Faxia: Seriously, I've at least heard that phrase said to me four times on four different occasions... Pretty sad. Hell, I just want to do it all, I love wrestling, but I was never good at it, I loved Judo, but I never learned enough of it, and I love submission wrestling and BJJ but I don't do enough of it...
You might want to try just working your stand up for a while. I know most guys that like mat work think it's a waste of time but you would be suprised how much it will help improve your mat work and you won't be giving the appearance of just wanting to wrestle. You can also get your coach to try and set you up with refs that are more Newaza friendly. You may not be able to get away with this a lot but you won't know until you ask.
Here is an synopsis of the discussion the USA Judo referee commission had about the new ne waza time. It's from a referee newsletter I get.
"Strong emphasis has been placed by the IJF, and was placed at the 2002 Senior Nationals, on allowing ne waza to continue while there is progress. There has been a steady statistical decline in the percentage of matches decided by ne waza, and at least part of the reason is that referees have been too impatient with ne waza. That trend needs to be reversed, both by greater patience and by greater understanding of ne waza by referees so that they recognize progress. There was some improvement at this year's Senior Nationals."
I saw some improvement as well. I also saw maybe three refs that obviously either don't like ne waza or don't understand it. They had referee juries on each mat, so hopefully those guys got corrected when they left the mat.
One girl was slipping into a nice juji, and got matte called in the middle. She won anyway, fortunately.
Ben R.
I'm glad to hear that.
The problem is that the refs don't know what the athletes are progressing towards. I think that they should take some time and hire a BJJ black belt as a newaza consultant so that can SEE the new techniques and how they are set up. The newaza has been so watered down over the years that some of the techniques have been lost. And it has been so developed over the years by BJJers. The real key is that you must keep working in newaza and you should have coach or someone in your chair yelling the steps to the moves that you are doing. That way the ref is influenced to let you keep working.
The Judo Machine wrote:"The problem is that the refs don't know what the athletes are progressing towards. I think that they should take some time and hire a BJJ black belt as a newaza consultant so that can SEE the new techniques and how they are set up. The newaza has been so watered down over the years that some of the techniques have been lost. And it has been so developed over the years by BJJers. The real key is that you must keep working in newaza and you should have coach or someone in your chair yelling the steps to the moves that you are doing. That way the ref is influenced to let you keep working. "
I agree that many refs don't know what's going on in ne waza. Many of the people who get involved in refereeing never made it to very high levels in Judo, despite maybe being sandan or higher in rank. So they don't know progress when they see it. I saw that at least three times at nationals this year, on one mat. One kid pulled off an Sankaku Garami (Omo Plata)...I was wondering if the ref was going to call matte, but he fortunately knew what was going on, and allowed play to continue to transition to other ne waza when the Sankaku Garami failed.
I like your advice about the coach yelling steps from the chair. It would maybe help in some cases. IN others, the referee may not even be paying attention to the coach. But it couldn't hurt !
Ben R.
Geoff Gleason used to teach competitors a mat strategy designed to get the refs to respond to their techniques.
How about writing a letter to (insert correct recipient here, like the international judo federation or something) and every one of us will sign it?
It seems like everyone on this thread has the same view on this.