Shrimping escape from munegatame

Here's some of Steve Scott's guys demonstrating the shrimping escape from munegatame.  This is not one of the fundamental escapes that I teach beginners, but more of a branch or variation of the bridge&roll escape that I covered the other day.

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Notice that the first 5 steps of the recipe for this escape are the same as for the bridge&roll, but then, once you've shrimped away from uke, what if he does not pile back into you for bridge&roll?  Well, if he just hangs out with that huge gaping hole between you and him, stick your knee in the hole and move into guard.

1. feet tight under your butt and elbows close as possible to your chest.
2. bridge with both feet straight up to create space under you.
3. turn onto your side, facing uke
4. bottom elbow under uke's hips and top hand over uke's shoulder
5. shrimp 2-3 times directly away from uke while pushing/holding him in place
6. turn your knee in  and shrimp or scoot or pull into the guard...

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Patrick Parker
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Bridge&roll from munegatame

Munegatame (chest hold) is the second osaekomi that we teach in judo, and the bridge&roll escape that is associated with it is one of the easiest bridge&roll escapes to get working, but sometimes students still have trouble getting a handle on this escape, so here is an explicit recipe for producing a bridge&roll escape from munegatame in practice.

1. feet tight under your butt and elbows close as possible to your chest.
2. bridge with both feet straight up to create space under you.
3. turn onto your side, facing uke
4. bottom elbow under uke's hips and top hand over uke's shoulder
5. shrimp 2-3 times directly away from uke while pushing/holding him in place
6. when uke climbs back on top, hold his head to the mat with your top arm
7. bridge straight up with both feet and push uke's hips over your head with your bottom elbow.
8. scramble on top of uke.

...and some general practice hints...

• Practice getting all the steps in.  Work for mechanical precision, as if you were a bridge&roll machine that is designed  and programmed specifically to tear apart this particular hold-down.
• Repeat each step several times, then add the next step, repeating all previous steps.
• Practice with moderate-to-light resistance at first and build up toward heavy resistance over the course of weeks-to-months.
• When drilling, allow uke to get all the way into the hold and start from a dead standstill, but when applying the escape in randori or shiai, do not wait for the opponent to set the hold 100%

... and a video of Nick and Damon demonstrating the bridge&roll from mune with only slight differences from my recipe...

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Patrick Parker
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How to break a judo hold - chock the hinge

This is a great example of a motion that will help you to start tearing apart your opponent's hold-downs so that you can facilitate an actual escape technique.  This particular example is kesagatame (the scarf hold), and the idea probably shows up most clearly here but it is definitely applicable to other situations besides kesagatame.  I call this maneuver, "chocking the hinge." You can see it in the above video at about 0"10 and again at about 0:16 (though it is kinda de-emphasized here.)

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Imagine that you have a heavy door on a hinge and you want to break the door off the hinge (Why?  I don't know.  Just go with me for a minute.)  If you place a chock (redneck word for a block or wedge) right against the hinge and slam the door against the chock, the weight of the door will tear the hinge apart.  The chock becomes the fulcrum for a class 1 lever with massive mechanical advantage at the point of the hinge.

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Now, imagine kesagatame as a door on a hinge.  Your shoulder that is being held is the hinge, your body and his body are the leaves of the hinge.  You already have a chock in place (the curve of your ribs and his ribs), so go ahead and open the door (swing your feet and hips away from your opponent's) and slam the door violently over the chock by banging you hips hard into his.

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Try this breaking the hinge motion a time or two and see don't you have more space around your held shoulder, either facilitating an escape or forcing him to reposition.

Ukigatame - the floating hold

In judo we tend to practice in phases. For instance, we might practice some gripfighting sequences to move from a free-movement phase into a clench phase.  Or (more often) we might allow the partner to take his grip and we practice throwing with tori remaining standing. Or we might start on the ground and practice some newaza.  It's fairly rare in this sort of class to practice the entire range of skills from grip to clench to throw to groundwork.  There are a couple of benefits to practicing with this separation of phases:

• Safety - It's harder to practice standing judo while others are rolling around doing newaza.  People fall on top of other people or trip over them. 
• Concentration - This type of practice also lets us to concentrate our time and effort on specific phases of combat (free-motion, clench, newaza, etc...)

