Alasdair Stuart's Blog

Let’s talk about fear for a moment. There was a time when fear grabbed my jacket before I’d even left the house. My pulse would rise, the bottom of my stomach would fall and I’d walk to Judo with a sick feeling. I was the fat kid. No, not even the fat kid, I was the fat, 35 year old nerd who had no business whatsoever stepping onto the mat with chiselled young gods and goddesses with biceps, pectorals and all those other things that I’d successfully buried under a couple of decades worth of chocolate and pie.

That fear, to my tremendous surprise, has faded. I didn’t even notice it go. It left a friend though; the simple fear of reinjuring myself. I go on about this I know, but its been close to four months that I’ve been working with a busted wheel. It’s better, almost completely better but I still can’t kneel properly, still can’t move quite right, still don’t trust myself with the injured knee. There was a twang, and there was a scream and nothing has been quite the same since.

Then there’s the fear of getting beaten up. Make no mistake, I am 6’1 and over 300 pounds, but I’ve been frightened of fighting my entire life, for two reasons. The first is that, well, I’m a nerd. I talk, I actually talk for a living on some levels and the idea of solving a problem by beating someone up is something which I find massively unsettling and, well, a little uncouth.

Then there’s the other fear. Because I’m Big you see. I’ve been Big my entire life, a little too big for the world. I break things sometimes, or used to, because my spatial awareness wasn’t great because, well, I’m Big. You have to be careful when you’re Big. Careful and patient and you must never, ever under any circumstances lose your temperature. Because not everyone else is Big and if you lose your temper with someone who isn’t Big you could hurt them very badly.

I’m Big. I’m Clever. The two sometimes feel mutually exclusive.

So I’m scared when I step onto the mat. It makes sense, because fundamentally what you’re doing is learning to hurt people. And they’re learning to hurt you. And sometimes when people learn they make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes lead to twanging. And screaming. And four months of physio.

I do it anyway. This may be bravery. It may be masochism. I prefer to think of it as a healthy respect for my art and my fellow students. And also maybe a little fear.

I’ve been scared recently for a different reason and it’s a slightly embarrassing one. I’m tough. Not in that ‘Can be punched many times without being hurt’ way but rather that I’m difficult to hurt. I’ve been seriously ill maybe three times in my life and seriously injured exactly twice. The first time I broke my arm by literally falling off the ground and the second involved a twang and a scream.

I’m scared of getting hurt again. Because I’m a cynic, and because whilst the black dog doesn’t live at the bottom of my garden he certainly plays there and most of all because I understand story on a genetic level. Now is the perfect time for our hero (Who in ths instance is me) to be seriously injured again just before he completes his recovery. In fact, the only time that’s more narratively smart for me to get injured again is less than a week before a tournament.

Again.

The thing I’m scared of is randori because randori is free practice and that means it can’t be predicted. Someone will turn the wrong way, push the wrong way, you’re as likely to do the same and before you know it it’s back to the bottom of the rehab ladder. So I don’t spar, apart from select circumstances and when I do I’m slow, I’m clumsy, I’m cautious.

Let’s talk about caution and violence for a moment. Caution in any martial art is a good thing. Fundamentally, you’re doing a combat sport, you’re fighting someone, and whilst the ‘storm in and blitz them’ approach works in the short term, it won’t work forever. No one’s Rocky, no one has fists of stone or muscles of granite. Everyone gets tired, everyone makes mistakes and everyone gets shut down when they do. So caution’s good, caution’s your friend, up to a point.

That point is when you freeze up and that’s where our old friend fear makes a return. Make no mistake, Judo is scary. Any combat sport is scary, but for me, at least there’s something visceral and frightening about the loss of control inherent in Judo. Your opponent isn’t just trying to beat you, they’re trying to throw you off your feet, hyper extend a joint until you can’t take the pain, choke you unconscious or just hold you still for twenty five seconds. Fighting hurts. Judo hurts.

So there goes the fear again, as the Doves once sang, and the way you deal with it is the way you deal with all fear. You face it. You look it in the eyes and you prepare for pain. You accept that pain, and the fact it won’t and can’t last forever, you can face your fear.

I sparred this week. More than I have for almost four months. I had two standing fights with no ground work and I lost one and won one. I threw a blue belt with Tai Otoshi, the throw that injured me, and it felt great. I turned, yanked, he sailed through the air in a perfect circle and landed on his back. My knee stung, a little, once.

I sparred on the ground too. Three times. I won two and I lost one. Groundfighting is the closest Judo gets to striking forms for me, because it’s there that things get fast. You and your opponent grapple for position, legs get thrown odd places, arms lock and you roll and turn and struggle until one of you is pinned, one of you taps or you’re both exhausted.

That last one happened. I was sparring with a black belt about six years my junior. I’ve worked with before, he’s a good guy, and like a lot of people cross trains with us and Brazilian Jujitsu. BJJ is Judo without the standing work and it excels at moving your opponent on the ground and locking in a never ending stream of extremely painful holds. I excel at being put IN extremely painful holds so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence when we started and locked up.

He turned under me, locked his legs around my arm and extended. This is an armbar. It’s the thing that, at the moment, former Judo Olympian Ronda Rousey is using to destroy her Mixed Martial Arts opponents as fast as possible. It hurts.

I stood up out of it. Just put my mass behind it and pulled and got my arm clear. I closed on him, put him down, got one of his shoulders on the mat and just ground. I have a lot of mass and I’m not scared to use it anymore so I pushed him into the ground, looked for a couple of holds, never quite got either and he tried his level best to get out of them.

The drill got stopped. I sort of slumped off him and we lay there for a moment before he patted my arm and said something which I think was ‘nice one’. I may have grunted. My heart rate was up. I was gasping for breath, my throat was dry and I’d not won.

But I had fought. Five half matches in one session, two good throws, a good solid choke attempt, some welcome tips from higher belts and exhaustion. Together those don’t just add up to victory, they add up to something better. Hope, possibility and the very real knowledge that I’m making progress, that I’ve earned my place on the mat. All of it, the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the caution, all of it is worthwhile because of that.

I’m scared of the big mat. There’s a good reason for this, and one we need to talk about. My Judo club is laid out on a balcony in the Railway Institute. There’s a sprung floor, two mats wide, some gym gear and an endearing and very small kitchen. Oh and a rack of water bottles with a sign beneath it saying

Lost Water Bottles. Are these yours?

Which appears to have been there a lot longer than I have. It’s not big, but it’s compact, neat, well put together.

The big mat is a different story. On the ground floor of the Railway Institute, where trains were once built and repaired, there are nine Badminton courts. The big mat, when it’s laid out, is laid out across a couple of these courts. It’s commonly used for tournaments, laid out so there are two competition areas with an alleyway between them. That’s the first problem. The first time I saw the big mat was as a spectator, sitting watching the tournament I’d prepared to compete in for close to a month happen without me. The big mat, right then, became something that I could see but not touch, somewhere I was allowed to be but not as anything other than a spectator.

