Judo Part 3

So i went to Judo for a few years. I learned a bunch of stuff on the mats. One of the interesting thing about martial arts is that you learn a bunch of stuff on the mats, a lot of intricate technique and then when you try it in the real world, none of it actually works. If you stick with it and use your head, eventually you begin to figure out what stuff works for you and what doesn't and why, and what stuff is so stylized that it only applies to your specific art and what stuff can translate into the real world.

Judo is often portrayed as simple, probably as a result of Western misunderstanding: if he pushes, you pull. If she pulls, you push. That's just a part of it. I remember early in my Judo studies i took that concept waaay too literally. A guy pushed me on the school bus so i pulled him hard...and he landed right on top of me. Had i learned about choke holds, this might have been an acceptable or possibly advantageous position to be in. It wasn't. I did, however, use one of the foot sweeping throws and pins that i learned in Judo while on a Scout trip. We got jumped by a bunch of older scouts, and one guy grabbed me by the collar with both hands. This was similar to the Judo grip i'd been working off of for a couple of years, so i went on autopilot & did the one thrown i'd done hundreds of times. It worked and i pinned the fellow and held him until he agreed not to be a jerk anymore.

Enough of the real world stuff. Let's talk tournaments.

I went to a Judo tournament on a Thursday night back in grade 8. My mother drove me through the fog to get to somewhere far away (it was really foggy). We arrived at the tournament and i remember walking in and thinking "this is crazy". We were in a gymnasium where there were about a dozen matches going on at once. I found out that i had to fight a guy from my own club first, which was awkward. I beat him because he flubbed two throws that i was able to reverse and i pinned him both times. Next up i had to fight a kid who was really cocky and i beat him too because he fought over confidently and i was able to get a hip throw on him. My third fight was against a kid named Moose. They did the matches based on age rather than size, and Moose was an early bloomer. He made short work of me. The funny thing was that i wasn't all that nervous about any of these fights, and there was a reason for that. That was it for me in the tournament.

When we first arrived, i recall hearing blood curdling screams coming from one of the areas in the gym. It turned out that it was where the girl's matches were going on. The screams were coming from these girls who were beating the crap out of each other, throw after throw after throw. They were animals and made the boys look like we weren't even trying. My fear was that i was going to have to fight them in a match. I wasn't scared to fight a girl (i'd been beaten up by girls before, so no biggie), but rather, i was scared to fight one of *these* girls who clearly had escaped from a maximum security prison for pint-sized Amazons. They were MUCH scarier than any of the boys. When i found out that boys didn't fight girls in this tournament, i was so relieved that they could have put me up against a (male) Sumo wrestler and i would have been happy about it.

I didn't win any trophies at that tournament but Gary did promote me to the next belt level (green).

Eventually Gary skipped town. I don't know why but he was gone. His sister took over the class. She was not as mean as Gary but she was still tough.

One day i woke up and my knee had ballooned up to 3 times its normal size. I don't know how this had happened (probably Judo) but i was on crutches & a cane for the next few months and then had to be really careful. The doctors never figured out what had gone wrong. I did not end up going back to Judo. I wish i had but what can you do.

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Before it all ended, i remember one night we had found a big 3 foot thick crash mat in the gymnasium. Gary wasn't around yet so a few of us took it and set it up on the stage below a balcony. We took turns jumping off the balcony (which was probably 6 or 7 feet up) and flipping & screaming down onto the crash mat. Gary walked in during the middle of this escapade, looked at us, shook his head and said "You guys are idiots. 100 pushups."

He was, however, trying to conceal his laughter.