Caffeine Free in Med 3

I am not a nice person

I guess I should amend that. I am not a nice person at judo. How mean I am varies from day to day, but on a competition day, I'm a killer. My first match lasted all of 10 seconds, which my team missed seeing, it was that fast. My second match was a little longer, maybe 20 seconds. I didn't get to fight the black belt I did last year because she gained 20 lbs and I lost 5 which put us two weight classes apart.

My third match was against this younger girl who gave me this sob story about being inexperienced and scared. I thought to myself, "let's go easy on her; I'll use this match to work on my extra throws." Jorn, my sandan, warned me to do otherwise, but I was pretty confident. So we went out there and I held back to see what she was going to put out there, trying my other techniques. She got a penalty for stalling and did a really crappy throw. I dodged the throw and went to choke her. She started to cry, and I didn't have the choke as well as I should have so the ref stood us up to continue the match.

So I backed off a bit and then she tried to go after me. Like seriously go after me. She wasn't being smart, she wasn't using good technique; she was just trying to take me down. My brain said the equivalent of 'are you f*cking kidding me?' Kid gloves off, I saw her go in for a throw, saw that it wasn't going to be a full point, and went down with it. I spun around her and cranked out my most merciless choke.

And she cried more. Too bad.

Lesson learned. Never ever lower your guard for anyone at a competition. Be fierce, be mean, be focused. Take names and crush them. It doesn't hurt to have a powerful okuri eri jime (sliding collar choke) to enforce your will. As I said, I am not a nice person, and I am willing to take you down directly.

(Of course, I was also at this website for people who are less direct.)

posted by Allie @ 3:05 PM