It got worse when I came back and trained for the first time too; I spent a miserable training session down on the big mat not trusting myself, my leg, my skills, my memory or anything else. I remember getting changed for that session and being genuinely excited as I pulled on my new knee braces and ankle guards, promising that I wouldn’t spar, that I wouldn’t push myself. It didn’t matter. The knee brace irritated my skin, the ankle braces were basically socks with the toes and heels cut off and I was slow, lumpen, frightened. I was failing, worthless, being left behind and managing to do that on a larger mat, in front of even more people than usual.

I have a problem with the big mat.

James Brown, however, does not have a problem with the big mat. The godfather of soul may have long since been ushered off the mortal stage, a cape around his shoulders, but it turns out he has a fondness for the gentle way. Or at least, the gentle way has a fondness for him.

Warm up routines at Judo are a variable feast. Sometimes they remind me exactly how unflexible I am, sometimes they’re an exercise in terror as we do endless forward rolls and occasionally they make me feel like a large man who’s getting larger in the right way, fat turning to muscle, flexibility replacing stiffness.

They’ve never made me laugh before though.

We were on the big mat, being taken by a gentleman with a red and white striped belt. This, in Judo, marks him out as an official grownup. You’re assessed for belts up to brown and from there, when you start earning black belts you can either earn them by gaining points for fighting existing black belts or you can earn them academically. The first is harder, the second is slower, they’re both on my list of things to look at because my plan with belts is very simple; I turn 35 this year. I want to have my black belt in time for my fortieth birthday.

Once you have your black belt, of course, it’s not over. You go from 1^st Dan black belt to 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and so on. Once you get to 6^th Dan blackbelt, you’re awared a red and white striped belt, white standing for purity and red for the intense desire to train. You get this far? You’re in the top couple of percent of people who’ve studied your art. You get higher than this? Well, there have only ever been 15 10^th Dan black belts. The company gets rarified the higher you go.

Which is why this gentleman, whose name I didn’t catch, coming out, pressing play on his laptop and leading us through an aerobic warm up to ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown was so surprising. Ne of the things that has always attracted me to Judo is the refreshingly low amount of macho chest beating bollocks but hand in hand with that is a certain seriousness. You’re learning how to throw people, choke them, break their limbs, knock them out by punching them in the body with the ground. It’s fun, there’ve been very few sessions that someone hasn’t laughed in but underneath all that is the knowledge that this is a very serious, brutal, efficient way of fighting.

James Brown clearly got that memo and decided to rub some funk on it.

You see, it’s also perfect Judo. It disarmed us all, instantly, put us on our mental backs and gave us the licence to relax. As the lesson went on, we broke down into pairs and focussed on driving the big bus. De ash barai is a throw where you drag your opponents’ arms around to one side whilst simultaneously sweeping their outer leg out. It’s two movements, done in perfect combination and done right it’s a fight winner. You put them down, land on them and pin or choke until they tap out and you win.

Done wrong, it’s embarrassing. Step, step, step pull sweep becomes step, step, step sweep miss or step, step, step sweep ankle kick or step, step, step sweep thin air. It all comes down to rhythm and pacing, and knowing to start the throw on the step before the step you throw on.

I hated it. Partnered with dour Scottish Dave we walked up and down the mat and I missed it every, single.time. Every permutation of failure fell out of my ankles and my hands as I failed to do three basic movements in order. I got frustrated, I got embarrassed, I remembered why I hate the big mat. Because I’m injured and weak, because I have no flexibility and speed and confidence, because I’m scared of moving my left leg.

And that, right there, was the breakthrough. We walked through the throw at quarter speed, and Dave, who is as boundlessly patient as he is cheerfully ruthless, pointed something out. I wasn’t landing the throw for two reasons; firstly because my pacing was ever so slightly off and secondly because I was pulling my left leg back instead of leaving it in place and using it as a platform for the throw. Four inches. Four inches lost through three months of pain and psychological trauma, and fear.

In a month it’s going to be three inches. Then two. Then one. Because fear is something you can negotiate with, and sculpt. Fear is something you have to have a dialogue with, bend to your will. Fear is something you wrestle with, and wrestling, these days is something I know a little about.

We got to start that particular fight too, as the instructor very pointedly called all the white and red belts out to demonstrate the technique. We’d all been partnered with high belts, all been nurse maided and were all given the chance to shine in front of the class. None of us landed it right first time but we all did it, all walked out and made the big mat our own for a minute.

The lesson rounded off like it began, classic funk and soul underpinning a Simon says game that taught me, to my tremendous surprise, that my forward rolls are on the way back. Then, the Godfather of soul, who in my mind was of course wearing a gold lame gi (With a cape), bowed, did that splits thing he did, and shimmied off the big mat. He’d made it his own and shown me I could too.

From time to time, Judo gets a bad rap. It doesn’t have the flashy strikes of Karate or Taekwondo, lacks the apparent chaos of mixed martial arts and has been eclipsed in grappling and wrestling circles by it’s own children, the Judo-derived martial arts of Brazilian Jujitsu and Sambo. Judo’s like the Beatles, one of those bands which is utterly influential, lies at the heart of almost everything and yet is distanced, not relevant, safe.

My adam’s apple begs to differ.

Chokes in Judo are a cheerful combination of politeness and savagery. You lie down, your opponent lies down behind you. They close their hands around your throat, you struggle, you fail, you tap out. If you don’t, and in competition you have the option not to, you will be rendered unconscious in a little over ten seconds. When you wake up you’ll have a headache from the pressure, your throat will be bruised and swollen, your voice will be shot and you’ll be disoriented. Oh and also? You might have urinated on yourself whilst you were unconscious.

Judo. It may not have knockouts but it does have moves you’ll still be feeling weeks later.

I like chokes. Actually I love them, they’re one of my favourite elements of Judo and I’ve spent some time thinking about why recently. I’m polite, I’m softly spoken, I’m self-deprecating. I like jamming my forearm under my opponent’s throat, gripping my hands together and dragging my hand back and up until they gurgle and submit. Who needs fancy kicks and knockouts when yu can take away your opponent’s capacity to breathe?

That’s the first reason why I’m attracted to chokes; they’re endgames. Literally one of the first things I was told when I started learning was ‘fuck them up first.’ I’m a big man, and as I’ve said before, I’m out of shape. That causes problems with breath, specifically how much I have and how I use it.

By the way, this is a common problem amongst fighters of any discipline, size or skill level. Watch any boxing match and look at how the fighters clinch more often as the fight goes on. Look at any wrestling form or MMA bout and look at how many times someone leans on the fence of the cage, or puts their opponent in a hold that doesn’t hurt them, but does immobilise them. It’s catching your breath, taking a moment to gather your strength. Fighting, of any stripe and any level, is tough and you have to get your rests where and when you can. Or to put it another way, you can go down the Rocky route and throw everything at your opponent constantly but two things will happen. You’ll get very tired very fast and your opponent will see you coming and get out of the way. Or, more likely, see you coming, use your own speed and size against you and put you down, hard. Then, because it’s suitably ironic, chances are you’ll get choked out. So you don’t do that, you put them down fast and hard and you strangle them out because that way you’ve got gas in the tank for the next fight. Or at least that’s the theory. Fast I’m working on, hard I can do and the chokes are getting there.

