Do a half-nelson, damn it!

It has never made the slightest bit of sense to me that so many judo players who wrestle in high school and college forget wrestling once they put on a judo gi. Some of them are really good wrestlers. One technique I cannot believe that every judo player does not know and use is a half-nelson. Here is former Marine Corps wrestler and West Coast Judo Training Center coach, Gary Butts, demonstrating on his fellow WCJTC coach and head instructor at Ontario Judo, Victor Ortiz.


 The first thing to notice is that Gary has his weight on Victor. He is reaching around Victor's waist to pull him closer and put even more weight on him.  At the same time, he has his left arm under Victor's arm

 Notice how Gary shoots his left hand through and is grabbing his opponent's neck.

As he turns Victor, Gary pulls his right arm back and shoots it through underneath to grab Victor's bicep.

You can see below that Gary continues to crank on Victor's neck with his left hand as he pulls the opponent's arm in toward him with his right. Notice how his weight is STILL all pushing against Victor. There is no space between the two of them. Also, you can see in both photos that Gary is driving against Victor with all his weight. Notice how he is pushing off of his left leg.

The half-nelson finishes with the opponent on his back, pinned with yoko shiho gatame (what jiu-jitsu players call a side mount).

Now I know that anyone who ever wrestled learned a half-nelson and I see lots of judo players who are successful wrestlers get in the same position that Gary was above and they never try this move. It is just ridiculous. Cut it out! Do a half-nelson, damn it!

Book cover - what I did when I should have been working

I don't know why I spent so much time playing with the cover. In the end, I'm sure the publisher has far more artistically talented people than me who can put something together, but, I hope, this gives an idea what the book is about - physical conditioning, matwork and coaching, for judo and for other sports, like mixed martial arts.

So, what do you think?

Spent hours today working on the book when I should have been writing a statistical paper (good thing I'm president of the company). Still, I have commitments to meet to clients, so, I'm off to that now.

Matwork Connections: Tie-up series

Many judo players do a move called a tie-up or key-lock, where they slip one arm through the opponent's bent arm, pull over the gi and "tie-up" the opponent's arm. If you want to see the whole series (and there's a LOT of it), you'll need to buy our book. Since I am working on the outline, synopsis and all that stuff publishers want, here is a guest post from Jim Pedro, Sr. today. Thanks to him and thanks to Kayla Harrison for the demonstrations (congrats on the Panam Games medal) and to Riley McIlwain for taking the photos.

Another matwork connection sequence is when you are attempting to do the tie up, as your opponent starts to get up on her hands and knees. You step around and get your knee in front of her chest as the other knee is controlling her head. Then, you take your free arm and shoot it through the arm that you were trying to tie up.

You cross-face (put your bicep into her face) and drive her to the mat

into the pin shown below.

Smart Coaching: Caring that you know

Before I was interrupted by the Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo video of Ronda's two buns, I gave the beginning of the first chapter of the section on coaching, "Coaching matters" . This is the beginning of the second chapter in that section, "Smart enough to do it". We're just getting started on this chapter so feel free to jump in with comments. (Photo courtesy of Riley McIlwain - thanks, Riley .)

Love is not enough.

By itself, caring about your players won't build champions. The first two sections of this book gave specific techniques, exercises and drills, both for physical conditioning and matwork. This chapter gives specifics on how to be, and become, a smarter, better coach. Of course, that is a whole lot of books all by itself, so we’re following the same tactic of the first section of focusing on the areas we think are too often overlooked.

The first of these areas *I* call developmentally appropriate coaching, being a professor and all, and Jim calls recognizing the difference between children and adults. Whatever you call it, there's a need to adjust your coaching based on the physical and mental differences between junior and senior competitors. A second area is individualized coaching, fitting your program to the strengths and weaknesses of the athlete. The third area is building mental strength. That strength includes motivation to train harder and longer in practice, and to face down fears and anxieties in competition. Anyone who claims never to be anxious before a competition is either stupid or a liar. The skill to learn is to overcome those fears and come out on top despite them. The fourth area is matside coaching. This is where the coach is most visible and where too many people let their ego get in the way. If you admit that you don't know always what you're looking for when a player is on the mat, or what is the best thing to say, well then, you're an honest person because this is true for all coaches at least some of the time. Hopefully, after having read this chapter, you'll find yourself in that position less often. We'll give you a preview right now by telling you that we believe "Less is more". During or just before a match is not the time to be teaching your player techniques. That's what you should have been doing the months before the tournament and if you didn't do it then, it's too late now.


