing, speed, power, combinations all create the opportunity for an effective pull, but without training my body to pull every time with exceptional power, I will never be able to throw any good opponent in competition.

Thank you Bennett for demonstrating the fact that is so often told to me, but I always seem to neglect.

Seoi Nage: Post-Criticism

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I’ve recently written a couple posts about seoi nage here and here and also posted a few videos of it up for critique by the kind folks at the Judo Forum here. Because of all the criticism, I found myself questioning every aspect of my technique, which is a great thing for the learning process. I took a couple videos on Monday of a (1) speed throwing drill and (2) regular throwing session.

Putting My Technique up for Criticism

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On an impulse, I put up a video of one of my throwing sessions to a judo forum: JudoForum.com post

The result is a lot of positive and critical comments on the details of the technique. I would summarize the more critical points as:

  • More kuzushi (more pull)
  • Get lower (bend more at the knees)
  • More consistence in throw dynamic
  • More control of uke landing
  • Don’t use crash pad
  • Do standard version of seoi nage before drilling Koga’s version

Each of these points could be argued, but it’s undeniable that they each contain a grain of truth. I’d say that the experience of posting myself performing a technique online for criticism is a positive one. I have a lot to think about and to work on. As long as I don’t take some of the more negative comments to heart, I think I can grow from this experience.

Ben Reinhardt provided links to a few excellent videos on standing seoi nage. One that was particularly interesting to me (and one I haven’t seen before) is of Hidetoshi Nakanishi (1983 world champ) throwing seoi nage for 10 minutes. I downloaded this video and watched it in slow motion. Just doing that over and over is a great visualization tool.

Also, Ben provided links to these three excellent videos:

Not Quite Koga (Yet)

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No lifting, just judo (at Main Line) today.

I successfully escaped being thrown, and actually got a chance to throw about 30 times (te guruma, seoi nage, osoto gari, harai ogoshi, ouchi gari).

Overall it was a very nice training sessions in the sense that Tom closely looked at the way I was doing the Koga seoi nage and made a few details very clear to me. However, most of the uchikomis we did towards the end of the practice, were off of movement, which REALLY highlighted how my balance is not proper for seoi under dynamic conditions. I kept leaning to the left which could easily be taken advantage off in a counter by a good judoka.

Tom’s correction on Koga seoi was to keep my head up and not bend over so much. Also, he said that I need to place my pivot leg (right for right seoi) back farther and place more weight on it. Of course, if I can do a one legged seoi with a tani otoshi. That felt very natural, but I want to try to get down the Koga seoi in the next several weeks. It feel like I could get a lot of power behind it if I get the balance and body position right. I noticed that my legs got a bit tired (burning) when fitting the Koga seoi for prelonged periods of time which means I need to work on my lunges.

I did about 200 uchikomi total.

Lonely Friday without Lonely Matt

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Practice at Mainline Judo Club

I drove a couple girls (Sarah, Joan). Matt had to stay home, so we had another instructor: Nick. It was not the same without seeing Matt on the sidelines with the excited/frustrated “I want to get on the mat, but I shouldn’t” look on his face. Not sure if it was because of me, or because he wanted to keep a fast pace of practice, but Nick made most of the practice uchikomi. I had to thank the Gods again on that one.

Every set of 10-20 fits was followed by push-ups or situps, so the whole thing was quite a good work out. Here is a somewhat accurate list of uchikomi:

  • Any throw (ten times then ten pushups
    • Osoto: 10
    • Koga Seoi: 10
    • Harai ogoshi: 10
    • Right kata guruma: 10
    • Left kata guruma: 10
  • Tai otoshi: 60
  • Uchi mata: 20
  • Seoi nage: 80
  • Tai otoshi: 40
  • Total: 250

Towards the end people started throwing, but I and the new white belt just did fits.

My pecs are sore from benching yesterday, but I did a total of about 500 pushups again today and more stretching than I’d like to remember.

I should note that I wanted to go to the gym but didn’t find time because of low sleep and work all day, plus the 1 hour celebration of dad’s birthday in his lab. It took a lot of will power not to dip into the free ice-cold beer there.

I’m glad Tom showed Koga Seoi Nage Wednesday. I’m not sure I like it better, but the different foot positions are helping me think about where my body is at during the throw. I do feel like I can drive more with the pivot foot so deep and in a “loaded” position.

Watching Judo

A total of about an hour of Olympic judo while eating. Some notes here if I’m especially moved by the match.

Bosch (NED) vs Rousey (USA) of 70kg women was an insane grip fighting match. Mostly, it was Bosch being crazy about basically making it very uncomfortable for Ronda to hold ANY grip. There is a lot to learn from that level of strategic aggression.

Gym Doors Open

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Finally got access to the gym using my card, instead having to sneak in during Judo practice… EDIT: No wait, after I wrote this optimistic sentence in the morning, I then actually tried to get into the gym and failed. I was promised to gain access tomorrow. We’ll see.

Watching Judo

Tiago Camilo (BRA) beat Guillaume Elmont (NED) in the -81kg bronze medal fight at Beijing Olympics. I watched Tiago with suspicion win on questionable calls throughout the competition. Don’t get me wrong, he is an incredible judoka, especially when watching some of his YouTube performances. He is, in fact, the reigning world champion. He threw Elmont with an ouchi-gari for wazari with just a couple minutes left. Elmont was coming off of two amazing golden score matches and looked like he was dead. Despite that, he seemed to miraculously turn out of the powerful ouchi for what was obviously a yuko (landing on his side) but was called a wazari by the chair judges. Anyway, Flavio Canto’s Brazilian torch has been passed I suppose.

Also, the other -81kg bronze medal match between Gontiuk (UKR) and Damdinsuren (MGL) was bad ass. These guys are both beasts of the division, especially Damdinsuren, whose pick ups were Big and full of that scary explosive power that I love about the wrestling-type judoka. But Gontiuk is probably one of my favorite judoka in this Olympics, and luckily (without help from the judges) he came out on top.

Main Line Judo Practice

Stepped back on the mat today, and thank the Gods that Sensei Tom designed the practice with me in mind… about 60-70 minutes of uchikomi, ALL seoi nage. Total number is 360. What we did:

  • Regular seoi (both sides) = 100
  • Opposite foot forward seoi = 100
  • Cross grip seoi = 100
  • Koga seoi = 30
  • Morote seoi with one hand = 20
  • Morote seoi with 270 degree turn and leg lift = 10

From this experience, it’s clear that I need to restrict myself to uchikomi for at least the next week. Then slowly allow throws. NO GROUND WORK (randori or otherwise).

Also I did about 500 pushups today, not for any reason, just as warmup for my shoulder every time I decided to thoroughly stretch it (which was 3 times). Iced it 4 times. Pain echoes are still there and come up sometimes to remind me not to be an idiot.

I read the Russian Judo book for a while and thought about the pick up Matthew practiced a while ago. This is something that I should get good at.

Conclusion: it was good to step back on the mat. Tomorrow, I’ll do the same, and also a lot of good lifting beforehand.