Set-ups and combinations - practicing not to be a one-trick pony

I watched our kids at the West Coast Judo Training Center this week and I noticed something that I think is very common with most good judo players (and I think this is true of jiujitsu , grappling and mixed martial arts as well).

I asked them to do their favorite throw and they all looked really good. When I said, "Go!" they went right to it, did it without hesitation and good technique.

Next, I asked them to do a set-up to their favorite throw, and then throw. This took a little more thought and they hesitated quite a lot at the beginning of the throw. That, of course, is bad, because your opponent is not just going to stay in position, waiting around for you to throw.

After we had practiced that for a while, I had them do a set-up, followed by their favorite throw, followed by a combination.

Here is an example of this drill with Bradley, who is 11 years old.

Now, he did not do it nearly as well as Crystal, who is a 19-year-old black belt, but he did it pretty well for someone who had just been practicing this for a few minutes.

The point, I told them, is to not be hesitating thinking about what you are going to do, but to practice it so much that you can do it without thinking. Crystal seconded that, saying that often after she has won a much by ippon, people will ask her what throw she did and she'll respond,

 "I don't know. A hard one. Where they fell down."

She demonstrates the end result of this drill. Over a period of time, it becomes automatic.

Take away lesson of today: Don't practice your throws in isolation.

Simple matwork start for kinesthetic sense development

Ooh, does that title sound impressively academic or what? So many people start matwork back to back. That's neither very realistic nor creative.

Here is another way to start matwork. Players start at opposite walls. They do a forward roll, and when they meet in the middle of the mat, they start matwork.


As I say in the video, this drill develops your kinesthetic sense.
As our dear friends at wikipedia can tell you,

Proprioception, the kinesthetic sense, provides the parietal cortex of the brain with information on the relative positions of the parts of the body.

Hopefully, you can see how a well-developed kinesthetic sense can be a good thing for a judo player to have.

Another matwork drill for transition

A few days ago, I put up a video of a matwork drill to practice transition. Even though no one commented on it, possibly evidence of lack of interest in my transition drills, that has never stopped me before.

This next video is interesting - to me - because it shows a situation that happens often in teaching. You have players at different levels. In this case, there are a couple of young players who are pretty inexperienced and there are several more players who have been doing judo, grappling and jiu jitsu for years.




What I do is teach a technique where you throw and go straight into a pin, because as you know if you have read this blog before, I harp constantly on transition, even for six-year-old white belts.

As Aristotle supposedly said,

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

So, you may as well start getting in that habit from the beginning. Our young beginning players start out doing the throw into a pin and that is all they do. Fortunately, I have the inimitable Crystal Butts helping with this drill so when we split up she can go with that pair and help them get it down perfectly.

The next part of the drill has an arm bar combination from the pin, followed by another arm bar if the opponent escapes the first one.

So, it is - throw, pin, arm bar, arm bar again.

I am just going to keep putting these transition drills up, so there!

Some matwork drills for fun and profit

The profit you will get out of these drills, I hope, is a development of kinesthetic sense, that awareness of where your body is in space and relative to other objects, like your opponent, and the mat and the out of bounds area.

I do a lot of drills like the one shown below. I stole this idea shamelessly from Sid Kelly.

Players lay at each end of the mat. Then they roll toward the center. When they get near each other they start matwork.

About half of the book, Winning on the Ground, is on transition. My belief is that "golden seconds" happen often in a match. Those are that second when your opponent is not quite ready to attack or defend, the second when you pounce.

Once they are set, it is too late. That's why it can be hard for jiu-jitsu players to switch to judo (that and the fact that the judo rules seem to change every third Thursday of the month).  In jiu-jitsu, and grappling, you can stay on the mat for a long time. In judo, you just get a few seconds and they make you get up. So, how do you practice for that second of transition when 30 times as long is trying to get your technique on someone who is already on their guard?

Easy, you do lots of drills that just last a few seconds, where you practice that split second transition. Notice the drill above only lasts ten seconds.

I have a bunch more drills I'll upload all week. None of them are in the book. That's for our next book. I haven't talked Jim into that yet, so if you want to see another book, you better buy this one.

Agility-Ladder-less Agility Drills and Assessment

All teachers should have learned early in their career that periodic assessment is a good thing. Before you teach children multiplication, you give them a ten-minute test on addition. If they haven't mastered multiplication, there is no point in plowing ahead.

 The same thing is true when teaching judo. For many years, I had a problem with teaching beginning students to do forward throws, especially very young kids. One day, I had them do these simple agility ladder drills (I was at a more affluent club then where we could actually afford stuff) and I realized that the kids had trouble with the basic movement of just twisting your body around in the air.

 So, in every class now, from time to time I do some drills like this. Again, we do it in a relay race format, to make sure the students are putting out an effort, plus races like this are a good way to instill a competitive spirit without anyone getting hurt. Since we have no agility ladders, I just put belts on the mat and the students are to go as fast as they can down the line pivoting and then back again. Here is a few seconds in a clip to show you how it looks.

 

No Hesitation Drills

In thinking about what the players at the West Coast Judo Training Center needed to work on this weekend, it occurred to me that they had the same need I see everywhere, all the way up through the international level.

That is, players need to overcome their hesitation. They wait for the perfect opportunity to attack and miss all of the "okay" or "possibly okay" opportunities that face them every few seconds.

When Ronda started judo, I told her that if you did not attack every three seconds, you got a penalty. She want along thinking that her first three years of competition until Tawny Uemura (I'm STILL pissed at you for this, Tawny) told her that it wasn't true.