But this type of practice in separated phases mostly fails to address the transition from one phase to the next. We try to minimize this problem by having most all nagekomi (throwing practice) techniques end in ukigatame (the floating hold, A.K.A. knee-on-belly) and many of our groundwork exercises begin in ukigatame. Thus, ukigatame is the transition between standing judo and newaza.  And as we saw in a previous post, since ukigatame is a core element of several aikido holds, ukigatame also represents one of the links or transition states between aikido and judo.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Things to be able to do from ukigatame

Ukigatame (knee-on-belly) is probably the most important hold-down taught in judo.  It is one of the two most-common transitions from standing to groundwork (the other is makikomi).  I recommend all of my students when practicing nagekomi of a throw that does not involve makikomi, always finish in ukigatame  (kneeling on top of a downed opponent) if possible.

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Here are a handful of things that you probably ought to be able to do from ukigatame -

• get completely away from uke with minimal exposure to being grabbed or struck
• maintain ukigatame as uke tries to bucks, shrimps, bridges, and rolls
• transition to tateshiho, munegatame, or kesagatame
• attack simple chokes, like katatejime, in order to expose uke to armbar attacks
• attack jujigatame or hizagatame on the near or the far arm falling backward or forward

If anything on that list seems like a stretch to you, I would recommend doing some drilling on that skill with a non-resistant partner, then try it out in randori.

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

One thing - get off your back!

In general, the first thing you have to do to escape from being held on the ground is get off your back! Turn on your side facing your opponent and you will be much more mobile and slippery than if you allow them to press your back to the ground.  Never turn away or they'll jump on your back, and never allow them to press you flat on your back.

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Osaekomi recap

Photo courtesy of Guillaume

This past month has been osaekomi month, during which I have placed more of an emphasis on writing about the locks, pins, and holds that appear in aikido and judo.  Following is a convenient list for you to check out the osaekomi articles from this past month.

• October is osaekomi month
• An osaekomi is an inconvenient thing
• Kansetsu in osaekomi
• Who's controlling who?
• Hold, but don't cling
• Osaekomi with knee on shoulder
• Just bridging doesn't cut it
• Don't drop uke's arm
• A video of the locks in Junana

Or you may just want to peruse all the articles on osaekomi in my archives.
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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Junana locks and pins

Osaekomi month is drawing to an end here at Mokuren Dojo.  For the past month we have emphasized the pins and locks and holds of aikido and judo both in our classes and here on the blog.  I'll have a recap of all the articles I've written here in a couple of days, but till then, here is a video featuring a few of my students playing with some of the locks and pins associated with techniques #6, 7, 8, and 12 of Junana hon kata.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Don't drop the arm!

Photo courtesy of BestKevin

Another quick and simple hint for preforming osaekomi (locks, holds, or pins) in aikido - When uke taps, do not just drop their arm onto the mat and walk off.

When a muscle is stretched to its limit, it becomes slack and does not contract correctly for a moment or two. So, when you stretch their arm, if you drop it they won't be able to control it and it will smack the mat like a dead fish. This is poor zanshin for you but it is also disrespectful, unpleasant, and perhaps painful for uke.

Stretch the arm and when they tap, step outside their reach, place their arm on the mat, and back away.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Just bridging doesn't cut it!

Photo courtesy of Simmr

One idea that I've had a hard time training out of my kids is the idea that simply bridging will invalidate a hold. Where does this idea come from? Pro-wrestling maybe?

In judo, a hold-down is done by pressing most of the bottom man's shoulders into the mat from a position of control. If bottom man bridges (lifts his butt), he's still held down. Sometimes some of my kids will lift one shoulder off the mat and wave the arm at the ref as if to say, "look, my shoulder's up," even though the opponent is clearly controlling and pressing the other shoulder into the mat. This does not stop the hold-down either.

I have finally said it enough times that some of my kids have figured out that there are three basic ways to escape a hold

• - Turn clearly onto your side. Even though you are still on bottom, this is a great step toward escape and the back of neither shoulder is pressed into the mat. Turning onto your side will stop a hold-down. Watch out though - you need to turn to face the opponent. If you turn away he'll jump on your back.
• - Reverse positions so that you are on top. If you are clearly holding uke, then he is not holding you. Make it easy for the ref to see that you are the boss. Refs are dumb, and if it's not easy to see your mastery they might think you are actually losing ;-)
• - Get your legs around their leg(s) or torso. Again, if you are holding him, he is not holding you.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Osaekomi with knee on shoulder

Cool old photo of some jiujitsu women applying a pin similar to some of the pins we worked on last night in aikido.  Notice that tori has secured uke's wrist to her own thigh and has placed her knee on top of uke's shoulder.  Also notice the head is immobilized.  I wonder what role the overturned chair in the background played in the technique?