The second reason I like them is that they’re one of the few areas where my size works for me. I’ve learnt in the last two months, that my size has been my crutch and it’s all too easy to lean on it. When you’re built like this it’s very easy to get a technique good enough and go the rest of the way on brute strength and that’s all well and good, again, right up to the point where you’re too tired to move and your opponent wins. Chokes though, are an area where the heavier you are, the better you’ll do. You hold your opponent down and apply it, or you lock them in place and apply it or you crank a strangle on fast and hard and because you’re bigger than the other guy, you get it on first, he taps out first and you win.

Or at least that’s the theory. The practice is a little different at the moment, thanks to being two and a half months out from my injury. I’m slow on my knees, worthless in randori because when I turn and move I’m guarding my knee and I’m not trusting it to move. Not yet. Soon but not yet.

The third reason I like chokes is simple and a little hard to admit; chokes let the beast out. I’ve prided myself my entire life on being polite and quiet and softly spoken and not getting angry and being fine. Please understand I’m not whittling small balsa dolls of my enemies and crushing them or anything like that.

At least not anymore.

Let’s talk about frustration for a moment. Frustration is something that’s been bubbling up to the top of my life with Judo recently, because of my injury. I’m guarding my leg, I’m not able to kneel properly, or fight from my back and randori is something I both want and don’t because it’s where I got hurt. I want to fight. I can’t fight. I want to train to the best of my ability. I can’t. I want to do something and for now I can’t.

The top of my body’s fine though. In fact, the top of my body’s great, and as a result, chokes are a chance to let some of that frustration out. When I put a strangle on, I put it on like I mean it, not hard but not pulling any punches and when it sinks in, when I feel my opponent give up a split second before they actually tap, a little bit of that frustration’s released. It’s not much but it’s enough. It makes it all worth while, the limping, the rehab, the frustration at seeing everyone else do hat I want to do. It reminds me I’m still there, that te strength and speed and confidence I’ve lost is going to come back. It gives me hope in the flexing of muscle and closing of airways.

Plus chokes are frequently very funny. Something about them simultaneously focusses you and gives you and your partner licence to break the tension as much as you can. This is particularly necessary when you’re driving your elbow into your opponent’s head to shove it out of alignment and lock in a strangle hold or using their jacket, their mass and gravity to close off their airways. This is why Steve and I christened a three stage strangle the gentleman, the cad and the bounder, because each stage becomes progressively less polite and why one strangle will forever be known as Haddocky Jimmy. This name was christened by Karen, one of the club brown belts. Karen remembers the strangle, who’s real name is Hadaka Jime, because you ‘swim’ your hand under your opponent’s chin until it’s in place then crank backwards and upwards. Hence, Haddocky Jimmy.

Chokes aren’t polite. They aren’t nice. They’re brutal, often elaborate manouvers designed to render your opponent unconscious as fast as possible and with as minimum possible effort for you. But they bring out the best in Judoka because in order to do them right you also have to look after your partner. After all, if you put it on too rough, then the only thing that’ll happen is they do the same to you a few minutes later. They’re polite swords, softly spoken and unflashy weapons that will finish a fight in seconds. Strangles are like Judo itself, not flashy, not showy and not to be underestimated, something to aspire to as well as to fear and respect. I rather like that.

I do have music but rhythm? Not so much. Honestly, that’s the first time I’ve even spelt the word right first time. Don’t get me wrong, part of Operation Batman remains learning how to ballroom and/or swng dance, but right now I’m an elephant footed lummox. Not in a bad way. I happen to be rather good at being an elephant footed lummox, but it’s not a destnation, just somewhere I’m passing through on my way somewhere else.

Let’s talk about rhythm for a moment, and yes that’s twice I spelt it right but I cheated this time and could look at the first time. We worked on rhythm (Three for three!) this week a lot, and how you can internalise it and make it work for you. Because when it works right you’re not just working at the right speed, you’re also putting each part of your body in place in the right order, dominoes falling in a straight line between the start of the bout and either victory or walking off the mat with both of you unharmed. Then of course there’s the other way that rhythm works. You keep on rhythm you keep on game plan, you’re not thrown off, you’re not thrown. They’re working to you, you’re not working to them.

Which is why we spent a lot of this lesson falling over. The forward breakfall is one of the two things I’m legitimately gunshy about because it involves falling over. Forwards. Onto your neck. Or at the very least around your neck. I’ve not got a good record with this sort of thing, so the thought of not only surviving the front roll but landing with my legs in a specific position didn’t exact fill me with confidence.

Did it anyway.

Then there was the tempo work. Wes likes to work with rhythm, and he clapped out a tempo whilst we went through a throw up to the actual commitment moment. Now I call that particular moment ‘Going Elvis’, for two reasons. The first is that I remember Space: Above and Beyond and the specific moment in one episode where someone goes past half fuel and keeps going saying ‘Going Elvis. It’s now or never.’ The second is that that moment is pretty much where I live with Judo, especially at the moment.

I’m hurt. I go on about it a lot I know but it colors every moment of exercise I do. I’m rehabbing well, certainly, but it’s going to have been a quarter of a year that I’ve been out of full action and slightly more than that beore I’m over the psychological hurdles. But more on that another time. For now, Going Elvis is what I do every time I get changed, every time I step onto the mat and every time I don’t do randori or have to explain why I’m not. It’s now or never. It’s always going to be now.

So, we worked to rhythm (Yes I am just putting this in now to show you I can spell the word. I didn’t even look this time.) and it was great. It kept things deliberate, kept things precise. We still went too fast, still didn’t quite hit our marks and kept going. You learn by trying. You learn by doing. You learn by going Elvis. You learn by being the training dummy of a US Marine. Or at least I do.

I was pulled out to demonstrate the Kesa Gatame hold and by demonstrate it I of course mean having it demonstrated on me. As Wes pointed out ‘Everyone loves to see the big guy get put down’ and so I laid down whilst Wes jammed my arm around him, hit me very hard in the ribs with his chest and held me very, very tightly in place.

It was great. Kesa Gatame is a great hold and everything he showed us helped. What was particularly fun was the escape from Kesa Gatame, which involves rolling sideways into your opponent, pushing them up your body and rolling them over you. This is simultaneously very effective and weirdly easy to do. The old adage about a lever large enough will turn the world applies to Judo too and it’s fascinating to hit the rhythm of it and watch your opponent go sailing over the top of your head. Simple, elegant, effective and done at the right speed, crushing.

Those four words perfectly sum up the lesson actually. Wes walked us through stuff at speed, made us work, made us focus and made us efficient. Every movement was strong rather than brutish, every secondary movement precise and decisive. Wes ranked 5^th in the English championships last year. Having been taught by him for an hour I can see why. He was always moving, always present, always reassuring or encouraging and, like Jamie, always human. The first time he passed us, he made my training partner laugh by pointing out the best way to lift opponents who are taller than you. When he came back around, he made me laugh by saying ‘See, now there’s the other problem. Even worse, she’s a girl and they cheat, they wear their belts higher than they should’ and showed me how to pick up smaller opponents effectively. He also, in the middle of a particularly inane but very enthusiastic attempt to muscle my opponent over my head told me to ‘Relax, hoss.’ Something which I was indecently pleased about.

