More Pull - Get Lower

 

More Pull - Get Lower

    “More pull. Get lower.” Perhaps you've heard these admonishments. Little did I know, in my early judo days when first I heard them, how critically important the advice was to successful judo throwing. The one we care about here is the first one, “More pull”.  

    I had to learn the appreciation of this the hard way. When a high grade Japanese sensei with whom we often trained gave this command, we pulled harder (while also trying to get lower at the same time). The sensei would come around again, stop, observe with inscrutable scrutiny, perhaps with a head nod or two, then say, “Okay, but more pull!” I pulled harder, and harder, and thought my fingernails might get ripped off. Then, a while later when he came around again, it was  More pull!  (“Wash, Rinse, Repeat”). There was no satisfying this man. Obviously, we weren’t putting enough beef into it. Or, so we thought. 

    Some years went by and I had an epiphany. So I asked my visiting Japanese friend, Kazuo Hirayama, Shorinji Kempo master and judo nidan, “When the Japanese sensei tells us ‘More pull!’, does that mean ‘Pull harder’ or does it mean, ‘Pull more’, as in don’t stop pulling?” I have no idea how difficult it was for Kazuo to make his tone and expression neutral and allow me to save face, having asked a question with such an obvious answer. 

“Don’t stop pulling”, he said. 

 Yet, we do. 

    When we do, the flow of the throw, and most often the complete throw, is abated. This is where throws get stuck. The brakes slam on. Dead stop. You’ve done everything up to this point, the kuzushi, the fitting in with good form, and for some reason the throw stops dead. Maybe, at this point, you can horse it over, but if you do, it’s no longer a judo throw, just a throw being done in a judo class. 

    As a sensei, it took me way too long to realize this was where my students were having a problem. I’ve come to call it the “two part throw effort”. Take time to watch others in randori and see how often a failed throw also has a dead pulling hand (the sleeve hand, hikite). 

    Test it yourself on a familiar front throw. There’s a good chance your form will be good, so if you actually used kuzushi, and focused on more pull as you do the throw, you will feel a smoother, effortless throw. If, on the other hand, when attempting your throw, you feel you have to bend over really big, face looking down to the mat, it means you didn’t do more pull. At the point where you want to bend over so as to use your butt to throw, pull! (Better late than never.) If you are bent over and looking straight down and see the mat instead of uke, then you strain and uke shows up on the mat, but that’s not a judo throw. Other throws that are not over the back or hip types sometimes require some manner of “second effort”. All “hopping” throws, like o-soto-gari and uchi mata, can of course be done without hopping or driving to the ground. If the only way you can make them work is by adding the second effort, you don’t have the throw skill down. Probably, adding continued pull will make a big difference.  It’s not entirely your fault. Much of this has to do with what happens when we first learn a throw. Throws have their own unique form. It is making this form that becomes our first goal. We have to make our throw look like the throw. Therefore, we have “check” point. 

    We step in and check it out. If you see a picture of a throw just before it is applied to kake, you can identify it. When we learn to complete a throw, this is where we tend to stop and examine all the pieces once again to see if they are in the correct place. We fit in, we stop and do a pre-flight check, then launch. This is the time when the “judo” goes away. There should be no pre-flight check in the successful judo throw. If that stoppage of pull exists, the launch effort then becomes the application of force at the point of critical mass. For example, seoi nage. The stoppage makes emphasis suddenly go totally into the forceful use of the butt, created by a strong bending over at the waist and a forcing backward of the butt. This actually creates  counter leverage and the need for more force. All too often, uke’s feet are solidly on the ground when this happens. (That’s because the stopping can cause uke’s balance to return and the kuzushi is lost.)

    Just before all the “Atomic Butt” action, the pulling stopped. Tori was in a seoi nage pose position. The throw becomes a two part action. When the pull stops, the judo stops. In teaching throws, when I see this, I force students to step in and only focus on continued pull of the hikite (usually the sleeve hand). I don’t let them stop the action at any time, forcing them all the while to keep pulling. That sometimes means standing there coaxing, “pull!, pull!, pull!, pull! From start to finish.  Sometimes, in the stuck position, just when everything is telling you to bend over, try just pulling, and very often the throw works from that alone. Once the throw is in the “We have lift-off” mode, uke’s feet just coming off the mat, the Atomic Butt, or the sweeping / reaping leg can come into play. 

Ways to Make Your Judo Work

• Mentally, see the whole throw at the very beginning of your throw. Our early judo experience compels us to think that just getting in is all that matters, because it’s the most challenging. When we get in, there comes a “What’s next?” moment. That is where we’d stop and check to see if the form was correct. Don’t stop in your pre-throw visualization. See it all, from start to finish. Try to imagine how it feels.  Then try it. 

 

• Uchi komi  is good for kuzushi  and tsukuri. It isn’t as functional for training the tsukuri to the kake. Some Sensei have pointed out that it actually trains the judoka to stop; so don’t let it. Do throwing practice to offset that. A “Step in, step in, throw” drill is a good way to combine the two. 

 

• Do a lot of nage komi. It is important to do complete throws. Put emphasis on the continued pulling as its own task. Focus on the hikite pull (pulling or usually sleeve hand). 
• Keep saying  “pull!, pull!, pull!, pull!  to yourself. 

 

• Make this a conscious effort, a major part of your next dozen or so practices. It feels so good when it is working for you that it won’t be long before your throws will begin to want to just do it.

    Here, in the photos from Tom Crone’s Judo Basics, is hikite doing its job. As the pull continues across, it does not suddenly drop to tori’s belly. It keeps pulling. In frame 2, the uke is already going around and over. You can see the continued pull by looking at the stress lines on uke’s sleeve in the triceps area. (Of note: Tori is not bent over at the waist but angled at the hip. It is uki goshi, and the continued pull at this point is already bringing uke over. For all intents and purposes, this throw is over. We have lift off!)

    Many think the idea is to get in and lift uke up, then dump uke onto the mat. However, that causes a stoppage in the process if the thought is two-part. The best idea is to think of throws as singular circular actions, with uke being brought around, not just up, The arrows in the above photo show this. This continued circular idea is what Kyuzo Mifune emphasized. 

    This won’t do you any service if you only try it a couple of times but don’t make it a complete part of your judo. This is where the mental part of judo comes into play. We hear about “focus” in martial arts study, and I think our definition should include what I am going to call “long-range focus”. Go beyond focusing on the task at hand, of the moment, and focus on focusing the next time. How? before you get on the mat, and ask yourself what you will focus on. Do this many times, and again as needed. Ask it just before or as you bow onto the class area. Focus is the simplest and possibly the most difficult aspect of any learning process. If you focus on “More Pull!”, it will make your judo work.