On Sunday, January 19th, we had just our second in house tournament. The first one was all the way back in September 2018!
As before our tournaments allow leg grabs in all divisions. (Note: In 2010 the International Judo Federation enacted a partial ban on leg grabs when one or both players are standing, which was quickly followed by a total leg grab ban. This change was not made for safety reasons – mostly it was to make judo look better on television and encourage more big throws.)
We also had some great no gi judo matches. Our rules for no gi judo were:
- All leg grab takedowns allowed
- Mae hadaka jime (guillotine choke) allowed
- All arm locking techniques allowed
- No leg locks
- All other judo scoring criteria the same: a match-ending ippon for throwing your opponent with both shoulder touching the mat, with force and control, and a wazari for throws that land an opponent on one shoulder. Ippon is also given for a tap or a 20-second pin, and wazari for pins held between 10-19 seconds.
Out of five no gi matches, we saw a few wins by throw, one by pin, one by choke and one by ude garami (kimura arm lock). Ryan and John went best two out of three in heavyweight no gi. Thanks to Michael Yoon of Cal Judo and Jon Pagni of Omar Kasdi BJJ for putting on a show in the advanced no gi division!
Our kids divisions were a lot of fun as well. Thank you so much to Sensei Michael Jen of Smash Gyms and Sensei Adham Ramadan of Griffin Performance Judo for bringing your kids to participate! We’ll do another one in a few months, and hopefully we’ll make it an even smoother and better experience next time.
