Elena Ivashchenko suicide

What a shame!  If this suicide really was prompted by failing to medal at the last Olympics, then this is a complete failure to recognize what is important in life and what isn't.

http://msn.foxsports.com/olympics/story/Russian-official-says-Elena-Ivashchenko-suicide-the-result-of-Olympic-failure-061813

MOSCOW (AP)

A Russian judo official says a four-time European judo champion who committed suicide had been depressed since failing to win a medal at last year's London Olympics. Authorities said Elena Ivashchenko died on Saturday at age 28 after jumping off the balcony of a 15th-floor apartment in the Siberian city of Tyumen. The director of a Tyumen judo center, Vyacheslav Yurlov, told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that her depression had started after she was eliminated in the quarterfinals at the London Games. Yurlov also said Ivashchenko needed several operations to treat a leg injury and had another one scheduled. Ivashchenko won gold at the European Judo Championships in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012.

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Edmund Burke on grappling

He who wrestles with us

strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.

Our antagonist is our helper.  (Edmund Burke)

(photo courtesy of DVIDSHUB)

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Commentary on Okano vs.Cadiere randori

What I see here (besides Okano totally out-classing the westerner)...

• Relaxed, upright posture.
• Light, free motion
• Okano is able to control Cadiere's balance through his hands, mostly without stiff-arming.
• Okano is much more grounded and stable - Cadiere is more springy up-and-down and twitchy left-and-right.
• Okano allowed Cadiere to make the first several attacking actions before busting him (with left seoiotoshi)
• Okano passes wide around the guard as he throws instead of throwing into the guard, then passing.
• Okano was frequently ducking under Cadiere's collar grip, passing that grip to his other side, seemingly inviting a makikomi, but Cadiere never exploited it.
• Okano repeatedly diffuses Cadiere's inside ashiwaza by grabbing the knee and passing it to the outside of his legs - without even trying a leg pick throw.
• Okano's wrist of his power-hand grip in every large throw that he attempts - that wrist is bent back into a pushing position instead of locked straight into a fist like we teach beginners (see the throw in the last few seconds of the film for the best view of this)
• Cadiere frequently used what looked like a hip-twitch feint (assuming those weren't abortive throwing attempts), and the hip feint never worked worth a darn.  In fact, it got him busted with an inside sweep early in the film.
• Both players seem to have good game on both left and right sides, but Okano appears to wait more calmly and put together throws based on what is available, whereas Cadiere appears to have 2-3 pre-programmed combos that he tries.
• Cadiere is no slouch, even though Okano makes him look like a child.  In fact, Cadiere appears to move and set up combos a lot like I do, so I suspect I would have fared about the same (or worse) vs. Okano ;-)

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Edward Snowden - Hero or Zero?

What do y'all think of this?




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Invest in loss (on many levels)

I was casting about, trying to put some words together about Nick's fourth randori hint...

Invest in loss...repeat the pattern that is causing you a problem so many times that your subconscious is stimulated to respond and solve it for you ....it should surprise you [...because, if you have the power to overcome your problems with the first solution you think up, they're not really problems.  You want to train your subconscious to come up with better solutions to more outrageous problems than your conscious mind ever could.]

...but I don't think that I could rephrase or expand on it any better without writing a book.  Following are a couple of talking heads from YouTube talking about this idea - you just have to mentally replace the word, "taichi" with "aikido" or "judo."  The first one is definitely the better discussion, but the second one, Josh Waitzkin, is such an interesting guy that I thought I'd throw that one in even though he didn't seem to have too much to say about the topic at hand.

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Hand pressure and foot direction in randori

In toshu randori, at least the way we most often practice it, you must act fully consciously and voluntarily.  You must move all of your decision-making to the foreground of your conscious mind so that you are not making any involuntary motions that you can avoid.  The reason for this is we are trying to use our conscious mind to re-program your unconscious mind to operate more strategically.

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But because your conscious mind processes things much more slowly than your subconscious mind, you have to slow down to a crawl or else unconscious motions start leaking through.  We have all experienced times when we have grabbed or blocked or struck or stiff-armed before we even realized it.  Those are examples of your unconscious mind driving actions and then informing your conscious mind later. We would rather slow down so that our conscious mind can guide us through enough reps that our subconscious mind will learn a new strategy.

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This problem of speeding up and unleashing your unconscious (which is what you already know, not what you are trying to learn) is the basis of Nick's next two randori pointers...

