The Support Foot

        Your throw's success or failure depends upon the position of your support foot.        

 Fix the foot! 

    The support foot is the foundation of all throws. If I watch you do a throw that isn't working, the first thing I look at is your support foot placement. That is the primary problem the vast majority of the time. It might be only one of more, but unless it's fixed, nothing else is going to matter; and if it is fixed, it can often go a long way toward fixing the other concerns. 

     A misplaced support foot destroys kuzushi. Kuzushi works in concert with the placement of your support foot. If they are not in harmony, the kuzushi vanishes. 

     The support foot is the place from which power is driven as the throw goes from tsukuri to kake. It is also the place where tori's body is initially correctly positioned to maintain balance throughout all parts of the throw's progression. 

     Try this. Do a right hand o-goshi just up to the point of beginning the kake, the lift and rotate. Lift up your left foot. You will discover that bringing uke over is close to impossible. Lift up your right foot, however, and your left leg will drive the throw successfully. All throws have a dominant power leg, even those that seem to have both feet evenly on the ground. 

     Every throw has a place where that power foot should be. You probably know the spot. Then along comes randori and the foot just doesn't get there. 

• The first step into a throw is the last step of walking. That sets up the ability to put the support foot where you want it.
• In uchikomi and nage komi, focus on that spot for every repetition.
• In randori, try to make this be the main thing you do. Forget about the rest of the throw (assuming you know it to some degree of familiarity).

     This becomes both the simplest and the most challenging of fixes. It's your foot! Unless uke has a prehensile tail reaching down and controlling it, you can put it anyplace you want. However, you must do more than simply "want" to. There are reasons you are putting it in the wrong place. We don't need to examine them. They are gremlins, and you cannot kill them with wishful thinking. We have to know they exist powerfully and they always try to return.

    Gremlin killer: Single-Minded Uchikomi and Single-minded Moving Uchikomi

    Gremlins don't just go away. They have to be intentionally and totally destroyed. Knowing a needed fix and saying, "Oh, okay. I'll fix that" won't. I've seen gremlins seem to be conquered, be gone for months, then return with a vengeance. I've also seen someone fix a problem on the spot, and then half an hour later it returns. You sometimes hear a judoka, often a sensei, say, "In judo, your toughest opponent is yourself." It's almost a shrug-it-off cliché. Support foot gremlins are among those personal opponents. 

     Practice makes permanent. Be careful, because this also means that while doing uchikomi to correct your foot placement, any mistakes you are making elsewhere in the practice will become more concrete. All too often, uchikomi becomes a mindless repetition of what we think the throw should be, and we make bad technique more permanent. 

        This is why single-mindedness is important. Perhaps the most challenging part of learning any physical skill is focus. There are separate methods out there to supposedly help you concentrate better. Here's one you might like. In uchi komi, have uke say "Foot!" to you before each entry. Also, if uke knows where you are trying to put your foot, uke can tell you if you are getting off target. If you don't have an uke doing it, do it yourself.

    Often, when watching a high level Japanese training session, the uchikomi features a strongly stomping first foot step by all the trainees. I recommend doing the stomp. 

     More Than Just a Spot

    Support foot placement is more than just a place on the mat. Correct placement also means the direction in which the toes point. Uchi mata and sasae tusurikomi ashi are special examples of toe misdirection, along with position error. FYI - Study how they are done in Nage no Kata. Look at the support foot, where it is and the angle its big toe points relative to the central action of the throw. If you don't do kata, then watch a world class demonstration and see it that way. Actual experience is a highly preferred way to appreciate this.

    In right uchi mata, at kake, the support toes should point to what would be tori's front, not to tori's right. In practice, an even larger turn of the support foot to the left is recommended, because that will compensate for when the foot tries to point to the right.  

    In sasae, the support foot should be outside of uke's non-propped foot line and the toes pointed inward, not on a line parallel to what would be the "railroad tracks". 

