Edited from my thread at Infinitemma.com
So,..
FINALLY shaken the flu,..well, enough to train anyhow, and headed down to Rumina Sato's ROOTS Gym last night. His gym is in Odawara and quite a train hike. I went early to look around the town. Nice sea side place. Rumina likes to surf too so this is good for him as well. The gym was actually really easy to find. About 1 minute from the train station on the 3rd floor of a building.
Rumina welcomed me at the door and his English is getting better. After about 10 minutes of students filing in the door we hits the mats. First thing I must say is his class is taught with only SHOOTO in mind. He teaches all techniques with fighting SHOOTO in mind. Warm up consisted of wrestling style stretches and exercises and also agility & balance techniques up and down the mat. To finish the warm up, we did 3 minute rounds of shadow boxing but MMA style shadow boxing. Kicks, punches, knees, sprawls, takesons and the like. Rumina comes around to every student and wacks them with a rubber bat to watch their striking checks. Great stuff!
We did LOTS of techniques. First part consisted of takedowns after throwing punches. Then takedowns after HAVING punches thrown at you. About 4 different takedowns were taught. Classic Rumina stuff. It was amazing to be taught the techniques I used to watch on dvd of him doing them and now he's teaching me! The takedowns were great. We also did a back control positioning drill which was aim'd at keeping the centre of your opponent. After drilling the back control drill we did rounds of the person on your back trying to submit you whilst you defended for 1 minute. All this defending WHILST you are standing! It was hard and heaps of fun.
The class then finished but after the class the mat is open for anyone to wrestle. From the ground or standing. The class went for just under 2 hours and we wrestled for 40 minutes before I had to run. Was funny when Rumina laughed at his student when I jumped at a flying triangle and landed it. Yeah Daz!,..you know if it's there I'm taking it,..ha ha.
Had some great hard rolls and the guys are ALL good,..and nice too. I'm catching up with them at SHOOTO on Friday night so that'll be fun..
Thanks to Roy Luxton for the hook up.
Out..
- Juggs