Photo courtesy of George Eastman House

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Hold, but don't cling

Photo courtesy of Spengu

Often, the harder tori insists on holding a pin, the harder it is to move to another safe position if uke does escape.

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In judo, it is often harder to hold a position when you clench tightly than when you drape loosely over uke. When you clench tightly, you make yourself a solid, unified piece for uke to lift. When you drape loosely it is much harder to lift you because you are both heavy and pliable. A better hold-down often happens when you drape yourself loosely over uke and allow him to shift under you (within constraints).

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The same thing happens in aikido when tori almost has a good pinning position but not quite, and the desire to hold that pin makes tori try harder and harder. If uke is able to reverse that pin, then tori will likely be in trouble for having tried to hold the position so hard for so long.

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Moral of the story - when your position starts to degrade, let go and move on instead of clinging to the past and riding it down the toilet.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Who's controlling who?

Photo courtesy of The US Army

I don't think this is really a set rule in judo, but in my book, it's not really a hold-down if uke is also holding tori in place. If tori can't get up and get away quickly and easily, it's not really a hold-down but more of a tangle. There are a couple of common implications of this pseudo-rule:

• Leg entanglement ends a hold-down. If uke can get control of tori's leg then he can prevent tori from easily escaping. By playing newaza this way, we don't have to worry too much about leglocks because we're working on preventing or diffusing the positional pre-requisite for a leglock. If you're going to hold uke down, don't let him grab or entangle your leg. Thus, in judo, leglock is sort of assumed if you can get a leg entanglement.
• The guard doesn't count as a hold even if the top man is pressing the bottom man's shoulders down. With legs around, the bottom man is preventing much of top man's control, while positioning for various counters and escapes of his own. It is difficult to free yourself from uke's legs while retaining good control over his torso.
• What about holds in which uke is free to hug your head or torso? I say that those are still holds because it is usually trivial to use your body weight and leg strength to break uke's arm hold such that you can escape.

So, one way to improve your control of uke is to prevent him from controlling you. Try it. You might like playing it that way.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Kansetsu in osaekomi

Photo courtesy of Invunche

In judo and aikido, when an osaekomi (pinning technique) makes use of kansetsu (joint manipulation), it isn't the explicit purpose of the kansetsu to break the joint. The point of the kansetsu is to take all the slack out of the joint, thus limiting the range of motion of the rest of the body, making it that much harder for uke to escape the pin or continue the attack.

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Try this. Take a relaxed slow stroll across the room. Now stroll back but hold one elbow flexed as far as it will go and see if your gait is as relaxed or natural as before. Now walk across the room again with your arms moving naturally but your chin lifted as far from your sternum as you can get it. What does that do to the motion of the rest of your joints.

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Point is, your body is made to work as a loose, flexible whole. By binding any major joint, you limit the motion of all other joints. Thus, without stretching a joint remotely close to the breaking point, you can bind one and restrict them all, thus making your osaekomi safer and more effective. Or as Tolkien would have said it...

One joint to rule them all,

One joint to find them.

One joint to bring them all,

And in the darkness, bind them.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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An inconvenient hold-down

Photo courtesy of Drome

In judo, one way you can win a match is to immobilize the opponent on his back for several seconds. In aikido and traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu many of the techniques end with tori holding uke immobilized (often face-down) for several seconds. This class of hold-down techniques is called osaekomi.

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Osaekomi is not really a hold-or-die thing. It does not necessarily mean tori is a failure if uke escapes the hold (though it's not really a good thing to happen). The main purposes of osaekomi include...

• ...making tori relatively safe, such that it is at least more difficult for uke to continue to attack.
• ...letting tori rest and calm down while making uke waste energy.

So, tori uses osaekomi to inconvenience uke while remaining relatively safe and fairly mobile.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Osaekomi month

Photo courtesy of PhineasX

I have a couple more monthly themes up my sleeve before I begin the weekly Interactions series for next year. Get ready folks, because October will be Osaekomi month!  We will be discussing the pins and holds that are associated with aikido and judo - and perhaps 1-2 karate articles.  Stay tuned...