2. Don't put pressure in your hands unintentionally

3. Once you do have to step, try to keep at least one foot pointed at your target at all times

These also go back to my recent articles on gripping, and how, if you get the hands and feet working properly, the rest of the body tends to start working properly.  If you are allowing your unconscious mind to operate your hands and your feet, then the rest of your body has no choice but to organize itself based on those two unconscious activities.

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This is also the basis of kuzushi - doing something to force the other guy back into unconscious operation of their feet so that they take spurious steps that do you no harm and which you can take advantage of.

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So, the solution is to slow down to a snail's pace - an absolute crawl - a speed that would make taiji masters look like speed demons - so that you are able to consciously monitor and control the pressure in your hands and the direction of your feet.  Eventually, after sufficient reps, your subconscious mind will learn the new patterns and when someone surprises you, it will protect you very rapidly based on the newer strategies.

[photo courtesy of Elvert Barnes]

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Don't take a step you don't have to

The first of Nick's randori pointers that he dropped on us early this year is, "Don't take a step that you don't have to take."  I appended to that, for my own understanding, "...because stepping exposes us to otoshi and guruma, which we are all expert at exploiting."

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But, stepping and step-synchronization and footfall kuzushi - those are to a large degree how we do everything we do, at least to about shodan or nidan level.  Our first couple of rules that we teach day-one beginners and that we beat to death every class include, "control ma-ai if you can," and "if you can't control ma-ai, get off the line of attack."  We are pre-occupied with stepping properly.

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But then we grab hold of one of the high-level sensei and we're busted as soon as we touch - seemingly they didn't even move much, if at all!  How do we begin to do the no-step randori when we have no drills or examples or exercises between about white belt and shodan?

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Here are  some possibilities for exercises to begin to build this capability...

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Suwariwaza and Kokyudosa...

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Stake Standing (or for yoga folk, Tadasana)...

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Isometric/internal strength tricks...

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Parlor tricks like Morihei Ueshiba and Lulu Hurst used to do...

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Parentheses in judo

There are many techniques in judo that are quite similar to each other.  I often think that these groups of techniques that are similar are clouds or sets or technical spectra enclosed by the two most extreme forms like a set is enclosed in parentheses.

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For instance, you can look at most of the ashiwaza as being somewhere between the extremes represented by deashibarai/kosotogari and okuriashibarai.

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Deashi/kosoto happens when uke's center is dropping and his feet are separating.  Okuri happens when uke's center is rising toward its peak and as his feet are coming together.  Depending on how you set them up (straightline or round-the-corner), one happens very early in the stepping cycle and the other happens later.  Much of the ashiwaza technical spectrum lies somewhere between these two extremes.

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Okuriashibarai has never been my forte.  I have spent 20+ years working on the beginner forms (like side-to-side nagenokata form) with moderate success, but have never been able to whip uke's feet out from under him like some of my betters.  I reckon another 20 years of practice is called for. ;-)

I do, however, have a decent deashibarai and a (perhaps even dang good) kosotogari. I think this comes from having made every mistake that can be made in that technique during the past 20 years.  All I have to do now, is not do any of those ;-) and deashi works great!

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Want to get a good handle on most of the ashiwaza?  Work on deashi and okuriashi.

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Want to get a good handle on koshinage? Work on ukigoshi and something far larger and more extreme (like sodeTKgoshi)

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We can probably argue endlessly about what techniques are the parentheses in tewaza - I'd maybe initially say ukiotoshi and taiotoshi.  But the point is, by working on the parentheses, you get better at the stuff that they enclose.

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Exegesis of Nick's randori pointers

Some time back, Nick posted a nice collection of randori pointers, and I responded that I thought they were great but that each one could be a chapter of a book, or that  he should at least re-post with some parenthetical explanations or expansions.
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A couple of days ago Nick's list resurfaced on FB and I re-posted it and someone asked me for some expansion and explanation.

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So, since nobody ever listens to my genius ideas,  here's Nick's awesome pointers with my own parenthetical explanations. I figure to talk about some of these at greater length in upcoming posts...

1. Don't take a step you don't have to take [...because every step you take exposes you to otoshi and guruma, which we're all expert at exploiting.]

2. Don't put pressure in your hands unintentionally [...because convulsive, reflexive grips stop the motion of your center and limit your options.]

3. Once you do have to step, try to keep at least one foot pointed at your target at all times [...because your legs contain the strongest muscles in your body, and they only work strongly in that one plane.]