Of course, by then, the pattern had been laid down and she continues to attack pretty relentlessly to this day.

Yesterday, we did several drills with the purpose of reducing hesitation. In one, players randori and if they don't attack every three seconds, they get whacked with a belt. As you can see, you need a few assistants to make this happen. As you can also see, the players are attacking with much greater frequency than in the usual randori session.

Attacks on the mat count, too. So do non-attacks. Lay and pray, get whacked with a belt.

This is one of several drills we did to reduce hesitation.

On the way back, I was thinking about how I would really like a book on drills. I called Jimmy and said,

"Hey, now that we're done this one, what do you say we write another book?"

and he said,

"NO!"

But I told him that I really would like to have a book on drills, and I had a lot of matwork drills that did not get in this book and I was sure he had a lot of drills, too. At which point, he said, he would think about it after this one came out which either means he might do it or that he just wanted to get back to watching the Patriots.

As to why this book is taking so long to be published, I have no idea except that it is apparently always this way with books. Supposedly it is because the publishers have to do all kinds of marketing for months to convince people to buy it, so lots of three-martini lunches with buyers from Barnes & Noble have to happen first. Seems sketchy to me, but that's what the New York Times Sunday Book Review says.

A few months from now, when I meet some of the deadlines for my day job, I think I may start on a second book. By the time I get around to it, hopefully our first book will be out and I will be able to talk Jim into doing half of it.

Practicing what I preach on transition

I am always saying that people don't teach transition from standing to mat work, they don't drill it and that is a great drawback in most judo, grappling and mixed martial arts programs.

Just to show that I do practice what I preach, I took some pictures of drills with  the littlest, cutest judo players I was working with at practice on Sunday and you can see this is how a person does a shoulder throw.

First, you get a grip on your opponent's right arm,  with your left hand about at the elbow and your right arm around her right arm. Both of your feet should be in front of or between your opponent's feet.

Next, you bend your knees, turn and throw the opponent.

Then, after you throw, you follow through straight into a pin.

If you teach people to follow up into a pin right from day one, they will learn to do it automatically.

I have been arguing this for years and have heard a lot of excuses why instructors don't teach transition, including,

• It's too difficult for beginners to learn a throw and pin all in the same day
• It's dangerous to throw and pin before they know how to fall
• People, especially beginners, don't like to take hard falls like they would if they were thrown and then their opponent went into a pin. Better to just start on the mat.

I think looking at this girls provides a good argument against all of those objections. Yes, it isn't a perfect throw and pin, but no one does anything perfect when they are a little kid, especially not on their first day. It is a perfectly respectable effort for a kid. Neither of them look like they are getting injured and they certainly don't look miserable. 

Not wanting to take hard falls is a reasonable objection, which is why we use crash pads.

Not only do I teach people transition from a throw to a pin on their first day, I also teach a follow up into an arm bar or two if they are adults. 

Help 'em up - How I learned judo from a 13-year-old

and why Dr. Rhadi Ferguson may beat me yet

So, Dr. Rhadi Ferguson and I are both putting the finishing  touches on our books. I challenged him to a race on twitter, and both of us being the competitive type are doing our best to win. Even though I started out 175 pages ahead of him, he may beat me yet, as the second-to-last chapter is the one that Jim and I have the most disagreements on.

Jim is a brilliant coach, no question about it. As I write this, he is working with the Olympic team and they are lucky to have him. He is too much of a gentleman to tell me flat out he thinks I am crazy, but he often says,

"Well, that could happen, but it's very unlikely."

Actually, he is both right and wrong, on two points. The first is that while some of the situations and techniques that I show are unlikely for people competing at the Olympic level, they are very likely for less experienced players. For the athletes he is working with right now, Jim is absolutely correct.

However, the great majority of the people who read our book are going to be young players, parents or coaches of young players, and adults who have been doing judo, grappling or mixed martial arts only a few years, at most. Many of them will compete against people who make "beginner mistakes" because they are relative beginners.

The second point is even very, very good people make mistakes. I've done it and I don't want to call anyone out by name but I just want to say that I have seen even people who are amazing competitors hesitate at the wrong instant and get nailed with something really basic. In fact, Jim and I were sitting side by side at the Olympics when the Cuban player went in for a plain old basic tai o toshi (body drop) throw, scored and went into the Olympic finals. Yes, they make each one of them very, very seldom but there are a lot of possible mistakes. So, if you practice 20 different situation drills for situations that only come up 1% of the time then 20% of the time, or something like one match out of five, you will nail  your opponent. What about the other four times out of five? Well, that's all of the other chapters in the book! Also, part of your job as a competitor is trying to "encourage" your opponent to make those mistakes, so they are going to happen more than 20% of the time. For an example of how to do that, you should buy our book and look at the help 'em up drill number two.

(If you are a statistician you realize that 20 events with a 1% probability happen less than 20% of the time unless they are all mutually exclusive probabilities. This is not my statistics blog. Just hush.)

Here is how the help 'em up drill came about --

Years ago, I was at a tournament in Barstow, California, watching the 13-14 year old division, because Ronda was in it. She was only twelve-year-old green belt but I had put her into a couple of divisions to get more matches. A young blue belt girl from the Barstow Judo Club was competing. In her first match, her opponent was on one knee, the girl came in and threw for an ippon and won the match. Ronda was her second match and it was almost a repeat of the first one. Ronda was on one knee, coming up and the other girl came in, threw her and got her in a pin. It was only a waza ari (half a point), and Ronda got out of the pin, mad enough to spit nails, turned the other girl over and won. On the way home, we had a conversation that went something like this. (It was over 13 years ago so this may not be a word-for-word accurate memory.)