The lesson rounded out with a little yellow belt prep which again was a very welcome addition. I’m very close to being ready for my yellow belt grading and it was great to get a chance to break off and work through the one thing about the yellow belt which has genuinely been worrying me; landing on my face.

Let’s talk about breakfalls for a moment. Breakfalls are the glue of Judo, the techniques that hold the sport together and keep you safe on the mat. Get thrown backwards? Breakfalling teaches you to land on your shoulders and slap the mat with one hand. Likewise being thrown to either side, you’re taught to roll across the mat and again slap a hand down.

Forward breakfalls are different. Forward breakfalls, when you’re thrown onto your face, require something a little bit more dramatic. Mae Ukemi is a wonderful, flowing name for ‘I jump onto my forearms to stop myself jumping onto my face.’ It’s a faintly ridiculous move that is also, or at least, seems, ridiculously dangerous. After all you’re hitting yourself in the arms with the ground. Or in the face if you miss with your arms. It’s a little frightening, a little intense, something you get right or get hurt doing.

So we grabbed a crash mat and began working on it. Knees bent, legs thrown back and down, the trick being landing palms down and the other trick being not double elbow dropping the ground. Now I’ve actually elbow dropped the ground before, successfully cracking the top of one of the bones in my forearm by essentially delivering a pro wrestling style elbow drop onto the ground. I am very good at beating myself up, as shown by both that incident and the time where, when attempting a forward roll, I managed to slam myself in the top of the head very hard. There are upsides, of course, my neck has two degrees extra mobility on each side now, but still, punching myself in the face with the ground was a very real possibility.

Except it wasn’t. We had a couple of rough moments starting off but what started out as a difficult, potentially ground punching enterprise turned out to be surprisingly easy. We figured it out, we worked out how to do it safely and by the end of the lesson I felt a step closer to yellow belt and a step closer to being all the way back. I had my rhythm back and whilst it’s scrappy and slightly stumbly and could really do with better balance it’s my rhythm and I’m finally starting to learn to dance to it.

There’s a noise. It’s a noise I’ve not heard before, not the comforting thuds and deep breaths, not the sounds of breath being pushed from someone’s body or grunts of effort, not the instructor yelling ‘Matte!’ so I can gulp down sweet life giving oxygen before the next drill. No, this noise is new, and this noise comes with two sensations. From above my left knee, there’s the familiar sensation of air against my face as I’m thrown. From my left knee downwards, there’s stillness.

The noise is a clicking.

It’s followed by me screaming.

It’s been a busy month and one I’ll be exploring in an upcoming Judo Diaries because I’ve learnt some really extraordonarily interesting things over the last few weeks. Crucially as well, I also had it suggested that I go in for an upcoming tournament. Note they didn’t tell me to, just that they suggested I do it. This is one of the secrets of learning Judo in Yorkshire; that things are suggested to you, sidle up to you rather than are stated outright. You learn to recognise a suggestion as something more than that, you learn to pick up on cues and hints. You learn to look not at where you’re going but where your instructors want you to go.

I loved this. I loved being told this because, for me, it felt like a validation. Make no mistake, I didn’t go into this wanting to fight. I knew it was a distinct possibility, and I also knew that it wouldn’t be something I could do unless I wanted to or was able. Randori made me nauseous when I started, the idea of fighting someone else still seems anathema and that’s even before you get to the idea of doing it for sport. I don’t fight people, I talk to them, I make people laugh, I’m clever and I know things about stuff.

Like purity for example, and elegance. Let’s talk about purity and elegance. There is something utterly simple, utterly pure, about the iconography of a Judo bout. The landscape is a raised mat, and there is nothing on it apart from you, your opponent and the referee. It’s a blank canvas, a circuit you close by stepping onto the mat. Outside the mat is life, conversations, complexity. On it is someone who is going to do their best to try and throw you, choke you, pin you, submit you and expects you to do the courtesy of doing the same with them. That elegant, pure mat boils down to one thing, to one question;

Can you do this?

I want to find out. I want to step onto the mat, feel the canvas beneath my bare feet, feel my pulse race and then slow, bow, come forward and come to grips. It doesn’t matter whether a bout lasts ten seconds or goes the full four minutes, I want to find out whether or not I can do it. Note I don’t say whether or not I can win, just, whether or not I can do that. That, for me, is the crucial difference; most people’s victory conditions are based on whether or not they win the match. Mine are based on whether I can step onto the mat.

So when the call came, I answered, and I wasn’t the only one. There aren’t many low belt tournaments so a group of the low belts from my club, people who’ve come up, by and large, together, all went in for it. That helped too, by the way, the knowledge that whilst this was going to be my first tournament, it was also everyone else’s first tournament. Fellow travellers, all heading towards the same point, the same spot. A mat with a man standing on the other side of it. A closed circuit. An open question. One I wanted to answer.

It preys on your mind, a decision like that. Mostly it did so because I’m a tall, overweight nerd who’s last serious fight was aged eleven and involved someone yelling ‘By the Gods! He has the strength of an Ox!’ when someone jumped on my back and I didn’t fall over. Some of it though, came from realising the responsibility I was accepting; to do my best, to not damage my opponent in doing so.

The rest of it though, the smallest part, came from the realisation that under the terror, under the overly articulate brain, under the adrenalin, I wanted to walk onto a mat, lock eyes (Well, roughly where their eyes would be, as I train without my glasses) with my opponent and test myself in front of an audience. Here people scream my name in support, here people boo me. Realise I’d won. Realise I’d lost. All those things, all those bright lights of sensation and psychology would test me like nothing before. It’s an awful truism that competing teaches you who you are, but the things about truisms is that they’re true. So it preyed on my mind, and I let it, because that way I’d be ready, that way I’d be focussed, that way I’d step onto the mat. Make no mistake by the way, I was under no illusions that I’d do particularly well, but I’d do. As far as I was concerned, if I could step onto the mat, let alone remember to move, or use a move on an opponent, I’d won. Any and everything else was an added bonus.

Which brings us back to the clicking. And the scream.

I was sparring with a white belt, and I was feeling pretty good. I’d had two sparring matches prior to that, one with a green belt and one with yellow belt Greg. The green belt’s a nice guy, slight, fast and I’d thrown him twice, both using Osoto Otoshi and both pretty solid. The fight with Greg had gone the same way my fights with Greg always go; hard fought, very tiring and inconclusive. So, by the time I got to my third opponent I felt limber, warmed up, confident.

We locked up, we turned and moved one another and looked for throws and nothing was happening, we were too evenly matched, too similar in size. Then he turned into me, threw me with Osoto Otoshi and…it went wrong. This is a throw where you stick your leg and hurl your opponent over it by dragging them from the shoulders and done right it’s amazing. Done wrong, you effectively lock them in place and drag their entire body over their knee. Which happened to me.

Hence the clicking and the screaming.

