Radomir Kovacevic

April 13th, 2011

Thanks to Andy P for pointing me to this great documentary. It's in six short parts:

Rusty in Sports Illustrated

March 9th, 2011

rusty-parnell-480x320.jpg

That's Parnell Legros doing a flying ukemi over Rusty Kanokogi. The young woman warming up looks familiar, but I don't know her name.

I tore these pages out of the March 24, 1986 Sports Illustrated. A lot of my possessions have come and gone since then, but somehow I still have these pages. I've been meaning to scan them for years.

Click the photo to see the rest of the article in my Flickr feed. If the scans are too fuzzy, you can read the text of the article here.

Owl uchikomi

January 6th, 2011

Lex Fridman's blog

January 4th, 2011

Here are a few good articles from Lex Fridman's training blog from just the past couple of weeks:

I see Lex is not only a judo competitor, he's a computer science researcher, a poet, and a general all-around thinker. I came across his blog via comments on AnnMaria De Mars's latest blog post, "Luck of the Draw is (usually) a Load of B.S.".

Last chance to smash Reuben

December 1st, 2010

News from Reuben: his job will require him to spend the next two years in Canada. He writes:

I am leaving on Wed Dec 8th and so Monday evening 6th will be my last workout at the dojo for a while. As such if anyone wants a last chance to smash me then I would gladly oblige them that night !!

Its hard to believe I have been at Oishi for almost 11 years now. In fact I had my first workout on the very first day I moved to New York – 1st June 2000 (as it was the only New York dojo that had a website !! ….. thankfully) and fondly remember almost dying from the Leonard Street summer sweat box !!! Good times.

I expect to be back to NY every few months and will be sure to drop in for a workout. I also welcome ANYBODY to visit us in Calgary – I have already found a good dojo up there – one that I think Sensei would approve of.

Monday night, folks. Let's see our friend off in the manner he deserves.

If you want to stay in touch let me know and I'll send you Reuben's email address.

Visit from Robert Siegel

November 27th, 2010

Robert with Sensei

Some of you know Robert Siegel from back in the day. Robert started judo as a kid and had already amassed a collection of trophies and medals when I met him in the late 70's, when we were both teens.

Robert and his family were in town for Thanksgiving. I had lunch with him on Wednesday and it occurred to me we could take a walk to the dojo and surprise Sensei and Barbara, whom he hadn't seen in almost 30 years. It was a great reunion, and wouldn't you know, Sensei surprised us. He rummaged in a closet for a minute and produced Robert's nidan certificate from the Kodokan, dated Jan. 13, 1992 and in perfect condition.

Robert's wife and kids came by and Sensei made everybody take an ukemi lesson. Robert practiced some throws on me, to the delight of his kids. After all these years he still had the muscle memory. It was like old times, getting smashed by that tai-otoshi.

I hope we'll have more of these visits in the years to come.

(If the above video doesn't work for you, try this direct link to the page on Vimeo.)

Comments were broken

November 27th, 2010

Sorry about that. You should be able to leave comments now.

John, Karim, and Mike made shodan

November 14th, 2010

Congratulations to John Harris, Karim Wahib, and Mike P on passing their shodan tests!

October 2010 Hudson Promotionals

October 3rd, 2010

[UPDATE: The matches are all up on Vimeo.]

The Hudson Promotionals were yesterday. We won some, we lost some. Congratulations to J Lee who made batsugan in the sankyu division in his first tournament.

Here's a highlights video, which I posted on Vimeo because I still haven't sorted out my login problems with YouTube:

I'll be posting full matches throughout the day. I have half a mind to switch to Vimeo, but I like having all my Oishi videos in one place, and there are a number of people who have already subscribed to my YouTube feed. Still undecided.

There were a couple of matches I didn't get. As usual there was one that I kicked myself for missing — a big ippon by Mike P near the end of the day. I thought I had it but I had forgotten to press the Record button. Fortunately Mike got it on tape. I'll post it when I get a copy.

A message from Sensei

September 1st, 2010

Click the fish: