If you keep your head up you can’t get thrown

Haha, this was a funny photo from the CCSF Christmas party, 2018. I made those shirts. I made it for sensei. I remember that he said that once and I thought it was cool.

He might have been describing a specific situation, but I thought it also sounded cool figuratively.

Robert Mendoza and Sensei – If you keep your head up you can’t get thrown – CCSF judo

I made another and added it as a random gift in the party. I am happy that Robert chose it.

How I made it…

I did a drawing of sensei that I found on Facebook on a piece of poster board. Then I made a stencil and stenciled it with a fabric marker onto a T-shirt. It’s kind of low-tech and a bit wabi-sabi.

Not sure if he really liked it, but some people seemed to get a kick out of it.

I got promoted to Judo brown belt

So along with another classmate I got promoted from green belt to judo brown belt.

Sensei, myself, Stas, and Samir

This last Tuesday I got promoted to judo brown belt. Nothing feels different though. I still feel like a white belt. Sensei says that it is hard to see your own progress cause everyone else is progressing too.

Beats me.

In promotion everyone lines up and gets to do 3 free throws. You don’t fight you just let them throw you. It’s practice for falling, but it is a lot of throws.

So in about 5-10 minutes I got thrown about…

Let me think…

There were maybe 15-20 students doing throws and they each get to throw 3 times so that’s…

Getting thrown anywhere from 45-60 times in maybe 10 minutes. I sort of dreaded it at first because I remembered last time, but it’s not so bad. Some throw hard, but many don’t.

And…

Judo is hard.

Progress seems slow, but belt promotion is faster than jiu-jitsu. From what I read I think averages for judo might be close to 5 years from white belt to black.

In jiu-jitsu the average is about 10 years from white to black.

I don’t do a lot of judo. I do about 2 days a week and have done so for around three years. Though in the beginning I didn’t do much randori just technique.

I got the photo from CCSF’s judo page.