[bradknowles]

So, I played Judo in college. Our teacher was jokingly referred to as "Choke Monster". As you might imagine, He was really good at choking holds. He told me once that he liked demonstrating with me, because I had good natural defensive methods. He was a 3rd degree black belt at the time.

He sometimes brought black belts from his Dojo to the University class, and I loved playing with them. I got so many good learning opportunities. Even if that did mean that a 300lb black belt threw me to the ground harder than I've ever hit the mat, and then he proceeded to fall on top of me. The problem was that my natural defenses were good enough to stop his first attack attempt, but he could plan multiple attacks in sequence, and rip right from one failed attack into the next one while I was still piled up on his back. But doing so meant he had less reserve to brace over the fallen opponent, as he would normally have done.

In the end, I had a minor injury to my neck, and a separate older minor injury to my hand. And I also attended one tournament at his local Dojo, which meant that I also encountered my professors Sensei, who was a 5th degree black belt. He was also the meanest and nastiest prick I ever met, and after one encounter with that asshole, I was never going back.

Thus ended my year playing Judo.

[bradknowles]

It's funny, now that I think about it. That tournament is also where I was told some techniques after-the-fact that might have led me to win a match against a brown belt, who was not yet 18 and therefore we weren't technically in the same class. Our weight was about the same, but he was younger and had a lot more experience in Judo. He had also forgotten to bring his cup, so I agreed not to do certain throws.

Most of the match was him trying to throw me, and my natural defenses being good enough that he couldn't quite manage it. And then I'd try to throw him and his trained defenses were much better. And so we would kind of drag each other down onto the mat, and that latter would continue -- his trained attacks weren't quite good enough to get through my natural defenses, and my attacks were not remotely close to good enough to get through his trained defenses.

Ultimately, his training won out, because he knew of more ground attacks than I did, and he managed to get me into situations I couldn't get out of. And he did that three times in a row.

After the match, my teacher told me if I had not attempted to attack but had instead gone more defensive, I probably could have changed tack and easily walked him out of the ring, which would have automatically caused him to lose. But then we agreed that wouldn't have been a very sporting win.

Nevertheless, I was technically the winner of the heavyweight adult class in that tournament, simply by showing up. But it was fun doing a demo match with this brown belt, even though it didn't impact who won which weight class.

Unfortunately, that was the only fun thing that happened at that Dojo.