    In both cases, the Nage no Kata foot placements are excellent examples.  

        Uchi Mata             

                 

                                                        Sasae Tsurikomi Ashi

(The purpose of these illustrations is to show placement angles. As to specific, exact, spot on placements, let's please not quibble.)

    Another common foot flaw

        Flat footed endeavors cause the knees to be vertically back (behind) the toes, and they should be on a dropline position ahead of them. Flat footedness also takes away final lifting and rotation action, which in turn eliminates a couple of dynamic inches of vertically forward thrust. Almost all, if not all throws should put tori in a position at tsukuri to kake where the knees are in front of the toes, the chest in front of the knees, and the nose in front of the chest. Any other position creates physical counter leverage. 

    Watch it Done Right

          Watch the successful judoka in your own dojo, or look on the Internet. 

Sadly, there will not likely be any discussion of foot placement. The best throws are those that require no hopping and no head diving. If a hop works it is too often because of an eventual and unintentional correct support foot placement during the hopping. Or, it succeeds because it wins by attrition. Head dives are a compensation for a lack of many bio-physical throwing essentials, and chief among them is support foot placement. Many judoka practice doing head diving throws, and this is a subject for another blog. My personal opinion is that the online high level competition judo coverage glorifies it. For now, suffice it to say that this sensei considers this dangerous and bad judo. Rolling over on uke when the throw is so dynamic that the momentum forces this, that is okay. Using head diving to make the kake work is not. 

In Randori

    A major objective of randori should be to work on things that need improvement. Here's an idea. Get someone to video your next few randori sessions from your knees on down and watch to see where you put your support foot for each attack. Look for nothing else. Isolate. For best results, be sure your sessions have several attacks. 

    Also, try this. Rather than have a specific throw in mind, just have a specific foot placement in mind, and let the throw follow. 

        It's Your Foot - Train it

    Sometimes, it seems our feet have little contrarian brains of their own. They just do what they want to do, no matter that you know better. You are unlikely to achieve total foot control quickly, because this is a gremlin that keeps wanting to come back tenaciously. Be master of your own feet. 

    We should never have to say, "I can't do this throw!"

    "Why not"

     "My foot won't let me."

      If ever your throw is admired by another judoka and you are asked your secret, you can smile slyly and say, "It's simple. I trained my foot." (Do not add "Grasshopper" to your reply.)

 

True Tipping Point

            So, you'd like to throw like legendary Kyuzo Mifune.            

            Don’t mistake the following for theory. It is something that you need to apply to your randori, and that you perpetually practice.

If you want to throw somebody with a really great throw, the best option is a judo throw. Because, to just do a “throw” you could simply pick somebody up and throw them across the room. Or, you could heft the victim onto your side, then fall on them, dragging them down under you. Those aren’t judo throws. They are just throwing. 

A judo throw requires a tipping point, plus a fulcrum, over which the uke’s body rotates and causes uke to land on the back.  Shiai points can be gained by throws that aren’t technically judo throws, and far too often are. In fact, many pictures are taken of these as examples of “dynamic” judo. These are not the goals of a true judoka.

Watching judoka practice a throw and not have success often shows the major issue involving tipping points. A successful judo throw is an uninterrupted single action that contains three essential elements. What we see instead is tori stopping at the moment between what should be the tsukuri and the kake. Then, often, without any kuzushi in the action, some lifting power is brought into play, and in spite of the results, we no longer technically have a judo throw.

This tells us the throw attempt’s failure is due to either missing kuzushi or improper fulcrum point placement, often both.

If at this point you might be thinking, “Duh! Everybody knows this.” If so, then let’s ask why these things are a perpetual cause of throw attempt failures.

