Photo courtesy of Major Confusion
One thing that we practice that improves both posture and randori is doing light randori looking for specific postural events in the opponent as triggers for specific throws. For instance, we might do low-resistance randori, throwing osotogari any time the other guy points his center away from you or we might do randori looking for hizaguruma anytime the other guy leans over and stiffarms..
What we are really working on here is learning to move around in shizentai and trigger our throws when we see the opponent make specific postural deviations from shizentai. Common deviations to look for include.
- if he turns his center away from you, do deashi or kosoto or osoto
- if he bends over and stiffarms, do hizaguruma
- if uke spreads his legs too far, do kouchigari or ouchigari
- if he lunges for a grip with his dominant arm and leg forward, do seoinage
- if he stands straightlegged on his heels, get ready to do anything named otoshi next time he moves
- if he bends his legs too much, get ready to do anything named guruma next time he moves
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I love it.
ReplyDeleteSo I played with this a bit in my class, and it seemed to take very well. I took just the first two (osoto and hiza) and worked on them individually, then...
ReplyDeleteWhat if they fail? Well, there is the bad failure where you never generated any kuzushi in your attempt and so you get countered to hell. Then there is the okay failure where uke has to reposition before he can do anything else. And wouldn't you know it, a common uke posture after a "good" failed hiza is when uke starts to turn out. And what did we just learn to do when the center is turned away? Osoto! And with a "good" failure of Osoto, a common reaction is to push! Hiza!
And this then builds in to non-postural triggers...
Cool, dude! you're spreading the judo love!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have tried "trigger training" in the past, but mine was not focused on posture-based triggers, rather more on feeling-based triggers. What I found after last night is that the posture-based triggers are much easier for people to pick up (especially beginners), and you end up working in some feeling-based triggers on the sly. Nice tips, coach! =:>
ReplyDelete