Katagatame - the cure for the common cold

Image courtesy of Major Confusion

This morning I had the remnants of the upper respiratory infection and then it came time to practice katagatame at judo.  I say I had the signs...

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I walked thru it and demonstrated it and Todd tapped.  Then I lay down and Todd started to set it up and I started coughing and tapping.  I got up and coughed a while and thought I was finished, lay down and started coughing again.  Finally got all that snot coughed out and managed to practice the technique.  Remarkable thing, Katagatame - the cure for the common cold!

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Hitchhiking

You know, I saw a hitchhiker today at the entrance ramp to the interstate and it got me thinking aloud to myself, "Does anyone actually pick those guys up anymore? Surely not." Picking up hitchhikers seems like one of those things that is so obviously stupidly dangerous that nobody would ever do it anymore.

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But then again, you keep seeing them every so often, so the practice must pay off in rides at least sometimes.

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My wife spent two years in sub-Saharan Africa and she said that hitchhiking was very common and was not stigmatized as it is here. She says that whenever a young blonde-haired white woman would stick out a hand for a lift, jeeps (or lorries as they called them) would seem to magically appear out of the bush and screech to a halt to pick her up. The drivers' first question was usually something like, "What are you doing walking? are you crazy? Get in here!"

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But things are not like that here in the good ole U.S. of A. I wouldn't recommend either hitchhiking or picking hitchhikers up. Neither party can tell what kind of situation they might be getting into. The only guy I might think about picking up might be someone who looks like this.

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How about y'all? What do you think about hitchhikers, hitchhiking, and people that pick them up?

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Kawano Yoshiichi Sensei

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How to deal with frustration learning judo

Learning judo is frustrating! I remember encountering that frustration learning judo and I just tried to endure it and work harder. Probably not the best way - I could have been trying to work smarter instead of harder if someone had been there to encourage me.
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I remember after about 2 years of almost-daily practice I was leaving class one day and my instructor stopped me and said, "So, Pat, are things starting to fall into place for you in judo? Starting to make sense and get better?" Well, he just caught me at a bad moment and I started crying and told him, "No. I get more angry and more hurt every... single... time... that I come to practice. Every single fall I take gets worse."
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He asked me why I put up with that sort of punishment without quitting and I said, "I don't know. Judo is just something that I can't quit. It's stuck down deep inside me." You'd think that a moment like that would have been the turning point, after which it would have started getting better, but no. Judo continued to hurt and frustrate me for 2-3 more years until I finally graduated and left that university.
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When I started teaching in McComb in 1996, I stumbled into a group of fanatical students who absorbed whatever I would teach and would clamor for more. They wanted to learn judo so I started teaching judo and I promptly affiliated myself with the highest-ranked judo folks I could get my hands on even though it meant having my instructors in Texas instead of here in Mississippi. Mac McNease came to do a seminar at my fledgling club in McComb and that was the turning point for me. The point where I stopped doing judo despite hating it and started doing judo because it was amazing and I kinda liked it. What was the little piece of encouragement that he gave me? He told me, "Pat, this is judo. It's supposed to be easy. If it is not easy then you are not doing it right. Or you are trying to do it wrong."
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That's when I really bought into Kano's maximal-efficiency-minimal-effort ideal and when I started improving and enjoying it. The moral of that story is, if you are frustrated with judo, I know where you're coming from.

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One of the most frustrating things is being crushed into the ground and smothered in randori and being unable to apply the positional escapes that you are learning. As for general advice that I'd give a frustrated student on the ground...

