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Showing posts from July, 2018

Zabgreb GP Day 1 - Israel's strong showing, American Hardware, IJF's improved experience

3 Mats, 3 Israelis competing I captured an interesting moment earlier today during the Zagreb Grand Prix. As I watching the matches streamed on YouTube, There were 3 Israeli women competing simultaneously - poor Shani Hershko (the Israeli women's national coach). The commentators on the broadcast also spoke a bit about the rise of the Israeli Judo team of late, especially the Women. Unfortunately, the Israeli Women's team today didn't perform as well as we would hope - they finished just off of the medal round with two 7th place finishes, and a 5th (with a further two women being knocked out early). The men's team finished a bit better with Tal Flicker and Baruch Shmailov taking Gold and Bronze, respectively, in the Men's -66kg. Overall, Israel has been progressively improving it's Judo, and unlike in the past where they may have had one or two competitors who had a chance at World or Olympic hardware (think Oren Smada, Yael Arad, Arik Ze'evi), they no

Thank you IJF for doing the right thing...

I was pleasantly surprised today, when I saw this press release from the International Judo Federation (IJF). The IJF announced today that they were suspending two of the major events - the Tunis Grand Prix, and the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam - because of the way that Israeli Judoka have been treated when playing in those events over the last several years. In the past few years, when playing at these events, Israeli Judoka have been treated unfairly. For example - at both of these events, they weren't allowed to compete under the Israeli flag, and had to remove all flag patches from their uniforms. When they medaled (and they did) instead of the Israeli National Anthem being played, they played the 'IJF' national anthem. Beyond that, the host countries have also played several games with their visas, and forced them into interrogrations by police upon arrival. Last year, in Abu Dhabi, Mariusz Viser, the IJF Chairman, met with the organizers of the Abu Dhabi event, who promis

The one thing Putin Taught me about Judo... (kind of)

In the early days of this blog, I did some book reviews, including a review of a book written by the current Russian Premier - Vladimir Putin and co-authors Vasiliy Shestakov and Alexei Levitsky (you can read the review here ). Although the book is out of print, you can find it on google books - here . One of the things I really like about the book, is what he refers to as the 'Technical-Tactical Set' (you can see an example for Tai Otoshi on pp. 80-81). For each technique, he shows how to set it up as a sequence both to and from other throws. For example: turn your blocked Tai Otoshi into a Seoinage. Granted, it's not earth shattering, but when I first saw it, it enabled me, (generally a visual learner) better understand how to follow-up one technique with another and, more importantly, that attacks aren't one off - there's no one swing of the bat, or taking a shot and waiting for a rebound - the attacks are continuous, and need to come in rapid succession. O

Time to start writing again...

Hello blog, how I've missed you. Over the weekend, I decided to casually read some of my old posts, and it bothered me that I haven't written anything on this blog in nearly 6 years. I have no idea if anyone is still reading it, but I also decided that I have to go back to writing it, and there is a two-word reason why - running selfie. Yes, I know that if I played word association with you, you wouldn't quite get 'Running Selfie' from Judo blog, so here's the connection. While I haven't been making it to the dojo consistently in a while, I have been able to go running. Every day that I run - right after my run ends, I take a selfie. Its not about sharing on facebook or instagram (although I sometimes do that), but rather its a way of reminding myself that a) I worked out b) I was happy and tired afterward and c) as my body changes from getting back into shape, it reminds me of what I looked like a year ago - kind of my own personal before and after.