"What do you think about that girl that threw you?"

 "Mom, she wasn't that good, she just got lucky." 

"Pumpkin, I watched her match before you and I thought she was lucky. Then I watched her do it to you and you almost never get thrown. Then I watched her do it to the two people after you. No one gets that God damned lucky. We're going to go home and practice that. I'm calling it the Help 'em up drill."

A year later, in the finals of the junior nationals, she threw her big rival with that exact move we'd seen in Barstow. Now, you might say, so what, some purple belt 13-year-old kid beat some other purple belt  14-year-old kid. Who really cares? The answer is, that kid cares. It was not the Olympics. It was just the biggest thing she had won up to that time, it was the first time she had beaten that girl by a full point and it was a huge deal to her. So, maybe these drills won't help you win the Olympics, although, as Jim says, it is possible but very unlikely. The possibility is far greater they will help you win the Tulsa Grappling Tournament, Freestyle Judo Championships or your third amateur mixed martial arts match. You know what? I'm totally okay with that.

Here, for your edification and illumination is a part of one of the four help 'em up drills

You have attacked your partner and knocked her to one knee.

As your opponent starts to come up off of knee, you step your right foot back and go into a sweeping hip throw (harai goshi). 

Ronda doesn't have perfect technique in the attack above but, as her opponent is in a very bad position, it really doesn't matter so much.

Defensive matwork drills round the bend

The Book is scarily close to done. So much, so that we are scheduled to head up to the Black Belt studios for a photo shoot in a few weeks. In reviewing our outline, for no good reason at all, I realized there are the drills we have not included in the book yet.  Four of these are defensive drills, starting with the two below.

Defending on the mat can win you a match, especially in judo, but also in any other sport with grappling where it is possible to be ahead on points.

Matwork defense is a skill you need to learn and here are two of the drills to teach it. 


Defensive drill 1: Eat up the clock

Here is the question I ask my students:

You are ahead by a yuko and in this position on the mat. There are 30 seconds left on the clock. What do you need to do to win?

The answer is simply that you need to not  lose - not get thrown, choked, pinned, arm barred or get two penalties after the referee stands you up. There is no stalling penalty on the mat. All you need to do is stay on the mat, eat up the clock and then you are the winner. Of course, if you just fall flat to your stomach and don't do anything, the referee is going to stand you up. The point of the drill is for you to attack the opponent without taking any chances. If the opponent is attacking you, you want to defend enough to keep from losing the match, again, without taking any chances.

This drill works for both defense and offense. If it so happens that you are one of the stronger players in your club, you should be the person who is "losing" most of the times that you do this drill. It will give the weaker players a chance to "win" if they can hold you off, and make you better prepared for when you are in the situation when your opponent is just trying to eat up the clock.


Defensive drill 2: Get out of there!

Here is the situation - you are in a match with someone so much better on the mat than you that if you spend thirty seconds down there, they ARE going to beat you. Your whole goal at this point is simple - get off the mat. Don't be a hero, just stand up anyway you can.

This is also a good drill for the other person because if you are really good on the mat, people will do anything to avoid being there. We have seen people get up from the ground and literally run away from the opponent they were so scared. In this drill, if the player who is supposed to get up manages to stand, the other player loses.

Like the first drill, this is a good one if you have players who are somewhat mismatched, because it gives one player, who could perhaps never beat the other on the mat, a chance to “win”. It also forces the player who could normally win in matwork to work harder to win at the drill.

Both of these drills can be done from a variety of positions. You can start the players
1.  Face to face on their knees as shown in the first picture.
2. In a referee's position from wrestling.
3. Start again with one player in the guard.
4. Start again with one player on his stomach.

Bingo! You have eight different situation drills.

Reaction Drills

There’s no such thing as a right way to do things. If you win, it’s right!

The chapter we just finished in The Book, on matwork series, is one way of winning on the ground. You begin with a plan that you follow through until winning is inevitable. (I called it predictable but Jim and Ronda voted me down.) That is one way to win and it works for a lot of people.

Situation drills are a second way of training to win on the ground. Don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t like a religion or voting for president. You don’t have to pick one or the other. However, we have found that most people do have a preference. Some people like the structure in matwork series. Others find it boring and have a hard time forcing themselves to go through the same routine over and over.

There is a “perfect” way to do a technique. Let’s take an arm bar. If you have all the time you need and an opponent that is not resisting, everyone knows the right way to do a perfect arm bar. Lock the arm against your body, pinch your knees together, hold the opponent’s arm at the wrist and arch.

There is one teeny, tiny problem though - people resist when they are being arm barred - they resist a lot. You almost never have all of the time you want. At most, you have a few seconds before the opponent turns over on to her stomach or pulls guard and gets out of position. In judo, you might get a few more seconds before the referee stands you up and makes you start again.

Situation drills are just how they sound, a way of training for the types of situations that are almost certain to happen in a competition.

There are two kinds of situation drills, one type I call reaction drills and the other I don’t have a specific name for except “other situation drills” so anyone please jump in with ideas. I thought of “scenarios” but that sounds too much like something you’d see in an episode of Glee or that show Julia watches on Hollywood High.

