Okay so I’m a beginner. 19. Started on April 14th. Im in a beginner’s class but there are quite a few blue belts, I’m a white belt.
Today we were training walking backwards and sweeping the foot. I got paired up with an orange belt guy, we were going back and forth and really weren’t getting caught off balance by each other or falling. I fell about 3 to 4 times to him, he didn’t fall like once to me so I was feeling pretty discouraged. Especially since everyone else in the class was sweeping their partners even the other white belts.
The other times I’ve did drills with the white belts we sorta just went with it with some resistance. But yeah my partner wasn’t falling basically no matter what. And I assumed it was bc yk “he’s an orange belt he’s just better than me.”
I had made sure to ask the teacher leading the class “I don’t just make it easy for him right?” And he told me basically no that if his timing is right then I will fall. And so yea I wasn’t getting caught off balance by him most of the time.
The teachers kept telling me to “sweep the foot.” One of them eventually came over and told me to move my back foot further back cuz it was close to my sweeping foot and that really helped me get him off balance and make him fall like two times.
We had switched back to his turn, he got me off balance more frequently and made me fall once again. But I could usually just regain my footing and we’d try again.
But then one of the black belts (I don’t know if he was a teacher per say cuz he was doing the drills with the other students) came up to me and was saying to me specifically “you know in judo, being a GOOD partner is to-“ I don’t exactly remember the specifics but he was basically telling me I wasn’t letting my partner do anything. So I asked him “So I let him trip me?” And he said yes. And me and my partner were both confused because the black belt who was teaching the class and leading it for the day told me the opposite. He also told me that what I was doing was making it so my partner could never throw me.
So we kinda just made it really easy for each other to sweep each other and then the teachers were telling me and him good job. But idk, I sorta felt called out lol cuz my partner before this was basically never letting me trip him at all. I mean idk I didn’t want to just be a bag of sand and let him dog walk me throughout it all without resistance while he never let me trip him once you know?
Soooo how much resistance and I suppose to give against my partner during drills, was I not being a good partner? I asked the lead teacher of the class that day if I was suppose to make it easy or not because one of the black belts told me to let my partner trip me. He kinda didn’t really answer the question and I felt dumb to ask him to elaborate.