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Suggested great books on aikido, judo, and strategy.
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What is a hold-down

Holds are an integral part of martial arts like aikido, judo, and jiujitsu, so it might sound like an overly-simple question - what is a hold? It turns out that it is more than it might seem. Holding techniques can be a lot of things. A hold ...

• ...is a position from which it is difficult for the held man to move to a better position. Notice that I did not say you wanted to make it impossible for the opponent to get up - just difficult. A hold is not a 'do-or-die no matter what' situation. Sometimes, the tighter you hold, the easier it is to turn you over. Often it helps to think about holds as temporary, transitory positions that happen between the real substance of the art - the transitions. A hold can be a stepping stone to the next, better position.
• ...is a position from which it is difficult for the held man to attack you. If you hold the opponent in a position from which it is easy for him to attack you, you're doing him a favor. For holds you have you position yourself to neutralize his potential attacks.
• ...is a position from which it is easy for the holder to disengage and get away. If you are holding your partner and he is holding you or has his legs around your waist or your leg, then even if it is officially a hold per the rules, it's a pretty poor one. A good rule of thumb for getting really good holds is hold the opponent such that he can't hold you.
• ...can be platform for launching submissions. Most all submission techniques require you to be positioned correctly - position before submission. But on the other hand, a hold might be so uncomfortable that the held player submits just from being held.

No hold is perfect, but based on these criteria, which of the types of holds pictured here seems better?

How NOT to escape a hold-down

This is a little notice to some of my students who have, perhaps, been watching rasslin' and applying those lessons to their performance in judo. Pay attention:

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When someone is holding you down, it is not enough to bridge your butt off the mat or lift one shoulder clear of the mat - you're still stuck under the guy so you are still held down. You can't just sit there under the guy yelling at the referee, "My back's off the mat! I'm on my side!" You have to get out from under him - better yet, turn him over and get on top of him! Make it obvious for the referee that you are not being held down.

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Pay attention to the positional escapes that I'm teaching you and practice them until you can easily find the escape for any hold-down!

Position as submission

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on the idea of position before submission. That is a common philosophy of grappling but it sort of falls short of the potential of the holding technique in judo. A position can and should be a submission in and of itself. The purpose of a judo hold is not only to immobilize uke, but to make him so intensely uncomfortable that he may just submit from the hold.

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For example, the judo holding technique katagatame (the shoulder hold) is known in jiu-jitsu as the shoulder choke (See Renzo Gracie's Mastering Jujitsu, p193 for an interesting variant) because the pressure of tori mashing uke's shoulder into his neck is so intense, unless uke is pretty sharp and pretty fast, he'll likely submit from katagatame long before he gets to escape it.

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Another great example that is ultra-common is the positional asphyxia trick used in most side-position hold-downs. The idea is to compress uke's floating ribs into his diaphragm and hold tighter every time he exhales. Pretty soon, with tori's weight resting on uke's diaphragm and his chest wall in maximum exhalation, there is no way to inhale. This is a vey frightening submission.

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Per conventional wisdom, I recommend that you pursue position before submission, developing good holding skills and good transitions between holds. But if you have previously only thought of holds as platforms from which to launch a choke or armbar, then re-examine them from the point of view of making the position itself into a submission. This will improve your judo game tremendously.

Position - choke - armbar

I think most everyone involved in grappling has probably heard the axiom, Position before Submission, suggesting that you pretty much have to achieve a stable, dominant position before you can have much success with a submission. But have you ever thought about it this way - Position leads to Choke leads to Armbar.

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Think about it - you get a dominant position and attack the guy's neck and he begins resisting and struggling, trying to negate the choke. In this situation not only does the choke distract him from the armbar, but he tends to push or pull his arms into awkward positions. Thus position-choke-armbar is a general recipe as to how grappling encounters seem to go.

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Perhaps the most fundamental example of this recipe might be the following: achieve tateshiho (the mount) and attack jujijime (cross choke). From here uke begins picking and pulling at your hands to counter the choke and you turn 90 degrees and lay back into jujigatame (the cross armbar). Following is a video in which they are not attacking the neck explicitly but you can see where the choke fits into this sequence.

Can you give me 1-2 more combinations that seem to fit this profile - position then choke then armbar?