Let’s start with reaction drills, since I have been talking about those in most of my posts recently. There are five types that I like.



Transition from standing to matwork from a throw. This drill starts with one person doing a throw. The second as much as one person’s knee touches the mat, matwork starts and that is how we do matwork randori. There are several variations to this. Let’s say Joe and Bob are practicing.

1. Joe does any throw and knocks Bob to his right knee.  As soon as Bob’s knee hits the mat, both try to take the other person down and go into a pin, choke or arm bar.
2. Joe does any throw and knocks Bob to his left knee.  As soon as Bob’s knee hits the mat, both try to take the other person down and go into a pin, choke or arm bar.
3. Joe does any throw and throws Bob on to his butt or side.  As soon as Bob hits the mat, both try to take the other person down and go into a pin, choke or arm bar. If Joe is smart he should be following Bob down to the mat. If Bob is smart, he should be trying to turn the throw into a position that is an advantage for him. One way of doing that, if he is thrown on his butt, is to pull Joe in and “collect the arm”.

Transition from standing to matwork from a missed throw. Again, there are a lot of different ways to do this.

4. Joe tries a throw, Bob moves out of the way and Joe ends up on one knee. As soon as Joe’s knee hits the mat, both try to take the other person down and go into a pin, choke or arm bar.

5. Joe tries a throw, Bob moves out of the way and Joe ends up on both knees. As soon as Joe’s knee hits the mat, both try to take the other person down and go into a pin, choke or arm bar.

Let me really, really emphasize something about these first five drills. All of them start the second one person touches the mat with any part other than his feet. That means the person who is down almost always has a grip on your gi and/or you on his. Any decent player is not going to stay in that position for more than a second or two because it is very disadvantageous. That second is your opportunity to attack.

Your success depends on your catching that opportunity. Chad Morrison made the astute comment on the previous post  that being faster than your opponent doesn't necessarily rely on you being naturally a better athlete. Someone who practices these drills a thousand times is almost certain to react faster.

The next set of drills also start standing but are for when you miss that first opportunity.

As they used to say on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, tune in next time.

Choking Plan B

Remember our transition drill from standing to matwork that I rambled on about in the last two posts? Here is Plan B.

The purpose of a situation drill is to have a FEW techniques that you have practiced so often from a given situation that when it happens in competition you react automatically. In this drill, the situation is a fairly common transition from standing to matwork. The blue player attacked and missed a throw.

Step 1: The very first thing you do is make it very clear to the referee that you stopped the throw. I have seen many times in tournaments where the white player in the photo above (not me!) would go around behind the blue player to apply the choke. Blue continues the throw, the white player gets thrown and has only himself/ herself to blame. In the picture below, the standing player jerks the opponent down and the blue player puts her hand out to stop herself from going face first into the mat. Notice that, just as in the previous technique, the standing player has her right hand on the opponent's lapel. THIS HAND DOES NOT MOVE.

These next few steps should happen in one or two seconds, but we have slowed them down here to show you.

Step 2:  Move to the side of the player on the ground.

Step 3: Pull up with your right hand, to make it difficult for the player to flatten out, and slide your left hand under the opponent's left arm. At the same time, throw your left leg across the opponent's stomach.

Step 4: Roll hard to your left  side. As mentioned in the previous technique, this is a move where your momentum carries you through the roll and your opponent with you. 

As you roll, you drive your leg across the opponent's stomach and your arm up behind the head. You do NOT wait until you have rolled over and then try to slide your arm behind the opponent's head. 

Below is the end of the roll. If the opponent turns in, she is going to allow me to slide my left arm further behind her head and choke her even better. If she turns out, that is going to pull the lapel in my right hand tighter and choke her even better.

Personally, this choke is not my preferred style because, unlike the previous choke, there is no natural transition from here into another technique.

When Ronda was little I tried to teach her the diving roll over choke I did and no matter how many times I tried to teach her, she just couldn't get it right. So, I came up with this move, Plan B. This illustrates an important lesson, by the way. The point of judo isn't to slavishly imitate your instructor or your favorite world champion. The point is to win. If in doing a drill like this standing transition drill you find there are certain techniques that don't work for you, discard those and try something that feels more natural. 

Don't try this at home

Thank you to Al B Here for his comment on my blog, asking about yesterday's post.

He wanted to know why I roll over the opponent when she is in this position.

I think I did not make it clear enough. What I am doing is DIVING over the opponent.

There was a game we used to do when I was a child which illustrated this perfectly. It is also strongly discouraged by all of the judo organizations for the very logical reason that it is dangerous. It looks dangerous, although I have never known anyone to get injured doing it. The same can be said of climbing trees, diving off a pier, swimming at Johnson's Shut-Ins, and swinging on a rope swing and letting go to land in the middle of a river with a strong current, barely making it back to shore and starting all over again. All of these are things I had fun doing as a child but other people died doing them.

Here is a video from Fox Valley Judo showing adults diving over a crash pad. This is kind of  the motion you are going for. It's somewhat safer than the drill we used to do because the person is landing on a crash pad. Here is another video that has players diving over a standing person and then over some mats. In this one, too, they land on the crash pad.  Both of these have the player diving up more than over.

The drill we used to do is not shown anywhere that I can find because it is stupid and dangerous, no doubt. What we did was have a person bent down like Ana is in the picture above, and then we would do a forward roll over them.  After the whole line of kids did that, we'd have a second person kneel next to them and do a rolling fall over both people. If you chickened out, or if you missed and ended up falling on the second person, you were out. We kept adding people until only one person was left.