• A lot of people have tension headaches after class from being wrung out on the ground or from being whipped into the ground. This gets better within 5-6 such classes. You'll notice a survivability turning-point within about a half-dozen strenuous randori sessions. I can just about guarantee that.
• There is a difference between learning the mechanics of an escape during drill time and being able to find that escape during randori. In randori, when someone is crushing you, you have to first find a way to get some respite for a moment. This can mean framing under them or shrimping slightly out from under them or just getting them off your diaphragm and floating ribs.
• During that respite you need to start working your three general groundwork principles that I gave you. That is, get two hands on a point, start with your shrimp-bridge type motion, and insert your knees and elbows as spacers whenever you can.
• Once you get those three principles going, the situation will tend to rapidly turn into something very similar to one of your escape techniques.
• You need to do many, many reps of the escapes that I show you. The most important of which are probably uphill escape from kesagatame and bridge&roll from munegatame.
• You need to to start each class with a few rounds of the mobility cycle. Let a partner get into a hold with weight on you and keep it there as he moves from hold to hold so that you learn to survive on the bottom while being pressed. And not just to survive but to be able to rest and think while on bottom.
• You also need to start each class with a 2-hands on a point drill for a while. You can practice this at home by tying a belt or a gi around a dummy, getting under him, getting 2 hands on a point, and shrimping out from under him. Push the dummy across the mat one direction while you shrimp your butt the other direction. You might have to reposition the dummy a little but when you reverse and shrimp with the other leg, it should throw the dummy on your other side. So you shrimp while tossing the dummy from side to side.
• Keep a good attitude. We generally learn to solve the hardest problems we can first, then everything else gets easier and easier. As my instructor says, it's easy to prevail when you're stronger and better and on top, but the guy who can prevail even though he is laying in the ditch bleeding is truly remarkable. You're learning to get out of the ditch!

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Blimey at the shin kicking Brits

Dojo Rat just posted a great video of a cool British regional grappling style that involves kicking shins to unbalance the opponent such that he falls on his back. Looks like a lot of fun... to watch. I wouldn't want to participate in such a match even if there were a lot of beer involved.

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DR's post is right along the lines of my previous posts on regional or ethnic wrestling styles. This type of video does a lot to disarm the stereotypes of Brits as fops in red jackets marching in lines as guerrilla marksmen pick them off. Anyone who would take a good shin-kicking to get you on the ground can't be that much of a wimp!

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Pummeling as a form of judo dance

Pummelling is a common wrestling drill that has made its way into BJJ and MMA.  An interesting practice, besides the games that he mentions in the video, is to practice throws from this pummelling game - finding the grip you need to do the throw that you are working as your hands and feet are moving. This also forces you to learn to let your upper body work for grips somewhat independently while you are attending to synchronizing your feet to the opponent's feet.  Roy Dean shows this on his second Blue Belt BJJ Rank Requirements disk - pummelling into a drop-knee kubinage. 

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Similar to our 'judo dance' that we use to teach beginners the throws with an element of motion. In the judo dance you take a normal grip and leave one foot planted, stepping back-and forth with the other foot in synch with your partner. The player whose left foot is moving is usually defined to be the thrower.  This judo dance is a highly efficent way to teach players to recognize the point in randori (chaos) when their feet synch up with the opponent's feet. You might consider adding elements of pummelling to the judo dance with more intermediate-to-advanced students to better simulate the randori/shiai environment.

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Assymetry in Taikyoku

So, who has noticed that the Taikyoku kata are assymetric? You do not do the same things on one side as the other. Taikyoku is a Left-Right-Left pattern repeated 3 times, You do twice as many left-side turns, stances, and blocks as right-sided but you do twice as many right-sided punches as left. The 270 degree turn is only ever done toward the left side Does this suggest to you...

• This kata might have been intended for a homogeneous right-handed society as evidenced by universally sacrificing the left arm as a block and keeping the right arm in reserve for a strike? I've heard stories of Samurai being taught to sleep with their right arms under their bodies so that if ninja were to attack they would reflexively throw up their left arm as a block. Apocryphal? Maybe.
• Taikyoku might be a template - you might be meant to flip it and play it R-L-R too. Funakoshi talks in his books about even muscular development. There are kata (e.g. Sanchin) that some people do right-handed and others do left handed. This was explained to me as the instructor standing in front of the pupil acting as a mirror - so each generation of students would do it opposite from the previous generation. Apocryphal? Maybe.
• Sidedness does not matter - you can't overcome it anyway and to try to is to waste time.
• The 270 degree left turn is only applicable as hip throw, which you would typically only learn one-sided anyway.