     Let’s digress. Take a glass and set it on a table. Nudge it closer and closer to the edge, until it is almost ready to fall off the table. There is a position at which the glass is on the table. If nothing changes, it will stay there forever. There is an almost immeasurable point where if the base of the glass is moved farther off the edge, or if the top of the glass is leaned over the abyss, the glass will fall. It won’t stay suspended in space. This is when the throw should happen, as irrevocably and instantly as the glass tumbling off the table. It should take place at the tipping point.

The continuous and contiguous action of the three elements has stopped at the moment when the third element should have begun. Often, at this point, the tori will make an extra physical effort to complete the throw. It could be bending forward at a ninety degree angle. It could be trying to lift the uke up off the mat. In randori or shiai, it could be head diving. It is no longer a judo throw, but just a throw done during a judo activity.

            When kuzushi meets tsukuri, the tipping point has happened and kake is in progress. There should be no discernable time between that moment of connection and the accomplished throw. It should be like stepping off a cliff.

All too often, this is where we see physical strength and / or added body bending happen.  Once into the actual kake, it can have its own problems, chief among them the discontinuation of the pulling hand. This all for later.

When doesn’t a tipping point tip? When the fulcrum point is not harmoniously conjoined with the movement of the off balanced object.

When watching a throw, we see the big action, the kake. When learning a throw, we get involved with the new architecture of it, the form. Kuzushi is mostly just pointed out and then demonstrated as a pull or a push in a certain direction. What we don’t see is that when kuzushi and tsukuri have a rendezvous, the throw is happening at that instant. The amount of time involved is zero. It is like stepping off that cliff. The tipping point has arrived and the result is kake. There are no pauses, no action breaks, no grunts, bends, butt thumps or face plantings. Uke is airborne. 

Kyuzo Mifune is considered the epitome of judo technique. There used to be a quip that if you blinked one eye while doing randori with him, you were off balance to that side. It is important to be familiar with the Mifune videos of his randori action and with his instructional videos.

At the risk of blasphemy, I am going to say that some of Mifune's throwing examples show bad form. If you try to copy his techniques and do the throw forms and the kake as he does them, you won't in these cases get good results. In spite of this, his throws are still amazing.

That is because his  judo throws are based upon his super mastery of kuzushi. He owns the tipping point.  The tipping point isn't wimpy. What is the ultimate tipping point? It is when the aforementioned glass on the table's edge is at the critical moment of tipping over, is going to go, unless something intercedes. In a judo throw, it does go, because a fulcrum point is what shows up to create the rotation.

If you will stand on the very top of your tippy-toes of your right foot, I will throw you with any front right throw I want, and you won't be able to stop me. If you can step forward, I haven't shown up in time. If you can plant your foot back down, I didn't perpetuate the pull. Here is Mifune showing the kuzushi for ashi guruma. He isn't exaggerating. This is what he actually does.

    Uke is one straight line, from big toe to top of the head. Look at uke's left foot and leg. They no longer can play any part in uke's defense. Uke is like a pencil balanced on its point.

    Here, Kosei Inoue is teaching his famous uchi mata. This is his idea of how the kuzushi should look, and what he does to make his work. You can watch it all at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9hhbuOb-U

 

    This throw is over. Your kuzushi must be this blatant. You will have to be able to show up with the speed and timing such that uke cannot recover. However, if you only show up with speed and power, it is likely you will not get a throw.

To Practice:

• Select your throw and know what direction is its off-balancing goal.

• Create a major tipping point and maintain it.

• Step in and do the throw, without losing the tipping point.

• Walk around and try to figure out how to create that tipping point.

    If you watch Mifune, Inoue or other great throwers in action, you'll see that they use a pre-established pattern of set-up steps prior to application of kuzushi.

If you don't establish kuzushi, don't do the rest of it. Not to be too blunt, but if you don't establish kuzushi, there isn't any "the rest of it". 

Here is a bonus tip. The battle for gaining and maintaining kuzushi is what nage no kata is very much about. If you can find a sensei who teaches it that way, it could be a worthwhile endeavor.

Add the endeavor for better and better kuzushi and it will make your judo work.