10-20 years behind isn't so bad

I got a great comment a day or so ago from Nick Lowry at the Windsong Dojo in Oklahoma City. He commented on my “Divine Nine’ judo throws that we practice more often than the remainder of the syllabus. Apparently KG’s students in Houston were practicing almost this same set of core techniques 20 years ago and Windsong students in OKC have been practicing a similar set for 10 or so years. This is one of those funny times when finding out that you’re only 10-20 years behind the times is good. These are great guys to be 10-20 years behind. True giants! So, I consider myself to be close to the right track when I can find out that I’m only a couple of decades behind folks this awesome.

One of the differences Nick noted between my Divine Nine and their core set was that they practiced tsurikomigoshi and sodetsurikomigoshi in the spots where I practice ukigoshi and kubinage. Those are certainly good throws. I was approaching the set of core techniques from perhaps a different point – TKGoshi and sode TKgoshi are variants of ogoshi/kubinage, so I put kubinage in my list. But I can see where TKgoshi could be a higher percentage throw because of perhaps greater ease of getting sleeve grips in a tourney or because of the necessity to get lower than a resisting opponent.

Creativity in the heat of the moment

To me, the really impressive competitors are not the ones that can get their tokuiwaza (best/favorite throw) in a lot of situations, but the ones that invent the majestic perfect ippon throws on the spur of the moment with such unexpected, unusual motion that the opponent (and every observer in the arena) is totally surprised.

These competitors don’t appear to throw named judo techniques – rather they just adapt to the opponent, pick him up, and put him on his back. Sometimes the observers are able to say, “That was sorta like technique-x so that must be what he just threw.” But the competitor wasn’t thinking “technique-x” during the thing. He just threw the man down and later said, “Yeah, I must have meant to do that technique.” See the following video for some examples of this type of surprise throw in judo – particularly the guy with the single leg picks towards the end.

This sort of spectacular inventiveness in the heat of battle seems to occur more with amateur wrestlers than with judoka. Why would this be? It’s not like the domains of these two arts are really significantly different - you grapple standing and grounded with the goal of getting the guy on his back or throwing him onto his back.

One possibility is the system of groupings into which techniques are placed in judo. For instance, the judo guy has to learn a half-dozen specific hip throws, each of which looks significantly like some model presented by the instructor, and each of which is recognizably different from the others. The wrestler, on the other hand, might learn one or two principles (like back-under or hip-heist) that allow him to lift and project the man using the hips as a fulcrum. So, the wrestler does not have to try to identify the tactical situation and figure out which pigeonhole to put it in (which specific throw to use). The wrestler has to figure out how to adapt his body to the situation to express a few basic principles.

Most judo guys (I’m guessing here) would probably know significantly more named techniques than experience-matched amateur wrestlers, but the wrestlers seems to be able to more easily adapt more creatively to competition situations.

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Hmmm. Makes you think…I’ve demonstrated in previous posts (click on 'Divine Nine below) that of the forty to sixty-something named throws in judo, virtually all competition throws come from about nine or ten of these throws. Might we do better teaching just a few basic forms of throwing than with a throwing syllabus of four-to-six times that many techniques?

Ground cycle #1 pointers

Great return to judo practice tonight after being out for a week or so. Rob and Iwarmed up with some ROM and moved into groundwork cycle #1 with some minor adjustments to what Rob was doing:

• Even though it's a pretty elementary drill and top man is not looking for armbars, bottom man has to actively work to protect his arms from being entangled and locked. Bottom man continually moves his arms as top man shifts so that they stay free and viable and so that they act as feelers.
• Also, when pushing back to base from your belly, you don't want to do a push-up type action. Rather, pull one knee up as far as you can and use you arms to slide your butt over that shin as if you were pushing your butt over a roller (your shin is the roller). I can push back to base this proper way with a 350 pound guy on my back, whereas it's hard to do a push-up with anyone on your back.
• Third thing was the crawfish action at the end of the groundwork cycle. Bottom man has to immobilize one of top man's arms against the ground or else he will float with you. Top man has to watch out for putting an arm around bottom man's waistline/beltline because the turnover is almost trivial for the bottom man in this situation.

