Northern Wind

Sooo, some of you may have seen the recent fight between Ronda Rousey and Alexis Davis.  If you haven't, you can watch it in it's entirely below. Don't worry—it will only take 16 seconds. In the judo world, Ms. Rousey has served as something of an evangelist of the art (not so much in word as in deed), dominating her competition with trademark judo techniques, from hip throws to her bread-and-butter submission, juji gatame. Case in point: during this particular bought, she makes very quite use of ogoshi straight to kesa gatame to end it before she can even manage to break a sweat. Which is great. Hurray for judo, and all that. Here's the thing. This example actually troubles me a bit. As long as your interest in judo is solely sport-oriented, then never mind, you probably needn't concern yourself. But if you look at judo in any measure as a viable form of "self defense" you may be in for a rude awakening—or, get put to sleep as the case may be....

I was watching a high level jiu-jitsu match on YouTube recently, and I noticed something. Something I suppose I should have occurred to me a long time ago—after all, as a judo man, I grapple too—but I guess it took me seeing it from the outside to notice. And since judo matches rarely seem to end up on the ground (and when they do, it's not for very long), I've enjoyed observing watching seasoned grapplers do their thing. Anyway, here's what I noticed, and this applies to grappling in general. Both parties are only interested in bringing the other guy closer. I know, you're thinking, "Doi! That's kind of the point of grappling, isn't it?" Bare with me... Come here. Go away. Come here—no, go away.  I aikido, there exists more of a balance. When uke tries to enter, welcome him in; when he tries to get back, send him on his way. In other words, when uke closes the distance, we go with it, typically ending up in some sort of control position, a...

One of the most profound additions to my aikido practice, in my humble opinion, has been the development in our system of what we commonly refer to as "chained series" or renraku waza . The concept isn't new, of course, but I don't know that many people practice it in aikido (help me out if I'm mistaken, I'd love to take a look at what others are doing). Basically, you would start off with uke either attacking or grabbing a wrist. Tori performs technique A, uke falls down (or submits). Then you do it again, but this time uke attempts to escape or counter technique A, so tori moves on to B, so on and so forth. Many of these chained series can get rather long, upwards of 9 or 10 even. When it comes right down to it, there are probably an infinite number of ways you can combine them, but the main idea is to practice flowing from one thing to another, to follow uke, to keep from getting attached to making a single technique work, by golly, blah, blah, blah...

Friend and fellow judoka (and aikidoka) Scott Weaver had a pretty good idea a while back to try and use the old "envelope drill" in judo similar to the way we use the "walking kata" (tegatana no kata) in aikido. It could just be something we do as a part of our everyday class at the beginning of the ne waza half of the hour. If you're not familiar with it, take a moment and watch this: Our problem was, our little morning class didn't know the envelope drill. Soooo, we've been breaking it down into bite-size chunks and practicing those. It's actually opened a few doors to other little "sub drills" if you will that I think are kind of fun. Here's one we worked on this morning: Part 1 1) Begin as you would with the regular envelope drill: uke lying on his back and tori in kuzure kesa gatame . 2) Uke rolls toward tori, who then transitions into mune gatame . 3) Uke rolls away from tori, and tori transitions back to his own sid...

Very interesting twist (pun sort of intended) to this classic Ude Garami arm lock from kesa gatame. I kinda like the leverage, but I wonder if it's possible to get the switch when adrenaline is running high.

I like sankaku jime , frankly. Many judoka and BJJ players do. It works pretty well, when everything goes right. The problem I'm finding is that, as I try and work on it with my class, not everyone is having as easy a time of it. Sure, there's a player's level of inexperience that factors into it, but aside from that, I think there's an issue with their build. Judoka come in a wide range: small and large, young and old, flexible and tight, thin and stocky. And for whatever reason, this crew seems to be all the wrong builds for this version of sankaku jime (no offense guys). Either that, or I'm terrible at teaching it (I hope that's not the case; I seem to be able to convey other things well enough!) Upon reflection, I think there are two things that might be getting in the way: 1) not shifting their hips over to the side a little and 2) getting too much of uke's shoulder in the way. Although, with some, they just plain lack the physical "bendiness"...