My instructor appeared next to me. Just appeared, which is the first indication I had of how I sounded. He’d been at the other end of the mat and covered the distance instantly. He asked what happened, I was incoherent, he asked again and I said it was an accident, which it was. I stood up, couldn’t put any weight on my foot, hobbled over to the bench at one side of the mat and felt thoroughly sorry for myself, clamping an ice pack to it for the last fifteen minutes of the session. People kept coming over to check on me, which was really sweet, in an odd, masculine kind of way. Greg looked it over, reassured me and we chatted about the throw he’d tagged me with whilst Phil, the senior instructor came over to point out that Steve, my training partner, had been picked up and thrown by Wes.

The session ended, and I limped over to where Steve was asking what he’d done wrong. Wes smiled and said. ‘A few years ago, I was given the best piece of advice anyone has ever given me; don’t fight like a goddamn guerilla.’ He explained that Steve, and by extension I I suspect, MOVE big, we’re too intense, too used to using our size. Wes suggested relaxed, flowing movements, an upright posture and, well, not fighting like a guerilla. Good advice and when I come back, I’m going to use it.

I won’t talk about the four days I was in denial, convinced I’d be okay. I won’t talk about going through a jar of Tiger Balm in a week, or limping around my work place. I won’t talk about the moment where it was very gently pointed out to me I wouldn’t be. I won’t talk about how much it stung, how unfair it felt, and still feels, to have something I realised I wanted and crucially, was ready for, taken away through sheer bad luck. None of that matters. It was an accident. They happen and they have no sense of timing.

I’m sitting out. I sat out last night, although I went anyway and listened, and watched, and learnt. I’ll do the same on Friday and a week from now, hopefully, I’ll be back. Then my objectives are simple; grade for and get my yellow belt, keep working, keep learning, keep getting better. Because there’ll be other tournaments, other chances. I’ll close that circuit, yet. Not now. But soon.

Let’s talk about violence. Violence is what I do, at Judo, and have done to me. You can dress it up all you want, emphasise the politeness, the courtesy, the humour, the remarkable amounts of clothing we wear, but the simple truth is this; once a week (And twice a week every other week) I’m learning to fight. When you learn to fight you learn two things; how to hurt someone else and how to survive them hurting you.

Shameful confession the first; there is a throw I genuinely hate having done to me. Any of the Goshi throws, or the Pussycat Doll Hip Bump, hurt like hell, because fundamentally what you’re doing is being picked up and dropped back first from half your height. The end result is like the Earth punching you in the spine and that’s even before you take into account the fact that most people will put you down with some extra force. Nine times out of ten now, I will bounce back up like a hairy Easter bunny whenever I’m thrown. Drop me with a Goshi throw? You’ve got about a second to drop on me, lock in a chest hold or get some way into an armbar or submission hold. They hurt, plain and simple.

Which of course is an asset, which I’m covering up because I’m still a shy, retiring English academic. So here’s the thing, out in the open; I am getting much, much better at popping straight back to my feet. I’m hard to throw, I’m hard to keep down and in a fight, that’s an asset. A big asset.

Shameful confession the second; I enjoy choke holds. Choke holds aren’t the simplest way to end a fight, that, for me, is lying on my opponent for twenty five seconds so their shoulders are pinned to the mat, but that isn’t important. Choke holds, and armlocks, are the closest Judo gets to strikes. You land them right, it’s over, you’ve won and crucially, you land them right, it’s over fast. I like them, they’re simple, they’re elegant and they work and I’m getting good at them.

Notice what I did there as well? I’m getting good at them, hidden at the end like an afterthought. I have two big assets, aside from my major asset of being big; I’m hard to put down and if I can lock a choke on, then you’re going to lose. I have what could be called fight skills, and that, on some level troubles me. The reason why it troubles me is because I’m still a polite, softly spoken nerd who’s slightly afraid of his size. It’s going further and further away but it’s still there and it manifests itself in sparring. I’m not alone either, as I found out this week. We all have tells, we all have physical ticks that come out when we spar, ways of dealing with the physical and emotional stress of the fact we’re actually fighting. It’s the equivalent of accent, to go back to the physical language metaphor I keep using. We all talk the same way, but we all talk with regional accents and for the first time, this week, I saw that.

I still got beaten, but this time, I saw it coming.

We did two things this lesson; Osaekomi drills and sparring. Osaekomi drills basically come down to the ‘They shoot horses, don’t they?’ school of repetitious physical exercise and neatly slot into the other movements we’ve been taught already. You control your opponent from the shoulders, turning them into you and putting them where you want to go and then you do two things, both fast; you ‘chicken wing’ their arms up, collapsing their elbows and dragging them towards you and then, well, you basically punch them in the chest with your chest.

Did I mention I’m six foot one and large? And that Steve’s taller and larger than me? And that this drill involves you doing this movement at speed and on the move? Ten times? This was tough, and it was tough in a way that I’ve started to notice a lot of drills are now. You work through the same motions over and over and each time you do it’s like working a pump. The pump pushes muscle memory up until it swamps conscious thought and you’re not thinking about your aching arms, or landing the throw right, all you’re thinking about is the movement, the intent, the set up. Zen and the art of putting someone on their arse if you will. So you focus by not focussing, you think by not thinking and suddenly we’re in exactly the realm I’ve spent maybe five seconds of my life in; you trust your body, it knows where you need to move and what you need to do.

Which is probably a good time to talk about Ford Prefect. Ford is one of my heroes and I first met him in the TV version of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. He’s a Betelgeusian journalist, a travel writer who comes to Earth, gets a bit stuck and ultimately saves Arthur Dent when the plant is destroyed. Ford is polite, well spoken, precise, odd as hell and largely unshakeable. I wanted to be Ford when I grew up, and, in some ways, I am. He’s the Doctor with slightly better more traditional dress sense, a man who can survive the end of a planet as long as he’s got his towel. Ford also, at one point in the books, decides to, as he puts it, take his brain off the hook and let his body come back to it if it needs him. This strikes me as remarkably good advice for Judo.

Which brings me back to tells, and Scottish Dave manhandling me. Scottish Dave is one of my favorite sparring partners because he doesn’t hold back and at the same time is very generous with advice. I tried an Uchi Mata on him during practice, ballsed it up spectacularly and he talked me back down, pointed me at what I needed to do and then let me throw him. Then, when we sparred, he grabbed me by the belt and yanked me towards him.

This is the second time it’s happened and I’ve learnt something from it, in fact two things; firstly older people are crafty, have been on the planet longer and know some tricks and secondly I need to close the distance. I’ve had a lot of success planting my feet and making my opponent come to me but for him, and other people, it doesn’t work. For them I close the distance fast, I wear my size and I use it to grab them turn them and put them on the mat. Some people I let come to me, others I don’t give them the chance.

I worked out why he does this too. It’s a good way of using my size against me, turning me and taking me off my game and off my balance. It’s also a fantastic tactic if it’s the end of a lesson and you’re knackered. He threw me twice, I threw him not at all but he had a couple of extra opportunities I blocked in time. It’s not a victory but I came away from that match knowing more than I had at the start. I know his tell now and he helped me see mine. I tried the same technique three times in a row on him, and each time he blocked it and each time it became easier. The reason for this is simple; I didn’t trust myself to try something else in case I hurt him and I was stressed because, well, I was in a fight. So I tried the one technique I had locked in my brain over and over and it didn’t work and I got thrown twice. To make matters worse I didn’t tuck my head either time so I bounced my head off the mat pretty hard twice. So much so that when I popped back to my feet and Dave asked if I was okay and I said yes, he insisted I take a couple of seconds. I didn’t complain, oddly.