4. Invest in loss...repeat the pattern that is causing you a problem so many times that your subconscious is stimulated to respond and solve it for you ....it should surprise you [...because, if you have the power to overcome your problems with the first solution you think up, they're not really problems.  You want to train your subconscious to come up with better solutions to more outrageous problems than your conscious mind ever could.]

5. Invest in lightness...in whatever technique you are doing try to reduce how much pressure you use by half, then again by half, again and again all the way down to minimal pressure....a good bench mark to look for is getting down to one finger [...again, because if you've got the power to blow, then it's not a real problem.  You want to find the sweet spots and leverage magnifiers so that you can solve the largest conceivable problems with the least conceivable expenditure of your own power.]

6. Use mirroring in weight shift, posture, and timing [...because if you connect to uke and mirror his motions, posture, and timing, you can amplify them to the point that they are beyond uke's ability to control.]

7. Deflect and redirect on contact. [...because this gives your opponent the longest possible time to commit to his chosen course of action.  If you try to reach out to deflect him, then he may be under-committed and counter your parry.]

8. Use proactive tactics of preloading and already being a flywheel in motion on contact [...because if you wait for uke to connect to you and stabilize, then it will be very hard to get yourself back into motion.  But if you are already in motion (or pre-loaded for motion) and uke connects to you, you draw him into unbalance automatically.]

9. Beware of over commitment and over determination to a given outcome [...again, because if you immediately know the answer to a problem then it is not a real problem.  If you commit yourself to the first answer you come up with, you are asking for a heap of trouble.]

10. Beware of defensive mind and continual evasion....eventually you will run out of options and space [...because sometimes you have to go and do and be proactive with your martial skills, rather than forever fading back and defending.] 

Randori, in each and every case, turns out to be what we decide to make it be ...it is a do it yerself nonverbal discussion that can range from a playful graceful nurturing dance to a soul draining fight for dominance or survival...so much of what it turns into revolves around what we think we are supposed to do and with whom....if we think we are supposed to control the other guy and manipulate him as we will, power and speed ramp up and triggers get pulled and there results an inevitable fight....if we decide the real game is not controlling them, but rather to manipulate ourself, our own body and reactions and to primarily be sensitive to them then it often goes the sweet way... When you put your hands on someone in randori it's not like a musician grasping an instrument to play it , because here the instrument is yourself, your own body, your own reactions and emotions , it's like the musician tuning himself in to the audience he is playing to and interacting with it

Thanks, Nick, for those randori hints!  I suspect that Nick deliberately left them somewhat vague so that we would have to explore them to find our own meanings.  As such, the above are not THE only answers to the question, "What the hell is Nick talking about?"  But they represent some of what Nick's pointers mean to me.

[photo courtesy of Matt Bull]

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Tokio Hirano - Nanatsu no kata

For the last couple of years, I've watched this bizarro thing so much (and gotten hints off of internet and Judo Forum) that I actually think it's starting to make sense!  Either that, or I've taken too many falls - but I'm starting to see meaning within the exercise!

It would be easy to write this crazy thing off as the flailings of a deranged mind, but bear in mind this was one of the most successful competition judoka in the history of history, and this was how he was trying to express his understanding of judo.

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He seems to be illustrating seven types of wave action (as in ocean waves crashing into a beach).  In each form he does one big motion that sort of looks like a kind of ocean wave riding into a beach or crashing into a rock or swirling in eddies or erupting in spray... Then he immediately demonstrates that sort of wave action in a judo context.

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Then he shows how to bust someone's technique when they try to put that type of wave on you - usually by standing against it and reflecting it, or by eroding completely out from under it and letting it pass.

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Kumikata and ashi-sabaki interact and inform

Here's where all this talk of gripping becomes really generalizable to judo, aikido, and even into everyday life...

• If you are holding onto something that is keeping you from expressing gracefully, let go of it.
• If you are standing in a place or in a way that makes it hard for you to express gracefully, move.
• If your hands are getting in the way of you moving your feet gracefully, let go and move.
• If your footwork is making you feel like you have to latch on with your hands, let go and move.
• If you are standing in the wrong place for your technique, you're standing in the wrong place.  Gripping harder won't cure that.
• If your hands are gripping convulsively, you'll never get your feet (much less your center) to move gracefully.

If you study kumikata (gripping), then you should, as part of that study, pay close attention to your footwork.  If, like me, you are OCD about your footwork, you should pay attention to how your hands are helping or hindering your footwork.

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Get your hands and your feet working gracefully, and everything in-between will work gracefully.

photo courtesy of Judy Van Der Velden

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Get feet and hands working right

Another way to think about the facile grips idea...

