Making Your Judo Work

The Magic of "Not Try - Do"

  

If you’d like to magically improve your judo faster, easier, and with lasting results, this is the blog for you.

     As a sensei, I've seen a zillion and a half people immediately fail at a judo task, get frustrated, get nowhere. The sensei says, "Fix this one thing." If it is done, there is success, and if not, more failure. Over time, a couple more "one things" have to be taken care of. Each requires making a single and concerted effort to fix it. Let’s consider the “One Thing”.

   I was telling a new student to do a simple head rotation when performing hane goshi. (For those who know my judo, it is "Sunrise - Sunset".) It requires zero special athletic ability. If you look up at the ceiling and then over toward your rear, as if watching a ball go up and over your head - that means up and around, not sideward and around, you'll have it. (This is the fix for just this example, not singularly the essence of this blog.)

     This is an action that can make a floundering hane goshi almost magically really good. It can be used for all front throws, but hane is the most glaring proof of its efficacy. That aside, it is as easy as wrinkling your nose. 

     The student was not being asked to perform anything that would muddle up the other things going on for the throw. In fact, the rest of the throw effort looked functionally okay. This student did it and the throw actually worked. Then, the student would do it once, maybe even twice, and then proceed to stop doing it. Over about thirty minutes of class practice time he was admonished to make it happen several more times, because he continually reverted to his old way. Perhaps you are thinking, "Well, there's always that student who just can't get it." Forget that. This happens over and again with student after student, and not just with this fix or this throw, and not with just throws.  Every judo technique can provide the opportunity to apply the advice given here. (Not the head rotation, the general advice.)

     We so often hear that the martial arts enhance that mystical ability called "focus". This is a big selling feature when parents are enrolling kids. There is no need to get mystical about it; it is simply very specifically paying attention, then doing.  Just for fun, let’s pretend you need to do something to improve any throw you'd like to name right now. My advice to create a major fix will be, "Wrinkle you nose as you do it." You do, and the throw is amazingly better. You do it again, and once more you get the reward. Will you always wrinkle your nose when trying this throw? Unless you are the exception to the overall world of judoka, you won't. The Gremlin that is you predominant action will override your newly achieved effort, because that is what happens to almost everybody almost all the time. 

    The frightening truth is that this “Gremlin”, this need to do the fix, can return way down the road. Only more and more practice can embed it. Practice makes permanent.

     It is human nature to revert to doing it incorrectly, because the original flaw is part of the student. It is what the individual's internal mechanism likes best, wrong or not. Fixing this requires that one do, not try. Okay, try to always do. 

 

·        Here's one way to make the fix permanent. One of the great values of uchi komi is that it provides opportunity to fix the little things repeatedly and with immediate focus.  Uchi komi, however, all too often is mindless repetition. While it provides a great place to drill the little things into shape, it can also drill the bad things into place.  

·        Another way is to do a mental command. If you need to do a special collar hand twist, mentally command “Twist collar hand”. If it’s a deeper foot placement, mentally command “Deeper step in”. Do this during uchi kkomi and in randori.

·        Try visualization (but not while driving J). Find a time when you can visualize and “feel” the action. Call it mental uchi komi.

• The "feel" here is a valuable ability. If you can feel yourself doing what you mentally imagine, you can train your mind / body reactions for actual applications. If you can't just do it, try to learn to do it. Sometimes, just one part of an action can be achieved as a starter.

·        Make a video of you doing the technique. See if you can do it with and without the “Gremlin”. Study it.

     Trying to always do does not require getting a mental or physical hernia. It means to do it, and do so because you tell yourself to do it. Then, always do it. 

     The irony is that this blog is a single suggestion which readers might apply once or twice, and then not apply the next time. Therefore, make a part of your judo and it will magically make your judo work faster, easier, and with lasting results.