I still did this drill with my own children. They can't sue me because if the do, I'll put arsenic in their toast and that will be the end of that.

ANYWAY .... the point is that you do a DIVING break fall , stretching your body out and then rolling back like a regular fall. Your MOMENTUM carries you over

and brings your opponent with you as you can see here.

A second important point is that even with the momentum, if your opponent is MUCH heavier, this will not work. Say I am 123 pounds (56kg) and my opponent is 220 pounds (100kg). I'll probably get him somewhat off balance but I doubt I will pull him all the way over. 

This technique works fine for competition because it is by weight division, and against a person of equal weight, with the momentum added by the diving motion, I can always pull them over and up.

As you can see from this helpful wikipedia entry (give them money, I did), 

Kinetic energy = 1/2 mass times velocity squared 

This is why the diving part is so important. The more I can increase my velocity by diving out, since this value is SQUARED, the greater impact on total force applied to pull my opponent over.

Don't think, just choke

"I know all 67 throws in the go kyu no waza."

is a brag I have heard rather often from a certain type. I have a confession to make:

1. I don't know if it is actually spelled go kyu no waza.
2. I don't know if there are actually 67 throws in it.
3. I certainly don't know all of them.

Gasp! And I have a sixth-degree black belt!  Yeah, I have a bunch of of good medals, too. How can that be. What a travesty!

I don't believe being a good judo player, or a good coach, is a matter of knowing every possible technique. In fact, think of the number of times you have seen a player hesitate in a match. For example, one player attempts a throw and misses because the opponent stepped out of the way or pushed the opponent down.

Both players hesitate and in the end nothing happens.

 In a position like this, most people would probably try a sankaku time (also known as a triangle choke). I have no idea who the person is doing it in the video in that link but her sankaku looks pretty typical in that it takes a while to sink in.

I don't try sankaku from here for three reasons. First, I just don't do sankaku because for most of my judo career my right knee did not bend (I injured it seriously as a teenager). Second, even if I could do sankaku it probably would not be my technique of choice because so many people do it that your competitor is generally expecting it. The third reason is that it is just not the style of mat work that I do. 

Here is what I do. First, as in the picture above, I get the hell out of the way so that she can't throw me. Notice I have stepped around her so that I am at her head and I am pushing down on her shoulder, putting my weight on her to stop her from trying to pop up and throw me.

Next, I am going to DIVE over her towards her hips at a 45-degree angle  (and you thought there was no use for geometry in real life). If you aren't so good at geometry, look at the picture below.

Do NOT dive straight over or you will end up under your opponent, get pinned and look stupid. And I will say, "I told you so."

You are going to do a rolling break fall and as you do it you keep your right hand on the lapel, in the exact same grip it was from the time you started standing with a right lapel grip. This hand never moves. Just hold on to that grip for dear life.

Notice the movement in the picture below. You are sliding your hand under her arm and behind her head as you are rolling over her body NOT after you have completed the roll.

The picture below shows the position as the attacking player is in the middle of the roll. You can see that her right hand has hold of the lapel that is now pulled tight under the blue player’s neck. Her left hand is under the arm and moving behind the head.

Instead of continuing to a standing position as you would in a regular rolling break fall, you are going to slide back on to your stomach as shown below.

At this point, you are both choking your opponent and have her in a pin.

When I do drills starting from a particular position, like this one, I do the same couple of moves over and over. I don't have 67 different moves. I probably have a Plan A and a Plan B that I practice 1,000 times a year - EACH. Then I have a Plan C and a Plan D I practice about 500 times a year - EACH. 

Because I do these so often, when I am in a particular position on the mat I am going to hit that move, say, the choke shown above, automatically, without thinking. If for some reason I cannot get it, say, the player turtles up too quickly and I cannot get the roll in fast enough, then I am going to go to my Plan B - automatically.

Tomorrow .... Plan B.

In the meantime ... Happy New Year !

Matwork drills for when you don't have a badger

I locked her in a closet with a badger.

That is the lie I have decided I am going to start telling people when they ask me what I did to teach Ronda when she was starting judo. 

Badger

If you've ever watched Ronda compete, whether it is in judo or mixed martial arts, you'll notice one thing about her - she's sudden. Often at clinics, like at the California Judo, Inc. winter camp this week, I'll show drills I had her do when she was young and I get one of two reactions.

1. People think it is a good idea, looks like fun and try it. (This is usually kids and more experienced instructors.)
2. People shake their heads and don't believe me. It's not complicated or impressive enough. (This is usually people who are legends in their own minds because they won the middleweight green belt division not once - but, TWICE- so they are just awesome.) They conclude that Ronda just won by luck and I just won because only dinosaurs did judo back then, and there probably weren't very many small dinosaurs so I had the division to myself.

A small dinosaur

I thought about making up some incredibly complicated move where I fake right, then left, then do a little two-step dance backwards and forwards, slip behind the opponent and tie their arms behind their back with their own belt. The badger story sounds better, though. Plus it requires less work from me.

If you don't buy the badger or dinosaur story, read on ...

Pin escape drill - inside turn

Did you ever see a situation where one player is on his back, maybe he just got thrown, or the other player managed to turn him over, and just at the last second, the player on the bottom turns out and escapes? Did you ever think that maybe the other player practiced for just that situation? Here is a drill I like for all levels from young kids to black belts.

