Matwork Drills: Don't Make It Up on the Spot

Anyone who has been to practice with me can tell you one of my favorite sayings is,

"If you don't know what to do in a situation, the middle of the match is a hell of a time to be trying to figure it out."

Hence, matwork drills! Below is one of my favorite ones. Actually, they're all my favorite one. How many times have you seen this one in a tournament ...

A player is ahead by a score, say a yuko, and there are 30 seconds left in the match. All she needs to do to win at this point is not get scored on. The players are on the mat, with your player on the top. What does the player do? She gets up and ends up thrown for waza-ari, losing the match. 

What should you do in this situation? If you are winning, you should stay down on the mat and eat up the clock. If you are losing, it depends. If you think you have a better chance of scoring on that player standing, you should stand up. One way to stand up is to get the player off of you and stand up. A second way is to get out of bounds so the referee stops the action, makes you stand up and come back to the center. The video below shows a drill we did at the West Coast Judo Training Center yesterday.

The first couple of rounds we did the drill in the center of the mat. The next few rounds we did the same drill but at the edge of the mat, so adding in the option of escaping by going out of bounds.