Second fight, second opponent, Sandra this time. Sandra’s one of the club black belts and she’s, again, an excellent sparring partner to learn from. Sandra likes chokes, like me, and she’s very good at them. We locked up and, as before, the same throw stuck in my head. Osoto Otoshi. Bring them on to you, step behind them and push. Tried it once. Nothing. Tried it again, nothing. Sandra threw me.

Jamie walked past, ribbed her about us spending too long on the ground and Sandra grinned, popped back to her feet and said ‘We’d only just got down there, hadn’t we?’. I laughed, she laughed, we locked up and she tried a throw. I blocked it. I tried Osoto Otoshi. She blocked it. She tried a throw. It landed. Popped back up, locked up again. What’s the best throw to try in this situation? Osoto Otoshi! What’s the worst that could happen?

She blocked it. Which was the point where my body had had quite enough. I stepped in to her, grabbed her round the waist and lifted her off her feet. She’s really good, so she caught herself as she fell but it had worked. I’d broken my tell, done something unexpected and taken her off her feet as a result. She still won, as did Dave, but they both showed me something vital. I don’t just need to breathe, I need to relax. My body’s a better fighter than my brain at the moment and the sooner my brain shuts up and gets out of the way, the better I’ll do. Although it will be sitting on the sidelines and taking notes.

I’m starting to trust myself more. It’s almost like an Orrery, with two planets starting to move into alignment, one my brain, one my body. I know the techniques, I’m within sight of having the confidence to use them and all I have to do is keep doing something which is almost impossible for me; fight. The more I fight, the more I’ll learn how to win, how to move and think and I’ll see my boundaries expand even further than they already have. I’m hard to throw, harder to keep down. Defensively I’m in pretty good shape. Offensively, I need to meet my opponent head on physically, but head off intellectually, at least for now. Sharpen the sword now, work out how to make a better sword with a fancy pommel later.

There’s a motion that lies at the heart of a lot of Judo. It looks, for all the world, like ballroom dancing, both of you holding on with both hands as you turn and turn, pull and push, each leading and following. It looks completely graceful and easy, right up until the point where one of the two people dancing picks the other one up and throws them into the ground. Which, let’s face it, is not the sort of thing you tend to see in a ballroom dancing lesson, at least never more than once.

The interesting thing about this motion is that it’s incredibly adaptable. The first third of the lesson this week focussed on this exact movement, learning to turn and be turned, transitioning your opponent from left to right. The idea is to get used to not only shifting your opponent around but moving and contorlling someone from multiple angles and directions. We built this up step by step, first with one hand, then two, then blocking out a throw, then completing it. This ‘Lego’ style of teaching is something we do a lot and it works beautifully. Get the first motion right and add another, get the second motion right and add a third, get them all right and your opponent’s on the ground before you are. Even better, you learn to throw people on the left and the right, moving forwards and backwards and crucially, you start to learn, physically, about motion points. It is, odd as it sounds, much easier to throw someone backwards if they’re moving forwards, easier to throw someone to the right if they’re already moving to the left. This principle, of applied and refocussed force, is, as near as I can tell, something close to the heart of both Judo and Aikido and it’s fascinating to see it in action. Jamie spent a long time not only walking us through this but also showing us exactly how versatile this looping, circular motion is. You can literally drop an opponent into four forward throws and a couple of backward throws from this motion, provided you’re in control. Most of throws are Goshi variants, or, to put it another way, another triumphant week of the Pussycat Dolls. Hip throws are really smart, very hard techniques because fundamentally what you’re doing is lifting your opponent, turning them through ninety degrees and throwing them at the ground. There is little or no way to do this softly or nicely because you’re basically falling three feet. Throw in the fact that I have a lot of mass and that I’m being thrown by someone with a lot of mass and the end result is a throw which genuine recovery time from. Most throws, at least in class, I can bounce straight back up from but the Pussycat Dolls throws? They take about three seconds to get back up from and, in competition, that’s an eternity. Something to remember for the future, or at least try and defend against.

The interesting thing about this is that all this section of the lesson did was put me in mind of the Judo tree from last week. Thinking about it now, I wonder whether the trunk of the Judo tree I’ve talked about before isn’t a specific technique, but rather, this motion. Move them around, position them, take them down in any one of half a dozen ways.

We moved onto Randori after this, and were given the choice of shifting to Newaza randori, or groundfighting, from Tachiwaza, or standing throws, if we wanted to. This led to three interesting observations, the first of which came just before we were told we’d be sparring. I was getting, focussed, calm. I found myself standing on the edge of the mat, very aware of how my feet were set, where my hands were and how much they weren’t wrapped around the collar of someone else’s gi. Eight weeks ago, hell, six weeks ago, Randori made me want to be sick because it was a fight, it was impolite, it was a physical confrontation. Now, I look forward to it.

I was up against Steve first, and, to be honest, was a tiny bit intimidated. Steve trains twice a week, has two inches on me and is technically a very gifted Judoka. He’s rapidly gaining an instinctive understanding of how to use his mass as a weapon, he’s fast for a big guy and he’s got some really nice techniques. So I was a little nervous, which of course means that being put across the mat from Steve was the perfect thing to happen. The advantage of Judo is you get to face your fears. The advantage of Judo for me is that my fears tend to be out of focus even when I face them.

We locked up, and he pushed me back and went for a throw and I turned him. We went back and forth, each launching attacks and defences and at one point, as I bulled Steve across the mat he looked at me, laughed and said ‘You’ve got BETTER’. We went back across the mat and just like at the top of the lesson, I turned him, let him move to my side, locked myself in tight and pushed, sweeping his legs over my right leg and down to the mat. Osoto Otoshi, one of the two techniques I’m genuinely very comfortable with. It wasn’t pretty, in fact, it was scrappy as hell but that didn’t matter, I got him on the floor. Steve was a syllable into congratulating me when I dropped on him, locked him into a chest hold and pushed down hard. He tapped out.

I’d won.

This doesn’t normally happen. For weeks I’ve been aware that in Randori I’m either passive or content to try something but know that I’m probably going to lose. Here’s the thing; I am. I’m a red belt (Two weeks in now I figure it’s official), I’ve got some time under my belt, know some throws but I’m regularly fighting yellow, green, brown and black belts. It’s very easy to let them use me as a training dummy you can have a conversation with but that’s not what I want to do. The fight with Greg a couple of weeks ago confirmed that, and talking to Steve about this lesson afterwards, I realised something about both the fight with Greg and the fight with Steve. I was absent, mentally, for a lot of them. I remember Greg’s foot being dragged across my face, I remember being kicked, I remember Steve laughing and telling me I’d got better, I remember locking the chest hold in. I remember absolutely nothing else. My brain had taken a step back, my subconscious had taken a step forward and my body just moved, just acted. It wasn’t aggression, although the actions were certainly aggressive, it was focussed, direct. I was going where I was going, doing what I needed to and anyone who got in my way was not going to be there for long. As Steve put it later, the politeness wasn’t there anymore. In fact what Steve said was that ‘I know how to kill the bunny’ but I like the politeness going away better. Besides, I like bunnies

After fighting Steve, as always, we moved up one opponent, which in my case meant fighting Florien. Florien’s a small, polite, softly spoken French black belt who eight weeks ago threw me in a way I didn’t know how to counter and knackered my shoulder. Florien’s a lovely guy, but, again, fighting him had a certain emotional payload to it. Which is probably a good time to talk about Amy Dumas.

