How is your Judo class structured?

[Res Judicata]

How is your Judo class structured in terms of time and activities? I've been doing Judo at the same club for a few years now, but I've recently visited and taken classes at some different clubs because of travel. Their structure was bit different from what I'm used to.

At my regular club, about 50-60% of the time is spent in randori. My coach is a strong believer in a lot of fairly hard randori, in part because that's the way his (Japanese) instructor organized his classes at the school before the current coach took over. The typical order in a Friday evening 120 minute class is:

• basic warmup, including a few falls and rolls (not many) (10 minutes)
• tachi waza instruction and tachi waza drills (10-20 minutes)
• static and/or moving uchikomi/nagekomi (10-20 minutes)
• ne waza instruction (10 minutes)
• ne waza randori (15-25 minutes) (3-5*5 minute rounds)
• full randori (30+ minutes) (short class: 5 minute rounds; long class: unlimited rounds).

The 90 minute classes are more compressed, and we sometimes skip various parts. We also have a technical class without randori and a short (1 hour) ne waza only class. We never do kata.

This is my normal.

The other schools were a bit different. Most significantly, the randori was much lighter and shorter (e.g. 3x2 minute rounds of ne waza and 3x3 minutes of tachi waza).

What is the class structure like at your school? And, for you instructors, why is it that way?

[NeilG]

Ours is a 90 minute class. The bulk of the time is in ground randori and waza instruction. The waza instruction could be newaza or tachiwaza or both. Standing randori is sometimes skipped if waza instruction goes long, and typically 10 minutes or so. If I could change anything, I would skip the chalk talk on terminology and extend the randori.

1. Terminology/concept discussion
2. Warm-up (jog/stretch)
3. Ground randori
4. Ukemi
5. Waza instruction/practice
6. Standing randori
7. Cool down

[Mister]

Normally...

Running for a while 10-20 minutes.
Stretching for 5-10 minutes.
Squats, tuck jumps, pullups, sit ups etc for 30 minutes.
Break falls for 10 minutes.
Sometimes 10 minutes of instructions.
Neck Bridges or newaza for 10 minutes.
Standing Randori for 30 minutes.
Running again for 10 minutes after we're all beat then some optional stretching.

It's a two hour class.

The weird thing here is we rarely get any instruction, we just go in there and beat the **** out of each other with the couple of throws we've been taught, we know almost no newaza, just getting out of pins, and it's working we're getting better, sometimes I wonder though if it would be better if we were taught more stuff.

[judoist]

Bow in

1) Warm up:

jogging around the mat area with occasional sprints diagonally down the mat

Streching - first head, then shoulders and arms, then back/midsection, then legs

bodyweight exercises: situps (usually 60-80 in a single set with different people counting ten each); pushups 20 wide 20 normal 15 close

Agility/partner drills: moving kuzishi down the length of the gym, wheelbarrows, sprints carrying partner (2 for each exercise, partners switching)

Agility: handstands, handstands into roll, cartwheels (IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou), pirouettes (again, IHATEYOUZ), backward roll into handstand-stand up (I can do theses relatively well)
one time down the length of the mat each

20 Kuzushi, compliant drills: instructor shows a tech, we repeat as we see, he calls all of us over if he spots something wrong, but generally demonstrates slowly on an uke and lets us figure it out

combinations: generally footsweep into forward throw

3) Newaza:

resistance drill: find a partner, pin him down, at the call of hajime the bottom guy has 15 or 25 seconds to get out, the top guy tries to hold him there. Who doesn't get out from the bottom: 25 pushups; who loses the bottom guy osaekomi: the same (2 times, partners switch)

At this point, we get some instruction concerning chokes or locks though not always; generally the same resistance drills as above but no pushups

Newaza randori 2 or 3 of these for 3 mins each, break 30 secs between;

4) Grip fighting randori: no throws, just grip fighting; again 30 sec breaks, usually 2 or 3 of these;

5) Tachiwaza randori 3 or 5 mins each, 30-45 second break, 3 or 4 but also 5

6) Cool-downs: leg streching and breathing exercises at the same time

7) Bow

8) Change

9) Proceed to drag your sorry ass home and try to fall asleep while whimpering pitifully

[LowwerWay]

Warm up is usually BJJ class prior.
Followed by step in drills.
Next is throw practice.
Then gripping and grip fighting.
Last is randori.

It's shitloads of fun.

[Gezere]

No strict time standards. It is generally warm up, drill, spar. The time for each depends on what is going on. For example, if we have guys going to compete the randori is longer depending on how close we are to the meet.

[herbo1]

Two of our classes are limited to an hour. They usually go;

Bow on
Warm up and rolls - 5 minutes
Technical instruction - 5 minutes
Drilling - 15 minutes
Randori - 35 minutes ( usually 5x3 minute randoris standing and 5x2) on the ground.
Bow off

[Res Judicata]

No strict time standards. It is generally warm, up drill, spar. The time for each depends on what is going on. For example, if we have guys going to compete the randori is longer depending on house close we are to the meet.

I sometimes attend a club like this. It's not so much a club for instruction as a collection of high-level competitive folks who are looking to spar. There's virtually no instruction and it's not really a place where a white belt could learn Judo. (I mostly get to practice my ukemi--involuntarily).

Judoist: instead of No. 9 try bar and beer. That's what we do every Friday. My coach is semi-serious when he says that beer is an essential component of Judo.

My next question is why are the classes structured the way they are, why do they have the components they do, and is there a better way to do it? Tradition isn't a satisfactory answer for me, although it may be the actual reason classes are structured that way. For example, the way Mister's classes are structured is a bit like a BJJ school I used to attend. I hated it--being exhausted before learning technique makes it much harder to learn.

[NeilG]

In our club, the ground randori comes after the warmup as it is considered to be part of the warmup. Typically we are told to go 50-60%. Occasionally we will be asked to ramp it up to 80%. If you are exhausted from the groundwork heading into ukemi, you went too hard.

It's a recreational club and the overall level is fairly low, so there is quite a lot of time devoted to waza instruction and practice. Space is limited, realistically we can only have 3 or 4 pairs out for standing randori and that's being careful. But randori comes after waza so you can maybe try out what you've learned.

[hathor]

running, pushups 50-100, situps 100, shoulder bridges, etc. Lots of stretching.

Breakfalls, rollouts, front falls, cartwheels etc.

Moving uchikomi, either throwing everytime or at the very end. About 4 or 5 techniques are done.

This all takes about 35 minutes.

Then its on to pick up drills - first major throw loadups, then ashi waza, then combinations of major throws and ashiwaza. If we feel like a throw is on, we throw it. This takes up about 12 minutes, with 4 minutes on each set. Continuous throwing and loadups, this can damn near make you throw up from exhaustion.

Water break, 5 minutes or so.

Then we do some in class shiai, usually 3 matches or so. This is a great experience to get used to the competition mindset of "one throw and its over". This will take about 10 minutes.

Sometimes we will go over a new way to do a technique either standing or on the ground, or we will do sute geiko, two throws each.

Then the rest of the time is randori, standing and newaza, for about 30 minutes. then a quick cool down. You are totally exhausted at the end