Step 1: Start with the player on the top as close as possible to the bottom player, without yet touching. Notice that the blue player, Ana, a former successful international competitor, when given a choice, chose to start in position for an upper four corner hold. This position puts her at an advantage. Less experienced players will probably start from the side. 

Step 2: When the coach calls “Go!” the players have ten seconds to either get the pin or escape. In the position above, the best choice for the bottom player is an inside turn. That is, to turn in toward the opponent. Notice that the player in blue (Ana) has grabbed under the uniform of the arm pulling away from her. She has to switch her momentum from going straight forward and down to the mat to pulling her opponent back . It’s already too late. The bottom player continues her roll to the stomach and escapes.

Variation 1: Same drill from the side
We do variations on this drill, sometimes with the player at the top as shown above, and other times with the player at the side, as shown below. This is a more common position, where the bottom player has just been thrown, or the top player has passed the guard. Again, the drill begins with the top player very close but not yet touching the bottom player.

Players will soon learn that the inside turn, pulling  the shoulder closest to the opponent in and turning into the opponent is the most likely chance to escape.

Notice that with the blue player at the side, if the white player on the bottom (that's me!) had turned away, she would be more likely to be pinned, as the blue player could pull back with her left hand, where she has grabbed under the left arm and pull the opponent to her back. Also, if the white player had turned away, she would be more at risk of an arm bar on her right arm, as blue could easily trap that arm, throw a leg over and sit back for the arm bar.

The drill is only ten seconds, then the players switch positions.  The reason for only giving ten seconds is to force both players to react quickly to take advantage of an opportunity to win or to escape. In a large group, do this drill once, with each player taking a turn on the back, and then switch partners. With a smaller group, when there are only a few partners of the same size, you may want to do this drill several times with the same person before switching. 

A very bright young 11-year-old asked me if I remembered that I had taught this same drill at the 2009 CJI Winter Camp. No. I'm amazed HE remembers what I taught two years ago.  Good for him.

 I do use this drill a lot because you can practice this situation several times in just a few minutes. It's also good for learning to get out of a dangerous position.

What I like most about it though is that it is good for developing a feel for mat work, which is THE key to being successful on the mat.  After turning away from the opponent and getting pinned several times, gradually the player will get into the habit of turning toward the inside. At the same time, the top player should get the habit of catching the arm and arm barring any player that turns away, or find it easy to pull the player into a pin.

It's a drill that teaches players to react in a situation, without stopping to think. To be sudden.

Drills and series: Matwork ideas of the day

Wow, did we ever make some progress on The Book today! Jim is back from China, Japan and Tibet or wherever the heck he was and we got another 15 pages done in one day. How amazing is that? I also have a list of photos I need to take down at the CJI (California Judo, Inc.) camp in San Diego tomorrow. 

The more we get done, the more I am struck by how completely different Jim and I teach mat work. He wrote a whole chapter, which I think is great, on mat work series. Not only is each series complex, but they all flow into one another. For example, for several pages there is a whole sit out series (buy the book) that ends with this

When doing this move, if you don't feel you can get the arm lock, do everything the same, (that is, lock above the elbow, use your inside hand to post), then spin around behind your opponent as shown and continue your mat work from there.

Grab their wrist, pull it into their body, and then go into the wrist control series from here... 

 The next page begins a whole new series, for several more pages. It's brilliant, and anyone who has ever seen Jimmy Pedro,Jr. or Kayla Harrison or anyone else Jim coached knows that it works. I find it fascinating because it's also not the way I do mat work at all. This is chapter four.

So what did we talk about in the first three chapters?
 Chapter two is entitled "Ten quick ways to a submission"
Chapter three is "Two techniques everyone should know"

 But I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about Chapter Seven, that I am working on now, which is situation drills. This is almost the opposite of what Jim did in chapter four. He says that you must always anticipate where your opponent is going to go.

My strategy is the flip side of that - having a reaction to whatever your opponent decides to do. The first drill is what I call "Help 'em up." If your opponent gets knocked to one knee and is so silly as to not let go of the grip immediately, you should do one of two things - either run straight into him, throw with o soto gari and bury him, or, if he is so silly as to try to stand up, step into an uchi mata and bury him.

I do this drill for two reasons. One is to teach the person who gets knocked to the knee that this is a very, very bad position and to not ever get here. The second is that, although you will not get a good player in this position very often, if you do, the person will only be there for an instant before they realize it is a huge mistake, drop the grip and either turtle up, get in the guard or some other more defensible position. Even really good players will make a mistake from time to time, but they won't make many of them, which is why you need to be able to capitalize on every possibility.

 I like the first drill because it allows you to catch even exceptional players because the bottom person is in such a bad position.

The next two drills are for positions that are much more likely to occur. Check back tomorrow night when I will (hopefully) have pictures of those, since that is part of what I'm teaching in the clinic in San Diego. 

Oh, The Book, right, when exactly will it be done and for sale? Well, our editor very inconsiderately decided to get married without consulting us in advance as to whether it would be convenient. While we thought editing our book was a perfect way to spend one's honeymoon, she apparently decided something else might be more interesting. (Yeah, hard to believe, I know.) Right now most of the photos in the book are "placeholders" so we know we want a photo of a counter to sankaku, for example, that shows the beginning, the exact placement of the hands, the roll, and the end but, of course, the quality needed for print is quite different than for on the web. We need to schedule a photo shoot in studio with the photographer. We're having Ronda do most of the demonstrations because she is much cuter and less wrinkly than me. We'll have to work around her fight schedule, so the photo shoot will probably happen some time in January.