In line with my recent interest in strategies for tall and short players, here's a couple of interesting sweeps from the guard from the perspective of a female player.

Well, I have to admit that "April as ne waza month" is off to a rather pathetic start. On both Monday and Wednesday, we only had three or four people, and once again, we ended up spending a bunch of time on throwing (all of time on Monday), and little on grappling. Sigh. I think the combination of small numbers and the fact that everyone there were all long time buddies (as opposed to new blood we don't know very well) naturally lent itself to a casual atmosphere. That kind of lame excuse, combined with my own inherent like/hate relationship with grappling are not going to get me very far. I'm never going to get better at this stuff...

Well, it will be for those of us in the morning class. It's not really part of any grand movement anywhere, although feel free to participate and clue me in on what you do. Mostly, I've just come to the decision that I need to do something to improve in that area, not only for me, but for the benefit of the morning class in general. An hour class just doesn't seem to be enough to get in as much material and practice time as you need for judo, although it seems to suit aikido just fine. Most of the time, we talk about nage komi (standing throwing) for a little longer than planned, which little or even no time for ne waza. We may get in a drill or two, but we never seem to get around to doing some good ol' randori. And to be honest, grappling is not my absolute favorite part of budo. And if I were to be even more honest, I'm not in that great of shape, and ne waza seems to make that fact more painfully obvious than other aspects of my martial training. ("Martial ...

Boy, I've been wishing for a decent judo or aikido related app for iPhones from the moment I laid my hands on one, but for the most part I've been sorely disappointed. There's both judo and aikido glossary apps available, which I may download, but I can't find anything related to the demonstration of techniques. Except for these two apps from Grapplearts.com (which is a site for BJJ players). I bought the first one, and so far, it's kind of nice. All the videos are included in the download, so you don't have to stream them from the net somewhere. It covers the basic BJJ techniques, nothing fancy, but that's fine by me. My grappling game is pretty weak, so I could use all the help I can get. You also get a short PDF book for free, but I haven't investigated that, yet.

As some folks may already know, I've been a bit too preoccupied of late to write in this blog due to both the death of my father and the birth of my second child, each within a couple weeks of each other. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things again, here and in life in general, soon, but for now, here's a little video or two.  This one is Keith Owen talking to a class of BJJ students about the importance of keeping things fun.

Mune gatame One of the things I've always been rather curious about was whether or not one could establish any kind of regular (or semi-regular) curriculum in judo. Our aikido always seem to follow a weekly theme well enough (we work on one section of a kata or exercise for one week, then the section the next week, etc.) but judo was always harder to pin down. It may not be possible, or even wise, to completely pin it down, but through the experiments I've tried so far, I like having a little structure, at least as a starting point. I'm fulling will to be flexible, though. Anyway, one of the things I'm trying is to spend the first portion of the grappling half of class on one of the major hold downs, usually by pairing up and doing a number of escapes. One week would be kesa gatame, then the next week kata gatame, etc. until we work our way through them (plus the kazure or broken versions) and the repeat. One of problems with that, as you may have guessed, is that there...

As I sit around the house on Christmas Eve, the snow falling outside, the tree lit, and presents still to wrap, I'm thinking about many things. Oddly enough, one of them is kata gatame . I started out just thinking about transitioning, being held by one hold, escaping, and then establishing a hold of your own. It works well for most of the main holds (that I know of), except for yoko shiho gatame, with which the main escape puts the other guy in sankaku jime, and kata gatame, with which the escapes I know of anyway put the guy in an arm bar or a choke. So I wondered if I were missing some escape ideas, particularly from kata gatame, and naturally started searching YouTube. I found a few explanations of the hold itself, but no escapes. Anyone know of any videos out there? While I kow the Kaze Uta Budo Kai forum will feature some osae komi waza soon, I wonder if they're go over any escapes I haven't seen yet. At any rate, stop thinking about budo, people, for one lousy minut...

