Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Thursday (1/11) was the grand opening of Oklahoma City Defensive Tactics' new dojo, just down the street on May Avenue. This dojo was started by members of the OKC Police Department that used to train with us back in the mid-to-late 1990's. They are primarily a competitive club, and have a very successful children's program.

Nick, Danny, Kellie, Greg and I went over to play judo with them.

The first thing was their warm-up routine. They didn't really do any stretching like we do. They did a lot of calisthenic warm-up activity -- burpees, flying pushups, spiderman pushups, mountain climbers, and more.

The second thing was uchi-komi. Like most of the rest of the world, their uchi-komi were performed with uke standing still. If they had a set routine for throws I couldn't pick it out. It looked like 3 minutes of whatever throw you want to do, repeated 3 or 4 times.

They did demonstrate a couple of slick moves on the ground from a recent seminar they hosted. Nick taught a nice little armbar-choke series for them to have fun with.

We did a few 3 minute rounds of what they call randori, which to me felt a lot more like shiai. Greg and I both played with Mike Darter, one of the founders of OKCDT. Greg also enjoyed some nice nage-komi (hop randori) with Kyle Eastham, the other founder.

All in all, it was a nice visit with the guys. It was fun to spend a little time on the mat with guys we used to play with day in and day out.