We did a lot of randori, both newaza and tachi into newaza. Rob did well there and got me in some positional asphyxia deals a couple of times. I got him with a good jujigatame (cross armbar) once and a good jujijime (cross choke) another time. We finished up with some repetition of kouchigari (one of the divine nine). We both agreed that if we worked with this intensity daily we'd each weigh about 20 pounds less.

Nine of Forty

Here is a really exciting video of some judo ippons, etc. If you watch you'll see that virtually every throw that is thrown is one of the Divine Nine that I've been talking about lately, or a minimal variant of one of the Divine Nine. This really boils down to the 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, basically restated as, "80% of successful throws will come from 20% of the possible throws." So, with a throwing syllabus of a few more than 40 throws, 20% would come out to about nine throws. The Divine Nine.

There is one major exception to the rule of thumb that pretty much all throws that you ever see are from the Divine Nine. Uchimata is the most successful throw that is thrown in judo competitions. So, why didn't I include uchimata in the 'Divine Nine' list of judo kihon? It's not kihon because: 1) It's a variant of ukigoshi, 2) it is harder to learn than anything in the Divine Nine, and 3) it is harder to fall from than anything in the Divine Nine.

This brings up a pretty important point when you begin trying to define a small set of kihon for judo. You can't reduce the whole system to these nine throws. Not only do other throws, like uchimata, comprise a significant portion of the opportunities for throws, but sometimes it is specifically the threat of some of these other throws that make the Divine Nine so easy to throw. If you have to watch to make sure the opponent doesn't get you with 40 possible throws, you tend to leave about 9 holes in your defense. When you try to plug some of these nine holes, like stiffarming to stay out of osotogari, you make bigger holes for other throws.

So, while the Divine Nine are representative of all of judo, and as such are worth some practice time during every class, they are not ALL there is to judo as a system.

Kouchigari for effect

Most folks probably don't consider kouchigari an ippon throw, but this guy sure demonstrates it for ippon! Watch closely, because this throw is fast. Not only is kosotogari a serious threat on its on, but it pairs with other techniques like ouchigari, taiotoshi, and seoinage to make for a really confusing mess of motion for uke.

Osotogari and hizaguruma

Osotogari and hizaguruma go together like peas and carrots. Actually better - nobody around here actually eats peas and carrots together, but I know from experience that these two techniques partner so well that learning one of them well impoves your performance of the other one. The reason that they go so well together is that they are dynamic opposites that occur from the same position. One is a forward throw and one a backward throw. One is (usually) an otoshi motion, the other a guruma. One is an attack on the near leg, the other attacks the far leg. One attacks an offbalance parallel to the opponent's stance line and the other attacks his perpendicular.

So it's just incredibly hard to avoid taking one of these two falls if you let the other guy get anywhere close to that position.

Fierce Tamura seoinage

Many people, when they think 'judo' think about the shoulder throw, seoinage. Although this type of takedown is common to pretty much all grappling styles, folks seem to especially associate seoinage with judo.

I was sifting through YouTube looking for a good example of seoinage for a post in my series of the nine core throws in judo, when I came across this video. This is merely an okay example of seoinage - when it comes down to it, with a resistant opponent of this level, the throw will not look like the throw you practice in the dojo anyway. But what caught my eye was the fierce persistence of the thrower as well as the awesome attempt by the opponent to avoid the loss.

How would you like to have that happen to you on concrete!?

Yeah, baby! Deashibarai!

If osotogari is the King of Throws then deashibarai can probably easily be considered the Queen of Throws, or the mother of all footsweeps. Above we see an excellent, classic deashi against a higher-ranked highly resistant opponent. Both of these guys had a lot of trouble once they ended up on the ground but the throw itself was superb. Below we see an unbelievable, superhuman counter (uranage) to osotogari, demonstrating that not even the King of Throws is foolproof.

Osotogari - the king of throws

The other day I published a list of what I consider to be the "Divine Nine"core throws in judo. Although this is an unordered list, osotogari is really the King of Throws due to its versitility. It can be taught and effectively thrown moving forward or backward, with otoshi or guruma timing, on the left or right side. It is one of only a few throws that is easily throwable with tori's power side no matter which direction uke is moving.

