Drill week! Guest cinch podcast from Hayward Nishioka

Since this week has been declared DRILL WEEK by the unanimous vote of all people polled in the entire population of me, we have a guest cinch podcast on situations where drills can be useful, with my special guest, Hayward Nishioka. You'll have to turn up the volume near the end when Hayward answers the last question. He is more shy and soft-spoken than me. Yeah, hard to imagine.



In the podcast, Hayward talks about two situations, fighting at the edge and taking an unorthodox grip. If you have a chance to watch his video, Get a Grip, it is well worth it. One of the drills he does in the video is have players fight for 30 second or 1 minute rounds with a specific grip. Personally, I like to get very tight to the person, almost a bear hug. As Hayward says, most people are uncomfortable in positions like that, and since I have practiced attacking from that position (in my drills) and you probably haven't practiced being in that position at all, the advantage goes to me.

In case you have been living under a rock most of your life and don't know who Hayward Hiroshi Nishioka is, let me enlighten you. Hayward is the only one I know who, in the course of his judo career, has participated in the world judo championships as a player, a coach and a referee.  Not all the same year, of course, he's not THAT awesome.

He has a new book out, called Judo: Coaching, Strategy and the Science for Success. It's available at many local bookstores and on-line at Amazon, Borders, and just about everywhere books are sold. It's nice to see a judo book getting such wide distribution, but not too surprising, because, after all, he IS Hayward.

Oh, I want to say something about the Get a Grip DVD. Someone made the comment,

"Is this the same old videos copied to DVD?"

So, I just want to make the comment

"Who the f*** are you, buddy? It has great drills on it and great ideas. People who think they invented judo last week ought to be taken out and submitted to uchi mata by Hayward about 10,000 times until they learn some manners. Yes, it was done a long time ago and has some great concepts and drills for improving your gripping significantly. It does not have the latest computer graphics with ninjas riding in on my little ponies. Shut the f*** up, watch it and learn something."

NOTE: Previous statements not endorsed by Hayward nor his publishers, who are no doubt at this very moment asking him very politely if he could please never speak to me again.