While we're here can you describe how the introductory curriculum of judo goes? I'm assuming you don't just go right into throwing?
Well, kinda -- normally they start you off doing falls and rolls for the first 2-3 weeks. From what I understand, doing falls in judo is a lot different from doing falls from different martial arts, there's a lot of emphasis on protecting the head, and people from differing disciplines often fail at this stage because they're used to falling a different way. Then they get you into understanding the concepts of Kuzushi -- learning how to break peoples' posture with simple exercises, as well as learning how to defend your own posture.
After getting comfortable with falling, depending on the school they'd either start you off doing some dumb hand takedowns that aren't really useful, or the basic hip throws that you'll be using for years like the harai goshi or o goshi. Some schools may even introduce the constriction techniques at this point (i.e., how to get into a choke after doing a throw).
Others, like ours, like to shake it up every now and then and introduce karate punches/kicks/strikes which I thoroughly dislike. Yeah, they do help with learning how to position your body and distribute weight but the Karate shit just bores me. I just want to throw around and hug dudes, damn