It is also scalable, in that beginners can safely and comfortably learn this throw while first learning to fall. Whenever several of us are stiff or sore, we tend to use osotogari (or deashi) as a continuation of warmup and ukemi practice to give us more time to loosen up and to more smoothly blend the ukemi practice into paired throwing practice (nagekomi). Onthe other end of the scalable nature of osotogari, tori can, if necessary put the extra oomph into it to make it extremely violent. In fact, I know of no other technique except perhaps ukigoshi with the potential for such a severe fall. I have been knocked senseless with a violent osoto and I've broken deep hip muscles with an ukigoshi fall.

Osotogari is also a very flexible technique. With minimal modification on tori's part, uke is threatened with haraigoshi or osoto makikomi. The harder uke resists osotogari the more trivial they make it for tori to switch to hizaguruma or deashibarai.

As the 'King of throws,' osotogari deserves your attention. If you study some other system and only take one thing from judo - take this one.

Core techniques in judo

I posted earlier that the old masters didn’t give us much clue about how to structure the piles of techniques that they left us so we could teach them effectively. That’s not entirely true – they did give us a couple of hints – the kata and the divisions. In this post I want to talk about the divisions and use them to develop a set of core techniques to be practiced regularly (though not as often as kihon.)

The Kodokan divides all throwing techniques into several groups, or divisions:

• Foot throws – the action mainly happens with the foot
• Hip throws – the action mainly happens with the hips
• Hand throws – the action mainly happens with the hands
• Sacrifices – tori sacrifices his upright posture to attain the throw

I think it is useful to divide some of these groups into a system like the following:

• Slips – leg throws that move uke’s unweighted foot as he tries to weightbear with it
• Trips – leg throws that stop uke’s moving foot as he tries to weightbear with it
• Reaps – leg throws that move uke’s weightbearing leg
• Hooks – leg throws that break down uke’s weightbearing leg
• Small hip throws – throws based on or mechanically similar to ukigoshi
• Large hip throws – throws based on or mechanically similar to ogoshi
• Floating hand throws – timing throws, typically otoshi motions, like sumiotoshi
• Pick-up hand throws – lifting throws like teguruma
• Back sacrifices – like tomoe nage
• Side sacrifices – like yoko gake

For a core set of techniques to practice, one would want most of these groups represented. In most cases it is pretty easy to come up with the representative technique for each group. For instance, when I say, “Name a leg throw that move uke’s weightbearing leg.” Most folks probably immediately think of osotogari. For some of the groups (e.g. Large hip throws) there may be some debate as to which technique is most representative of that class of throw. Some may reasonably argue for ogoshi, tsurigoshi, kubinage, or others.

Following is my list of the techniques I consider to be the core of judo. I teach all of these before green belt as the basis of all the other throws. For the sake of brevity and simplicity of this set of core techniques, I have excluded sacrifices, pick-ups, and hooks. If I absolutely had to choose a pickup and a sacrifice, I’d choose the single-leg pick and yoko tomoenage. Also, because of personal preference you will see that the slip-class and trip-class throws are over-represented. If I had to only pick one slip and one trip they would be deashibarai and hizaguruma.

• Osotogari (reap)
• Hizaguruma (trip)
• Kosotogari (trip)
• Ouchigari (slip)
• Kouchigari (slip)
• Deashibarai (slip)
• Ukigoshi (small hip throw)
• Kubinage (large hip throw)
• Seoinage (floating hand throw)

If you check out the gokyonowaza you will see that the above 9 throws are very much representative of the vast majority of the first three kyo and parts of the rest of the syllabus (with the exception of pickups and sacrifices). Most of the throws can be considered variations on the above.

This is an unordered list. It can be taught in pretty much any order you like. Also, I have not specified any certain variation or version of each technique. These are really core principles. You might work on one variant of osotogari on week and next time you come back to it, work on a different variation.

After warming up and running through the kihon I almost always spend some time in each class working on one of these core techniques. Doesn’t have to be a lot of time – maybe just 5 minutes. Maybe just 25 reps of one of these core techniques as a review each class.. A good way to do it is work on the first one for a week, then move to the next one for a week, and so on… In this way you get through the entire core of judo every nine weeks. Another good point of cycling through the list like this is you don’t use up all of your class time repping core techniques so you save time in each class for randori and/or tokuiwaza.