What do y'all think? Do you practice Taikyoku both-sided? Why or why not?

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Ego in the martial arts

I was talking to a guy at church today and we got off on the topic of ego in martial arts. He asked if there were a lot of folks that get into it for reasons other than to just learn a skill. I told him, "There is a lot of ego mixed up in why people do martial arts and it often takes years to calm that down if you ever do.

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For some reason I've been thinking for a few weeks about a couple of my worst moments in the martial arts. Moments that made me wonder, and probably made those around me wonder if I had learned anything at all from studying this stuff.

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As a freshman in college I was a State Champion in karate. I worked out all the time and was proud of my flexibility and kicks. One day, I was sitting in my room in the freshman dorm with my circle of friends and with one guy who had sort of insinuated himself into our circle. Nobody liked him. He was arrogant and annoying - and I was far from the only guy that thought so. Let's call him Q-. Well, we all made some excuse to leave the room and go eat together or something. Nobody invited Q- and we all hoped he'd get the message, but no, he hopped up and started out the door to go eat with us. I was seething at his boorish insensitivity as I walked out the door with Q- right behind me. (I'm sure there was a girl to impress in the group or something too). Anyway, as I walked out the door, I slipped to the left right along the wall, hauled off and hook kicked Q- in the face around the door frame. It was a technically perfect hook kick. Something to be proud of! The only thing was, it wasn't Q- I'd kicked. Without my knowing it, he'd switched places with another of my friends - a guy who never offended or hurt anyone. And it was this innocent that I kicked. It wasn't hard enough to hurt him but it was humiliating to him. I tried to assure him that I hadn't meant to kick him, I had wanted to kick Q-. So, not only did I kick the wrong guy, but I humiliated one friend, openly insulted another, and made the rest of them think I was an first class a-hole. I should have had my butt kicked for that - it would have left me feeling better than I did.

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Years later, after I'd gotten into aikido and absorbed all the great lessons of the Art of Peace, I was (I think) 4th dan in aikido. We were having an email conversation amongst a group of ourselves about some technical aspect of aikido. One of the shodans sent an email suggesting something or questioning something that I was talking about in the forum. I don't even remember the content but it struck me wrong so I sent out a public message basically asking him how he dare question me when I was a 4th dan and he was just a shodan!? I regretted it as soon as I pressed SEND. I sat there in my office waiting for the rebuttal, and when it came it was pretty gentle. He basically just asked me, "Are you crazy, talking to another person like that - regardless of rank?" I immediately agreed, apologized, and claimed a moment of insanity. Fortunately, he didn't let that poison our relationship (because he was better at the Art of Peace than me) but the training environment was pretty frigid for a while. A few years later we met at a seminar and had a good, sweaty ass-busting session that seemed to put a lot straight - I've seen him occasionally at seminars since then and everything seems okay between us.

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The moral of both stories: You have to guard yourself carefully against making irreversible actions.

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It's not like I've been feeling unforgiven or unresolved or that sort of thing, but for some reason these two incidents have been on my mind for a couple of weeks.

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Any of you guys ever have those ego insanity moments that you want to share?

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I needn't say more...

Go check out this site if you haven't yet!

January 2009 Kohaku Shiai

Today was our monthly Kohaku shiai (in-club tournament) in which we draw together all the kids from all the different classes into one big competitor pool. Today we had 13 competitors with 5-6 students out with various bugs. We ran 4 events, clothespins, roostertail, steptoe, and newaza randori. We'd planned a fifth event, tachi randori, but ran short on time - with so many competitors we ran 46 matches. The winners at this month's shiai were...

• 1st place - Jacob Allen (10 wins)
• 2nd place - Ethan Schwing (9 wins)
• 3rd place - Tanner Humphreys (8 wins)

Everybody did great and now we have a better idea about the things to work on harder next month.