--  Well, there is more, but I have to brush Julia's hair. I told her that I needed to come up with the last sentence for this post first. She suggested, how about this

Goodbye.

Fight-y Smurf's Hairstyling Tips from Ronda

Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo Guest Video Blog from Ronda Rousey

How to do your hair.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COACHING

The chapter I'm working on now for The Book is on coaching. We tag-teamed and it's Jim's turn to do some matwork techniques and edit my draft of the matwork section, while I edit his first draft of the coaching section. Thanks to Riley McIlwain for taking photos and Kayla Harrison for posing in them. Also, thanks in advance to Gary Butts and Victor Ortiz from the West Coast Judo Training Center who are going to be helping fill in the gaps this weekend by posing for some of the turnovers. (And, yes, Ronda, I DO deliberately have a white person in a white gi and a black person in a blue gi in all of the pictures we take at West Coast because it makes it easier for people to see immediately who is doing what to you.)  So .... here is what I am working on today .....

To excel at coaching, you need to be smart enough to do it and dumb enough to believe it’s important. We thought about that saying a lot before deciding it’s true - which is why we have divided this section into three chapters, believing it’s important, being smart enough to do it and there isn’t a manual for this.

Over the years, we could have made a lot more money managing hedge funds, writing software or selling real estate than we’ve made teaching martial arts. It isn’t that a person can’t earn money in the martial arts industry - both of us have children who make a living coaching, teaching, competing and marketing to martial artists. The truth is, though, that anyone who succeeds as a professional martial artist probably has the drive, mental and physical ability to succeed in a lot of areas of life.

In this chapter, we’ll do our best to convince you that coaching is important in building champions, both on the mat and in life.

It’s been said that athletes don’t care how much you know but they know how much you care. That’s not completely true. We believe you need to care about your athletes. They need to trust you, to believe when you tell them to change weight divisions, switch their training plan, work out at one gym versus another - that you have their best interests at heart. No matter how technically skilled you may be, no matter how much you are up on the latest theories of coaching, no matter the number of degrees you get, if your athletes don’t trust you and you don’t have their best interests at heart you will never reach your potential as a coach. If your athletes reach their goals it will often be despite you instead of because of you.

Caring is necessary but it’s not enough. You can love your players like your own children but if you don’t know enough to tell them to lock the arm against the body and pinch their knees together when they go for an armbar they aren’t going to win as much as if you knew a little more technique.

If you’re a completely selfish person, no book is going to change you. If you’ve read this far, though, we assume you’re a coach who sincerely wants to help your athletes improve or an athlete motivated to succeed in your sport as far as humanly possible.

Coaching matters. It certainly matters when it comes to winning. The next chapter is all about how, the details of what to do. Right now, we want to run by three reasons why coaches help you win, why coaching matters. 

First of all, a good coach pushes you harder than you can push yourself. We’ve said it throughout this book - intensity is key to winning. It will pull you through when the opponent has better technique, more experience, better tactics. Part of that intensity comes from physical conditioning and part of it comes from mental toughness. The exercises in the first section develop physical condition, but they also build mental toughness as a coach pushes, encourages and demands more from an athlete than he or she believes possible. Many of the drills in the second section are about developing matwork techniques, but some, like the escape drills from pins and armbars, are also about building intensity. How much do you hate losing? How badly do you want to get out of that pin?

[Yeah, I know there are two more but it is past 1 a.m. and I have to write a lecture tomorrow, read four chapters on multivariate methods and write a paper on categorical models. Plus, I have clients who actually want me to write programs and answer their email. So I'll have to get those other two tomorrow. ]

Matwork Mistakes Not to Make

One mistake players can make when they hear us talk about connections in matwork is to think that everything has to be connected to everything else. That is not exactly true. I'll write about that some other time, or you can read our book, which is coming along nicely, thank you.

A bigger mistake to make than thinking everything needs to be connected is to get so focused on one move that you forget to make connections. An error we have seen too many times in competition is when a player is attempting an armbar against an opponent who is resisting very strongly, as in STEP 1 below.

Often what happens in this position is - nothing. There is no Step 2. The player on the top exerts a lot of effort trying to get the armbar but the player on the bottom has both arms locked together resisting. The referee stops the match and both players get up.

When I get some more time, I will write about what SHOULD happen in Step 2. I only have a step 2, but Ronda has steps 2 through 9. (I counted. And took pictures.)