 I saw a blog I wrote in January that said we hoped to have The Book done by the end of this year. I don't think we'll be too far off. How long after we get done all the publisher's end takes, I don't know. Guess I will find out.

Secret of matwork #14

If you ever watched even one tournament you've seen this happen ... One person is thrown, knocked or falls to the mat. The other player stands there for a few seconds and either doesn't follow through at all or moves to a different position before going into matwork. Nothing of interest happens and the referee makes them both stand up and start again.

What the hell happened?

Yes, this really is labeled "Secret of matwork #14" in our book.

One reason people will let an opponent have a chance to escape is that they only have a limited number of techniques on the ground. They have to move from the side of the opponent to in front because they don’t have any moves they can do from the opponent’s right side.

There should be no position, no place on the mat, where your opponent is safe from you. For each of these positions, write down what technique you do well enough to do in competition. That is, not just something you can do in a demonstration, but that you can make work against an opponent who is resisting you.
1. You’re knocked down with your back to the ground and the opponent standing in front of you.
2. You’ve knocked down your opponent, his/her back is to the mat and you are standing in front.
3. You miss a technique or are pulled down so that you are on your hands and knees and your opponent is standing in front of you.
4. Your opponent misses a technique or is pulled down so that he/ she is on hands and knees in front of you.

In the photo below both of the players should have practiced attacking from the position she finds herself in.

5. You miss a technique or are pulled down so that you are in front of your opponent with one knee on the ground and still holding on (this is a terrible position, by the way, against a knowledgeable fighter and you should try never to do this).
6. Your opponent misses a technique or is pulled down so that he/ she is in front of you with one knee on the ground and still holding on.

  7. You are on all fours with the opponent your side.
8. The opponent is on all fours with you at the side.
Do we need to say it again? In the photo below, whether you are the person on the top or the person on the bottom, you should have practiced an attack from there.

  9. You are on your back. The opponent is between your legs.
10. Your opponent is on her back. You’re between her legs.

11. You have been thrown to your stomach and your opponent is behind you.
12. Your opponent has been thrown to the stomach and you are behind him/her.

In this case, for the person on the bottom there is not a very good attack, but what he should have practiced is getting out of there and into a better position.

How do you get an attack from every position? Go back and read some of those posts about drills and repetitions. 

We want you to notice something here. All of those pictures above are from one tournament, the 2008 Olympic Trials. If we can go to just one event and find examples of all of these situations, they must occur fairly often. If you know you’re likely to find yourself in a situation, practice for it. It only makes sense.

And that goes not only for positions you're going to find yourself in, like on all fours with the opponent in front of you, it also goes for situations you'll find yourself in, like behind by a yuko and at the edge of the mat. If it's likely to happen, you should practice for it, don't you agree?

Drills versus Repetitions

In one of the chapters on matwork in THE BOOK, we talk about the importance of doing drills and repetitions. Which brought me to the point of what is a drill versus what's a repetition?

A repetition is easy - it is doing the technique against less than full resistance. As Andy Lee so eloquently put it on twitter, "repetition is about muscle memory". I am a very, very big proponent of repetitions, doing the technique over thousands of times.

When you are first learning a technique, do repetitions with no resistance. For example, in the photo below, Jerry is allowing his partner to reach under his arm, reach behind his neck and apply a choke.

Take a close look a the position above. What she should be doing at this point is rolling to her RIGHT and getting on TOP of Jerry.  When she does that, she'll drop her right elbow and have a cross choke. More importantly, she'll be in a pin while she's choking him. Also importantly, she'll be in a great position to do other techniques as a combination off of that pin/choke.

The instructor's role in repetitions when a technique is NEW
You do a lot of repetitions, slowly, with no resistance, when you are first learning a technique. As an instructor, this is the time when you are correcting players, telling them to move their hips further to the right, adjust their grip, drop the elbow lower. You, too, are doing a lot of repetition, reminding the student of each part of the technique that makes the whole thing work.

As you become more experienced with a technique, you gradually do your repetitions against more and more resistance. This builds up your strength and it is more realistic in training for a tournament situation.


Musicians do scales, basketball players practice free throws, martial artists do repetitions
 There is no point at which you have become so awesomely great at a technique that you don't do repetitions. Here I am doing a matwork repetition for a rolling choke. I've probably done this move for 40 years now and I still practice it. Tina resists about 50% ....

As a more experienced player, you should do your repetitions faster and faster. Try to be done before anyone else in the room, and still do the technique correctly. As I tell players all of the time, there is no point in being able to do a technique badly faster than anyone else.

Notice, Tina is trapped. I have my leg keeping her from escaping, my left hand is sunk deep on her lapel and my right arm is shoved through under her armpit and far past her neck. That completes one repetition.

Another term for repetitions is newaza uchikomi. However, I switched to using the term repetitions because over the last few years we've had more people from outside of judo coming to practice. People in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grappling or mixed martial arts seldom know any Japanese terms, and neither do many of the younger judo players.

Speed drills aren't really drills. Those are just fast repetitions.

What are drills, then?


Drills are training for a specific situation.
Here are four examples of drills. Why four? Why not? In all of these drills, both players are going 90%. (I say 90% because it's not a tournament, you want to look out for your teammate a little. If you go 100% in practice what do you do in a tournament?)