Amy Dumas was best known in the 1990s as Lita, and was, along with Trish Stratus, entirely responsible for the legitimizing of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Women’s Division. At least part of the reason for this was her background in Judo and Kickboxing, and I remember reading an interview with her about her Judo background, and how she’d always end up fighting the same woman at regional competitions. Her opponent was always better than her, she was always under no illusions about beating her so she changed her victory conditions; it was no longer about winning, it was about seeing how long you could last, whether it was longer than last time, what you learnt before you got beaten.

This strikes me as a remarkably sensible attitude to fighting higher grades and it’s one I’ve had a lot of success adopting. Florien was almost certainly going to beat me, so it was no longer about beating him, it was about learning. We bowed, I walked out to the centre of the mat and stopped, setting my feet. When I fight smaller opponents, I make a point of doing this now. If I try and match a smaller fighter’s speed, I’m essentially helping them beat me up, so I stand and I wait as they bounce off me, we lock up and someone gets a throw in. This time, of course, it was Florien, who dropped me with a spectacular throw that involved him throwing me over his shoulder as he knelt on the mat. I hit, hard, but not badly, rolled, smiled and thanked him. I think what I actually said was ‘That was really cool, thank you.’ He smiled, stood up and it immediately became apparent he couldn’t put much weight on his ankle. He tried to walk it off, was clearly unable to do so and finally bowed to me and left the mat. Karen came on, after taking a break and we just started sparring when the drill was finished. Two fights, one victory, one new throw that I’ll be faster off the mark with next time. It was my best Randori session so far.

I’m in an oddly confessional mood this week. Not content with telling you that one of my martial role models is a female professional wrestler, I can now reveal something a little awkward; I love strangleholds. We’ve done a couple before and the lesson finished off with Jamie showing us three more. To be fair, the lesson actually finished with Jamie talking us through the chokes as Sandra applied them to him, meaning most sentences started well and ended in wet, gurgling noises. This was just absurd in the best possible way, watching my instructor calmly walk us through how to choke people as he was being choked and the fact Sandra was clearly enjoying it only made it more amusing. Only in a Judo lesson, and I suspect only in a Judo lesson in Yorkshire, could ways to strangle people be funny but it really was.

There are three basic chokes that we were shown, thumbs in, thumbs out and one sided, none of which are the correct names. The basic principle is the same; you’re fighting from your back, your opponent’s between your legs and trying to pin you. You cross your hands and lock them into your opponent’s jacket as high as you can, then pull them down towards you, cutting off the flow of blood in the arteries and closing their throat on the cross of your wrists. Thumbs in means thumbs in, thumbs out means…well you get the idea.

First off, this is a drill which has a healthy dose of the absurd to it. Lying with your legs open whilst your partner ‘menaces’ you is just a little silly and the seriousness of the matter wasn’t helped by Steve yelling ‘Rah! Godzilla!’ as he descended on me. Nonetheless we worked through the chokes, first me, then him and we both got them down.

The one handed choke though, was the stand out. As Jamie pointed out, it’s quite rare for an opponent to obligingly let you get a double sided choke and this works around that problem by putting both hands on side of your opponent’s gi. The bottom hand is fingers in, the top hand, as close to the top of your opponent’s gi as you can get it, is thumb in. You drag your opponent sideways, kick their leg out and thread the thumb in hand over the top of their head, trapping it between your hands. It’s incredibly effective and has a massive effect for relatively little effort. It’s also massively uncomfortable and feels a lot like your head is about to be popped like a balloon. Interestingly though I appear to have a natural defence to it; my enormous noggin.

There’s a moment in So I Married an Axe Murderer which, the first time I saw it, made me laugh so hard that I couldn’t see. Charlie, played by Mike Myers, has gone to his parents for a meal and at one point we see Charlie’s dad, also played by Mike Myers cheerfully berate his cousin. It’s an unending stream of conscious tirade of pseudo-Scottish creative insults, all centred around the size of his head and includes the deathless line ‘THAT’S AN ENORMOUS NOGGIN! IT’S LIKE AN ORANGE ON A TOOTHPICK!’

My name is Alasdair Stuart, I have an enormous noggin and I am proud of it.

We worked through the chokes last and when the lesson finished, Steve talked about how the politeness has gone. He said that a few weeks ago, when I fought Greg in what Steve calls ‘The Battle of the Ages’, he kept yelling ‘CRUSH HIM!’ every time I got him on the mat and that tonight, for the first time, I did.

Polite violence. It’s a ridiculous dichotomy but when you look at it, that’s exactly what Judo is and what I seem to be starting to get. Every week I take a step forward, every week the man on the other side of the mat takes a step back and every week I get a little more comfortable, a little bit more confident, more willing to try, to compete. It’s not about anger or aggression, it’s about focus and determination and, in my case, having an enormous noggin. I always knew it’d come in useful.

It works like this; in order to practice Judo properly you need to be insured. You are, after all, both being thrown and throwing people to the ground with tremendous force in a variety of different ways. Do it one step wrong you break a limb, do it two steps wrong, you break a neck and nobody wants that. So, in order to practice you need to be insured and in order to be insured you need a licence and in order to get a licence? You need to join the British Judo Association and when you join the British Judo Association? You get the grey book and the black book.

The black book is the heart of your life as a Judoka and the grey book is the brain. The black book is your licence book, detailing every tournament you compete in, your placing, your belt gradings, your path through the art to your eventual black belt. Which is probably as good a time as any to talk about my big plan. You can grade, up to a certain level, every three months. Past that level you can grade every six months.

So let’s talk about my plan for a moment. Doing the rough maths and assuming the best case scenario, that means that if you pass every grading first time you can make black belt in three years. I’m giving myself five years, because the idea of closing out my third decade on the planet with a black belt in Judo really, really appeals to me. More on that, what comes after it, and what I’m planning to do to mark my 35^th birthday in a future Judo Diaries.

The grey book, meanwhile, is the syllabus everybody is trained from and it contains detailed breakdowns of every move you will learn. There are diagrams showing you how to do each move, its name and how to pronounce it. This is the book of wisdom, the thing you frantically check in the run up to a grading. It’s also filled with inspirational quotes from world class Judokas, at the top of most pages. It sounds cheesy I know, but there’s some very useful advice in there, and it’s all delivered in a very pragmatic, matter of fact way. One of the real standouts is a comment about how it’s possible to build an entire array of techniques around a single central technique, creating a ‘Judo tree’ with multiple branches all leading down to the one central technique which in turn ends with your opponent on the ground and you welcoming the adulation and hard-earned respect of your peers. Or something like that.