Just got directed to this site from Marcelo Garcia which features a slew of searchable videos. https://www.mginaction.com/ One of the first videos I watched had to with an arm bar known in jujutsu (jiu-jitsu, whatever) circles as the " omoplata " (it looks like embedding his videos on a blog is allowed, but you can follow the link). In the judo world, however, it would most likely be refferred to as sometimes referred to as ude-garami or sankaku-garami ("triangular entanglement") or ashi-garami ("leg entanglement"). For whatever reason, it's not one that I've ever spent time on, and never knew existed until I started investigating BJJ a little. Frankly, I'm intrigued. I've seen a few odd ball entrances to it, which at first made me wrinkle my nose (a little too complex for my taste), but I've since seen a few that looked a little more palatable, such as this entry from Derek Hall at our humble li'l dojo: I'm looking forward to ...

Three of us worked on a few sankaku entries on Monday, and it went... well, not quite as expected. Basically, most of us had a hard time getting the legs fully clasped with the foot of one leg behind the knee of the other. We could do it well enough on the escape from yokoshiho gatame, but the first version done from the turtle in this video turned out to be tricky. Usually I can manage it okay, but I think the two guys I was working with then were a little more... "beefy" shall we say than what I'm used to. As for the other two, their own flexibility might be an issue in addition to the size of the uke, and in one case, with a dude who has spent a lot of time working out, his own thick thigh muscles might be getting in his own way. Mostly, I want them to start thinking of their feet and legs to be just as useful as their own hands. Tomorrow, we'll probably go over the same drills as Monday (maybe an additional one), and see if we can't iron out some wrinkles. I...

So many things I'd like to write about, so many things rattling around in my head, but not enough hours in the day. This morning, for instance, Prentis Glover stopped by morning glass (he had Veteran's Day off of work, it seems), and was kind enough to take us through a lovely arm bar series. I'd seen the first chunk of it, but either hadn't seen or completely forgotten the latter half. It starts with tori holding kesa gatame (let's say on uke's right side, for the sake of example). Uke's arm gets free and we get a number of straight arm bars: 1) The first is the easiest. My left hand yolks uke's wrist and holds his arm out straight, with the elbow joint on my right thigh. Straight arm bar. 2) I can use my left (rear) leg to step over his wrist, pinching uke's wrist in the back of my knee. My knee goes toward the mat, my foot slides back towards uke's foot (his elbow still on my right thigh). Any time you get the leg involved, it's a scary de...

Buddy Christ Wilson has started his own judo blog, Graplyrz.com , which includes a few videos. Hopefully, he'll keep it up and I can learn a thing or two!

Grab some popcorn, sit back and watch a little kansetsu waza.

Good ol ' juji gatame This relates somewhat to my earlier post about taking notes. We don't spend near as much time on kata in judo as we do in aikido , so whenever I encounter a new drill, or series of techniques, I have to jot them down if I am to have any hope of remembering them down the road. This is as much as I can remember of an arm bar drill I've seen a few times, but it's been a while. (And the ending I may have made up entirely!) Begin with uke on his back, and tori in a loose kazure kesa gatame , down at the hip level (right side). 1) Uke turns toward you, pushing you, doing all the work. You roll flat against him. 2) Uke rolls back onto his back. You switch back into kazure kesa gatame . 3) Uke turns toward you again, really trying to push you. You snag his arm in waki gatame . 4) Uke tries to curl his arm out of the arm bar. You use your right arm to snake under his for a quick coil armbar (this one is really hard to describe in words without ...

The lone ship at sea After the birth of my son three years ago, evening budo classes became a thing of the past. Which is fine, mind you, I actually enjoy my family, so I'm not complaining. After that, my main option was to go to aikido classes at noon during the week, during my lunch break. But I didn't have a judo option, and since I could rarely make it into a Saturday morning class anymore, I didn't have a jodo option either (is it jyodo, or jodo? I can never settle on one). So I started a noon class for both: Monday and Wednesday judo and Friday jodo. Which went well for awhile, until my work moved further away from the dojo which stretched my lunch hour to the breaking point and I had to start coming in for early morning classes (thankfully, judo and jodo classes were already in place!). Again, I never minded the noon or morning classes; they're a great bunch of guys. What I missed was the presence of anyone higher ranking than me! I hold dan grade ranks in all th...