Gareth and Ude Gaeshi

We were blessed with the reappearance of Gareth this week. This intermittent character is often unable to train for long periods due to work commitments so it is always a pleasure when he pops in.



Gareth is a gracious and honest fella who always trains with good spirit despite somewhat dodgy knees.

As promised there was a (slight) departure from the normal run of the mill class although my "quick" recap of the four techniques seemed to take up half the session. Here are a few snaps of the guys doing some of the techniques.






To be honest most of the shots were of ude gaeshi (elbow fold technique) since that is when I had the camera out.

The difficulty most beginners have is a fear of falling. They get all stiff when a technique is being done on them and this means that the thrower is not able to learn how to break balance easily and can in drastic situations lead to injury where the uke tries not to fall and ends up hurting themselves.

Despite some of these fears the guys continue to appear to be enjoying themselves.



After the review of the past two weeks we played with a form of kote mawashi (nikyo) and kote gaeshi (wrist fold) which demonstrated that whatever side you avoid a strike there is always a technique available.

Thanks to Rupert, Gareth and Peter for supporting the class.