I haven’t found the trunk of my tree, not yet at any rate, but this week I have found a bunch of interesting new branches, all of which looks a little like the Pussycat Dolls. Sort of. But before that, there was the small matter of me injuring myself again and my return to the less than wonderful world of the mental block. Far too many years ago, I hated and feared maths, or math, if you will. Maths was the boogeyman, the irrational, ridiculous, cruel beast that was standing between me and Academic Nirvana, or at least the University College of Ripon and York St John. Maths stalked me, picked at me and all I could do was back myself further into the wall I’d built between me and being able to understand it. It took four years of extra teaching from pretty much the entire Maths Department at my school to get a C, which is the highest grade I could get in the ability stream I was in. I got it too and now maths is something I simply respect rather than actively fear, thanks partly to the extra tuition and partially to the fact that working retail for seven years gives you decent maths skills and a pathological need to give exact change wherever possible.

Maths is no longer my mental block. Hopping forward rolls are. Let me explain, one of the warm up exercises we do is a forward roll where you crouch on all fours and push off with your legs. You rotate around your hands, head not touching the ground and roll to your feet. Or rather, they do. Me, I jump up and fail. Then, I jump up and fail again. Then I jump up, don’t tuck my head, crack my neck and bite my tongue and fail. In front of everyone else, who is much, much better at this than me.

The last person, halfway across the mat, an instructor on one side of me, a senior black belt on the other, helping me through a move every single other person in the class has done and done easily. Blood in my mouth, hot and sweaty and embarrassment on the horizon but not quite here, not quite yet. Not my finest hour.

But not my worst. I did it. I did it with massive amounts of help and the thought of doing it next week frightens the hell out of me but I’m going to do it anyway. I got a lot of encouragement and, stupid as it sounds, Jamie patting me on the shoulder, explaining what I did wrong and saying ‘Don’t hit your head, for God’s sake’ with a smile on his face meant a lot. I’d tried, I’d screwed up but I had tried and that counts for a lot. Jamie wasn’t alone either. Karen, one of the female black belts, was particularly effusive and later explained to me what I was doing wrong. I wasn’t pistoning up from my legs enough, wasn’t giving myself enough motion so, in essence, I was pile driving myself into the mat. Or to put it another way, I was literally kicking my own ass.

Next week, I’m going to run through it with Steve before hand. Next week I may even wear a gumshield because biting your tongue, ladies and gentlemen? Hurts. Next week I’m going to do this again, and keep doing it until I do it right. Still frightened though.

Gymnastics to one side, the rest of the lesson focussed on different variants of a single technique. Uki Goshi, or the Pussycat Dolls Hip Bump Throw as it will forever more be known to me, is a lovely technique. You step into your opponent, pop your hip up into their chest and roll them off your hip onto the ground. This week we learnt the multiple entry points into that throw, multiple angles of attack that work with your size, not against it.

All of which started with each of us being given a scrap of white belt, told to tuck it into the back of our belts and paired off. The game was simple; each of us had to turn the other and try and grab the scrap of white belt using only the hand holding the other person’s collar. It was a really smart piece of teaching because the movement it taught us was the set up for every single version of the throws we’d learn later that night.

Oh and I won. Sort of. I was paired with Wes, the US Marine instructor which is a little like being a feather paired with a forest fire. Wes is a phenomenally nice guy, an amazingly good Judoka and fighting him is a lot like fighting Judo itself. You will learn, you will get a throw in if you do it right and you will never, not once, be under any doubt as to who is in control.

Except I won. We closed, we locked up, Wes grabbed my piece of white belt. We closed, we locked up, Wes grabbed my piece of white belt and I grabbed his. Our hands actually passed in mid air and I was just registering what I’d done when Jamie, the instructor, came over, congratulated me, and pointed out I’d used the wrong hand. I apologised, Wes grinned and congratulated me anyway. A win’s a win. After all, Captain Kirk reprogrammed the Kobyashi Maru program so it was possible to win and he did Judo and everything. Seriously, where else do you think the falling back with one foot in the Klingon’s chest throw came from?

This drill completed, we then ran through the various different types of the throw. It all comes down to where you trigger the throw from, whether going over your opponent’s shoulder to grab the belt from behind, putting them in what is essentially a non invasive headlock or coming straight at them, it’s devastatingly effective. It’s also adaptable to your size, as I found out when I worked with Stephanie, the new red belt. Steph was very smart, very switched on, got the movements down and was a fifth my size. At competition speed, she’d have put me down every time but going at practice speed we looked a little like a small, precise female Judoka hauling a large training dummy around. So, I helped her a little, throwing myself the rest of the way when she didn’t have the force to complete the technique. I was careful only to do this when she got the movements down but, Stephanie’s a good Judoka, she got the movements pretty much every time.

The lesson rounded out with sparring and I found something very odd had happened to me; I was looking forward to it. Read back through the early Judo Diaries essays and what you’ll see is someone who wants to learn how to fight but isn’t actually that up for the whole fighting thing. It seemed a little…y’know, physical, confrontational. I might get hurt. I might hurt someone else.

This week I was bouncing on the balls of my feet on the sidelines waiting for my chance to go on. We tend to do a two fights on, two fights off rule to make sure everyone gets a fair shake and my first fight was against one of the club green belts. I walked forward, remembered the words of Obi Wan Judo from a few weeks previously, as well as the advice of friends and family and just…stopped. I set my feet and let him break against me, which he did. He picked and circled, looking for grips that I either defended or turned and I think, it’s difficult to remember, that I moved one, maybe two steps. Then he dived behind me and caught me in a bear hug.

I didn’t think, I didn’t act, I just turned to my left and suddenly he was in front of me. He just had time to mutter ‘Oh F-’ before I picked him up using one of the throws from earlier in the session and dumped him on the mat. He complemented me on the throw and, of course, threw me not long after but he had to work hard to do it and the throw I got in on him was great. I acted, didn’t think, acted and my body knew what to do. I need to trust it more, clearly.

My last fight was with Dave the Scottish brown belt, who’d helped out with our gradings a couple of weeks previously. Same approach, less successful result. The first match Dave yanked me towards him with my belt and put in a grip which basically shoved his fist, and my jacket, into my throat. I got out of that, and looked weirdly affronted by it, just in time for him to throw me again. This time it was something weird and esoteric that dragged my jacket across my entire face and finished with Dave asking whether he’d accidentally kicked me in the nuts. ‘Nph, I’g fime’, is what ‘No I’m fine’ sounds like through a gi jacket by the way. I got up, we locked up, he grabbed me by the bottom of my jacket and threw me again. I was surprised again, I was impressed again, I was thrown again. But I remembered and I learnt and I’m trying that if I can get away with it next week.

There’s a third book that the British Judo Association doesn’t send you. It’s the book you write yourself, the journal of your experiences in the art, your fear, your joy, your triumphs, the moments where you get a good throw in and the moments where you’re the last person out on the mat unable to nail the simple technique everyone else can. That book’s your map, not just of where you’re going but where you’ve been. I look at that book and I see white ground in the middle distance, and red ground beneath me (I’m officially a red belt, apparently). White ground behind me, yellow ahead, red below. I like my third book most of all, because that book is mine, and mine alone. I’ll like it more when I can do that forward roll too.