1. One player has just been knocked to one knee. The other is still standing with a grip. Start matwork from there. They have ten seconds before the referee calls "break". At the end of ten seconds, the two players switch positions.
2. One player is in the guard. The other player is between the legs. This is a disadvantage for the person on top so he/she has 30 seconds to get out of there.
3. One player is on elbows and knees in the "turtle" position. The other player is in front. They have 30 seconds for someone to score.
4. One player is on elbows and knees. The other player is on the side. They have 30 seconds left in the match and the player on the bottom is behind by a score.

Wait a minute - there are dozens of possible situations - you're in their guard, they're in you're guard, they're on all fours with you in front, you're on elbows and knees with them at your side, you're ahead, they're ahead. Do I expect you to practice for all of those situations?

Do they all occur in  a match? Yes.
And yes.

Ever notice how some people just know what to do when they hit the mat? It's because they practiced for that exact same situation before.

P.S. Thanks millions to Jerry Hays, USJF Archivist for all of the way cool photos.

Armbar Escape Drill

When someone is trying to break your arm, there is a natural tendency to panic. One way to overcome that tendency is to practice escaping from armbars. Look at Bradley here (I have no idea why he is so happy about this drill), he is on top with both hands on his partner. This is where we would start the drill where you are almost in the armbar.

When I say "hajime!" you have 10 seconds to either get the armbar or (if you are on the bottom) to escape. This drill is good practice for the person on the bottom in escaping from the armbar and the person on top in finishing it. LISTEN! If you are the person on the bottom, your main goal in life at this point is getting your elbow on the mat. If your elbow is on the mat, the most they can do is pull your arm out so it is flat against the mat. That doesn't really hurt.

Here's a picture of the exact same position in a tournament:

This is the situation for which you are practicing in that drill. (Thanks  to Jerry Hays for the tournament photo above.)

Another advantage to this drill is that it allows you, as a coach, to watch how your players are doing armbars and make sure their technique is perfect. For example, Crystal! (yeah, I'm talking to you)

Why is your left hand on the mat? You know both of your arms should be locked on his arm, and I know that you're tired and I can see your gi is all sweaty but that's no excuse.

And Bradley, yeah, you, all smiley in that photo above. You see how Crystal has her body up against that arm. That's how you should be.

The armbar escape drill is supposed to benefit the person on the bottom who practices getting out of an armbar so quickly it is a reflex, but, as you can see, it can benefit the person who is applying the armbar as well, especially if you have an alert coach available to correct any mistakes.

Drill week! Standing corner drill

Hey, it's drill week! I just decided it would be a good week to put up a new drill each day on my blog. Yesterday I showed a drill for the situation where one player is ahead and wants to stay down on the mat while the other player is behind and wants to get up. Today's drill is another one that uses the edge of the mat.

This one used to happen to me a lot - I was much better on groundwork than standing, so my opponents, who knew this and were no dummies, would try to go to the edge of the mat. Their strategy was to attack at the edge and if the attack failed, either go out of bounds before we hit the mat or, if we did go to the mat, get out of bounds immediately. My strategy was not to let them do that.

How many times have you seen these things happen when players are at the edge of the mat:

 One steps out and gets a penalty. A little while later, he steps out again, gets another penalty, can't score to catch up and loses the match.

Or this

 In trying to avoid going out of bounds, one player moves into a bad position and gets thrown.

Or this

One player lets up, thinking they are out of bounds. The other player attacks and slams him/ her.

Incidentally, there was a pattern a while back, particularly among players from one particular place, who would deliberately attack when they knew they were out of bounds. Their reasoning seemed to be that if the referee called it correctly out of bounds, at worst nothing happened, and at best they would get a score. Somewhere in between there was a third possibility that the referee would call the throw out of bounds but the other player would be shaken up enough, either physically or mentally, from being thrown that when they went back in bounds and started up again the "cheating" player would have an advantage and win. It really is against the rules to deliberately throw your opponent after the referee has called matte but usually referees give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't hear them.

Of course, there is a fourth option. I started coaching the players I worked with that whenever the referee called break when they went out of bounds to stop attacking and be ready. If the opponent attacked, they were to counter and slam the person into the mat as hard as they could. I never cheated and I never teach anybody to cheat. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with cheap shots. Consider it giving the person a lesson and doing the community a favor.

As for practice, this week we did corner drills where players are at the edge of the mat and have to throw or get away from the edge without getting a penalty or getting scored on.

Matwork Drills: Don't Make It Up on the Spot

Anyone who has been to practice with me can tell you one of my favorite sayings is,

"If you don't know what to do in a situation, the middle of the match is a hell of a time to be trying to figure it out."

Hence, matwork drills! Below is one of my favorite ones. Actually, they're all my favorite one. How many times have you seen this one in a tournament ...

A player is ahead by a score, say a yuko, and there are 30 seconds left in the match. All she needs to do to win at this point is not get scored on. The players are on the mat, with your player on the top. What does the player do? She gets up and ends up thrown for waza-ari, losing the match. 

What should you do in this situation? If you are winning, you should stay down on the mat and eat up the clock. If you are losing, it depends. If you think you have a better chance of scoring on that player standing, you should stand up. One way to stand up is to get the player off of you and stand up. A second way is to get out of bounds so the referee stops the action, makes you stand up and come back to the center. The video below shows a drill we did at the West Coast Judo Training Center yesterday.

The first couple of rounds we did the drill in the center of the mat. The next few rounds we did the same drill but at the edge of the mat, so adding in the option of escaping by going out of bounds.