Helpful handful: tsurikomigoshi

One of my faithful readers emailed me a question about tsurikomigoshi (the lifting-pulling hipthrow). Following is a very good demonstration of my favorite variation - sode tsurikomigoshi (the sleeve-lifting hipthrow) and a handful of hints that I think might help with our tsurikomigoshi.

• Notice that this builds off of a very loose 2-sleeve grip. If you can control the opponent through this grip with this much slack in the system then you can control him pretty much however you grab him. That makes this a great, versatile grip to practice from.
• The hip turn-in is pretty much a standard large-hip throw entry - like ogoshi - with the crack of tori's butt on uke's right thigh. You can also do this throw overturned, sticking both buttcheeks across uke's thigh and spinning uke across your low back as in koshi guruma.
• Tori's left hand wraps uke's right arm around the right side of tori's torso - sort of like a makikomi action. Tori's right hand lifts uke's left arm, leading it upward and forward. Alternately, tori may be able to use both hands to lift both of uke's arms upward and forward during the turn-in
• This throw builds off of the deashibarai that we start each class practicing. As such, tsurikomigoshi makes a great addition to any of your circles of throws that include deashibarai.
• Other variations of this throw are approximately the same thing but with different grips. You can do a sleeve-lapel grip and lift his lapel up and forward, or another one of my favorites is to take a sleeve-lapel grip and insert your right elbow into uke's left armpit to lever uke upward and forward.
• Bonus hint: Get your hands on a copy of Toshiro Daigo's Kodokan Judo Throwing Techniques book. It is the most comprehensive book around on judo throwing and Daigo's descriptions of tsurikomigoshi (pages 89-96) are the best.

John Perkins' ATTACKPROOF kichuando

For the past several months I've been reading a book, Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection, over and over again, regularly if not constantly. This book is a primer on some of the drills and methods used in John Perkins' kichuando. One of the reviews on Amazon is titled, "This is not your father's karate." And it certainly isn't. These guys have taken a lot of flak from various folk because of the unusual-looking system and the bold title of the book.

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I found the book to be very insightful and informative. It is filled with drills and exercises intended to promote relaxation, flow, sensitivity, and power. These attributes are then applied in a bare minimum of CQB techniques like the palm jabs, eye rakes, elbows, and knees. The result is an interesting eclectic style that appears to be a combination of some Chinese internal arts (minus the exotic terminology) and good-old WWII-era Army CQB.

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One of the things that I thought was really remarkable was the apparent similarity of what I was reading to the aikido that we do. Of course, kichuando comes from a different point of view than the aikido tradition, but over and over I kept reading things that made me say, "yeah, that's exactly right!" For instance, the cornerstone of the system - the practice that all the rest of the book leads up to - is Guided Chaos, the kichuando form of randori or push-hands, and again, I found striking similarities between the Guided Chaos that I've seen on YouTube and the push-hands-like hand randori that we practice. If you are looking for a different perspective on the principles that drive our randori aikido, check this book out.

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Overall, I would highly recommend that you get the book and read through it a few times. Stay open-minded and consider how the things that you are reading are similar to, or different from, your art and your ideas. This book will certainly be an education for you.

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?

Slow down, relax, and maintain ma-ai

 

Lisa Ullmann, student of Choreutics founder, Rudolf Laban, observed:

• fast motions tend to contract inward toward the center.
• slow motions tend to extend outward from the center

I have found that trying to move quickly in a conflict tends to shorten the encounter space and artificially reduce ma-ai. In my practice I see this most in the backwards turning steps (a.k.a. 'goblet steps') of Tegatana no kata and in the first step of shomenate. If I do these motions at a slow-to-moderate speed and relax then I am able to maintain a relaxed natural posture and a normal ma-ai. But if I do them quickly I seem to be jumping back almost into a wrestler's stance, ready to engage - and I tend to be a couple of inches closer than I wanted to be.

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Play with this some and see doesn't moving a little more slowly help you maintain a more natural, upright, relaxed posture (shizentai) while opening up the space between tori and uke.