New nikyu

Judo with Rob

• Worked on Karl’s “Creating the moment” material
• Footsweep to control
• Deashi, stepping around the corner, hizaguruma, kubinage/ogoshi, ashiguruma

Aikido with Patrick M., Kel, Jill, and Cynthia

• Warmup, ukemi, tegatana (emphasizing following-foot and shizentai), hanasu #1
• Aiki brushoff from hanasu #1 on the far footfall and on the near footfall
• Rokukata hikiotoshi as a brush-off and ushiroate as a follow-up to a spoiled hikiotoshi
• Patrick M. did his nikyu demonstration. His shomenate, aigamaeate, gedanate, and shihonage were particularly excellent. His kotegaeshi might need some work.

Ukigoshi and gearing ratio

Considering ukigoshi, if you look at uke and tori from above you can imagine them as gears turning together. One typically has to turn faster and farther than the other, thus creating different forms of throws. For example, sometimes tori turns a lot while uke doesn’t turn much, creating the big hip throws like ogoshi and koshiguruma. In other instances, tori turns a little as uke spins around him, creating different hip throws, like ukigoshi and haraigoshi. Most often it is some middle condition, with tori and uke each making some part of the turn. This variation in the turning speed of the two ‘gears’ is called gearing ratio, and you can get more info on that at wikipedia.

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With that in mind, you can define about two basic forms of any koshinage:

• Catch uke stepping forward. Step to the side just as his front foot plants, pulling him into offbalance. Turn your hips backward into uke with a backstep, loading him and throwing.
• Catch uke stepping forward. Step to the side just as his front foot plants, pulling him into offbalance. Pull uke’s lapel side 90 degrees to get him to step with the other leg. Load him onto your hips and throw as he turns the corner.

In the first form, tori makes all the turn as uke hovers in offbalance. This is the form classically taught in uchikomi, with tori pulling with the left arm and turning in to catch with the right arm. This is also the form taught in amateur wrestling – called something like ‘the back-step’. In the second form above, uke makes part the turn as tori makes the other part of the turn. As tori is turning to the left, uke is stepping with his left foot, taking up the slack.

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Both forms are decent beginning ways to learn the thing. I alternate between them in my teaching. I often teach the back-step technique as kubinage instead of ukigoshi or ogoshi – but that’s just a preference thing. There are many variations, but they mostly tend to fall in a spectrum between these two basic forms. In randori situations you have to find the right middle-ground between these two basic forms on the fly. That is just part of the art of the thing.

Judo and aiki at Mokuren last night

A slight change in the format of my training logs...

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Judo with Rob

• Groundwork cycle – emphasis on minimizing 2-knee downs and reversing the flow of the cycle using the shoulder press turnover, the knee-lift turnover, and the cross-face near ankle breakdown.
• Newaza randori followed by drilling the skill of walking out of jujigatame by feeding the arm farther in and stepping over his body. I also got to try a step-over guard pass that I saw in a book. Worked great.
• Standing throws into a crashpad. A few repetitions of ogoshi (I hate that throw!) then working into the otoshi-guruma concept with taiotoshi, ukiotoshi, sumiotoshi, and hizaguruma.

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, Jill, and J.P.

• Tegatana emphasizing pulling with the front foot to snap the recovery foot back under your hips to minimize time spent in an indeterminate state.
• Hanasu emphasizing the transition from #1 into #5 and #2 into #6
• KiHara Chain #2 working maeotoshi, shihonage, tenkai kotegaeshi, and aikinage/aigamaeate. Emphasis on using the wrist-hand in aikinage as a feeler instead of an end effector.

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.

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.