shadowspar

Dr AnnMaria DeMars, former judo world champion and hardcore statistics geek, who I've followed on twitter seemingly forever:

• DrAnnMaria: If you're following me hoping to hear about business, statistics or programming you want @annmariastat
• DrAnnMaria: I have two twitter accounts because most programmers don't care about conditioning for martial arts or matwork.
• DrAnnMaria: On the other hand, with all the sexual harassment problems at conferences #OSCON maybe those programmers ARE following me here on purpose

Apparently the universe really wants me to watch olypmic judo.

The CBC is streaming a live video feed of the finals and semifinals of the judo competitions. This is extremely awesome, because in previous years you were extremely fortunate to catch much judo on TV if indeed any at all. The admittely minor downside is that there only seems to be a live feed and with the time difference, that means that the action starts around 6am EDT.

I'd hoped to watch as much of the coverage as I could, but if I'm up late or don't sleep well, trying to get up at 6 in the morning will make me nonfunctional for the rest of the day. Since this is the case, I haven't actually set an alarm to wake up in time to watch judo. As it turns out, though, I haven't needed to -- two out of the past three nights, my daughter has helpfully woken up in the middle of the night and then fallen back asleep at the magical hour of...6 in the morning.

Surely this is divine providence at work. =)

On another note, this is really the first time that I've been actively participating in an olympic sport when the olympics rolled around, and it kind of changes my perspective. I am probably never going to go to a major international competition, let alone the olympics, but even myself and my little club out here in the sticks are connected to something much larger. It was astonishing to see how many judoka were bearing their national flags into the stadium during the opening ceremonies, and how many different countries judoka were coming from. Maybe I've always subconsciously thought of judo as something that originated in Japan and spread around a bit to North America, Brazil, and Western Europe. It was awesome to be disabused of that notion. African nations fielded judoka. Russia and the former Soviet republics are extremely strong competitors. Israel. Iran. Italy. Cuba is a judo powerhouse. (Who knew?) Even tiny little nations like Malta sent a number of very tough judoka to Beijing. It's very cool to be reminded that I have peers practicing the same sport as I in every corner of the world.

I just learned the coolest throw in the known universe -- yoko guruma (横車, "side wheel"). It works just like shown there -- step around, drop, roll to the left, and throw uke over your left shoulder, all in one fluid motion. Here's a video.

It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be at first -- it seemed to come to me quite naturally, while some of the kids had a bit of trouble with it. My biggest concern was avoiding any inadvertent face plants either when throwing or being thrown, and that didn't turn out to be a problem either.

Funny thing, too...tonight I noticed on the way in to class that I'm starting to feel more like a judoka and less like a guy who happens to wear funny pajamas to the gym a few nights a week. I'm about as far away from judo godliness as you can get, but feeling like I'm able to put in an effort instead of just floundering is pretty cool.

Okay, maybe it's not the coolest throw in the universe, but currently it's the coolest throw in my universe. =)