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What we really want to do in judo and aikido is to learn how to use our bodies in a flexible, pliable, facile, harmonious way - initially in stressful, combative situations, but more generally in all of our lives and interactions.  We want to develop grace.

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One manner of approaching this is to pay the most attention to hands and feet.  Hands and feet are where we deal with two of our biggest problems (the Earth and the opponent), so they are of primary importance.  If we can get those two areas working flexibly and harmoniously, everything in the middle should begin to work itself out.

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The analogy one of my instructors used was un-kinking a hose.  We can spend hours working from the middle outward, but if we get a person on each end of the hose and they walk apart until the hose is straight, they can shake it and the middle will come unkinked.

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Imagine if we were to splint our feet and ankles and knees in a rigid cast.  How graceful would we be?  Not very, because our feet and ankles and knees have to be pliable for us to move gracefully.  With our legs rigid, our entire body is thrown out of whack in any task we try to do.

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The same goes for our hands.  If we squeeze our hands into fists (or handblades) then that tension is reflected throughout our entire body, and our grace is compromised in every task.

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Pay attention to feet and hands.  Get them working right and everything between them will begin to move more gracefully.

photo courtesy of ggianni3

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Convulsive grips vs. facile grips

Language is rife with kinesthetic expressions related to gripping or grabbing or holding, because this form of manipulation of the world through our hands is very important to our lives as humans.  To live is to have to handle difficulties, to have to come to grips with situations, to grapple with day-to-day exigencies.  We have to grasp lessons and hold ground...  How we hold things is how we deal with the world.  It is how we are.

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Aikido and judo are all about holding things.  This is part of why these arts are rife with analogies and implications in real life. It is important how we grip things, and in these arts we make a careful study of gripping and holding.

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In judo or aikido classes, some participants (especially beginners) reflexively respond to their partners' actions and motions by latching on with their hands in a convulsive grip and trying to hold the situation still.  This appears to me to be some form of defensive reaction, almost like a flinch.  At some time in the past, these folks learned that they could protect themselves by clamping onto threatening things and locking them down, and this may not be too bad of a defensive reaction for some survival situations.  It is probably an adaptive thing, but there are potential side effects...

• Once you clamp down with your hands, you can't do much else with them.  Locking down the threat locks down your hands too.  In fact, locking down with your hands locks your whole body - especially your arms and shoulders - in place.  With your upper body in a defensive spasm, there is no way to breathe naturally, and you end up gassing yourself out.
• While reflexively clamping with the hands can be a good response to some situations, it will surely be maladaptive in other situations.  You might be able to grab a snake right behind the head, but try clamping onto a sparking high-voltage wire.
• In a general, everyday-life sense, you can't live your life by latching onto anything around you that makes a surprising motion and crushing it until it is still.  You might be able to do that to some mild people/situations, but try latching onto a policeman who stops you about a broken tail light and you'll quickly learn that grabbing and clamping is not always best.  Even if you do not get into a dangerous situation by clamping onto something with more horsepower and willpower than you, you will alienate people around you by habitually grasping and suppressing them anytime they try to interact.  You will rapidly teach people not to try to help you.

Judo is about pliable use of strength to achieve flexible goals.  Aiki is about harmonizing with the energy around you instead of squelching it.

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Learn to use your hands in a facile, pliable, harmonious, flexible way, and this will carry over to your body and your mind and your spirit and your life.

photo courtesy of Giant Ginkgo

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Magnificient sutemi by Hirano Sensei

Tokio Hirano is a name that is rarely mentioned in American judo circles - at least the ones that I circulate in.  But I get the impression that he was more of a household-name in European judo.  And there's not a single European nation that fails to beat the hell out of the USA in both grassroots Judo promotion and in Olympic competition.  So it probably would behoove us to take a look at some of their revered teachers...

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From Judoinfo.com...

Tokio Hirano (5’5”, 75 kg), obtained Godan (5th dan) at age 19, is perhaps the greatest Judo technician of all time. He is probably the best known Japanese Judoka in Europe. In 1952, Hirano went to teach Judo in Europe. Within six years, he had accumulated over 4,300 wins. 

In order to promote Judo, Hirano would fight all black belts in the city where he taught Judo. In November 1954, in Mannheim, Germany, Hirano scored all ippons in 34 minutes against 54 black belt opponents (1-3 dan).

There is a good bit of footage on YouTube of Tokio Hirano in action, much of it very abstract and confusing.  But what struck me today was the beauty and power of his sutemiwaza. I can watch his uranage and tomoenage videos endlessly...

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