Making judo/jjj throws work

[jay1995]

Can you learn to do judo throws without ever sparring with them. At my dojo we do ground fighting but we don't do randoori. So would I people able to pull them off in a self defence situation.

 

[sensei8]

Welcome to KF, jay1995; glad that you’re here!!

The title of your topic reads, “Making judo/jjj throws work”. MA techniques already work as designed by said MA founder. The responsibility is that of the practitioners to make said techniques work. That requires maturing in techniques.

Resistance training is everything. Get rid of the complacent training because real attackers don’t just stand still and go along with whatever is happening to them. Your real attackers will resist you at every step of the way.

Imho!!

 

[Wado Heretic]

First, Welcome to Karate Forums

A brief pre-amble. I did Judo throughout University until a knee injury where I tore my LCL in my left knee. Thus, I have some knowledge, and I would not call myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination. These days my focus is karate, which is application focused, but when I dabble in Judo it is to study the Kata and Principles therein. Please take what I say with a grain of salt

Would people able to pull them off in a self-defence situation?

To answer your question there are three straight forward answers. The shortest is No. The longer is man falling from a cliff: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

The longest is that it is complex and often comes down to context.

In my experience, there is no such thing as practicing throwing techniques with complete compliance (outside of worked pro-wrestling moves). In the sense of two factors:

1.      You must physically put in the effort to throw someone, and if your structure is off a throw will not work. Although a good training partner is giving you their body, everyone is going to give it to you differently, and you need to learn to work around body types and different weights.

2.      Unless someone is a supreme and well-rehearsed Uke and they have deep trust in the equipment and yourself, your average training partner is not going to like to be thrown. Whether consciously or unconsciously they will resist your technique out of a sense of self-preservation, which is they may unintentionally dead-weight you, or pre-empt your throw attempt with their intended break-fall by moving a certain way.

 Thus, even in a compliant model you already have several factors to deal with relevant to making them work with active resistance. The physicality of the move, and how shapes and sizes change each performance. This is why it is important to practice with compliance to learn how the technique should work. If one does not practice making the technique work successfully, one can never make it work under duress, because you will not know how the technique should feel. In the same sense, to learn how to win, you must practice winning and have in your mind a vision of winning. If you only spar people stronger than you and lose constantly, you will never gain the tools to win. Therefore, there is an innate benefit in training with a partner letting you try to throw them.

With regards to fighting on the ground: a little knowledge goes a long way. Most people have absolutely no knowledge or acumen when it comes to moving effectively on the ground, never mind grappling someone else. Having knowledge of locks, chokes, and pins will be of benefit even if practiced with compliance. If it is against someone wholly ignorant that is. Also, some degree of martial arts training will condition you in comparison to a wholly untrained person. Again, it is also important to practice with compliance to learn to make the techniques work. If I roll, and even if I catch someone in a control position, if have never practiced finishing a technique I am going to find myself in deep water quickly.  

Thus far, it does sound as though I am contradicting the “No” statement I started with.  To an extent I am and I am not. My point is it is important to train with compliance on times, and that some knowledge and conditioning will go further than you might expect against an untrained, aggressive individual. However, we fight how we train, and fighting involves an extreme level of stress that most people are not used to. It involves a level of physicality most people underestimate. Three minutes can feel like six hours against someone stronger, faster, and more skilled than you.

Resistance training is about two things:

1.      Coping with the mental stress of fighting

2.      Conditioning for the physical demand of fighting

It is not about learning techniques. It is about developing the ability to perform techniques under duress. It does not require randoori to learn to do techniques under duress. And very often, trying to gain that ability through free sparring is a long and painful road, which often fails. Which is to say, whoever has better natural inclinations will dominate those with worse nervous control. Under the fight or flight response we also have freeze and fawn. The latter two are not a good or effective response when violence has begun. And that is why resistance training is important. Learning to harness our stress response under duress. Now a person who is good at handling stress under duress naturally, or through experience, and has athleticism, can often make what they have learnt, even if through compliant drills, work to some extent against someone in theory equally skilled or strong. These people, however, are few and far between. And natural inclination will only take you so far. The only true talent is perseverance. We also need to understand that sparring as a training tool is only as useful as the learning experience. If a person’s only take away from a sparring session is that they were defeated, then they did not learn anything.

I use a ladder of drills which introduce what I call doses of chaos as one moves up the rungs. For example, when practicing a hip-toss, we will start with compliance and then add different types of resistance. For self-defence It might be having the partner shouting at you as you try to perform the technique or having to work around or against a wall. If just drilling repeating the technique but each time, they give you their body a different or awkward way. For example, if working on our throws from judogi grips, coming at you in a mirrored stance, so you must change feet on the fly to make the throw work. Stuff where we isolate aspects of violent encounters, or competition problems, and work on them in isolation. Building that familiarity with the stressors we encounter, so when we do finally practice randoori we are familiar with said stressors. In this way, when we have a good or a poor sparring session, we can analyse and see where our opponent was better than us, where our own technique let us down and how to improve, and whether we were too much in our own head due to the stress.

In conclusion

Compliant practice is useful if it is for learning techniques and you keep in mind what you need to be analysing

Randoori alone will not make you able to perform techniques under duress. It is a training tool but only part of a tool kit

Studying and understanding factors of duress and stress, that impact performance, and drilling with resistance to develop fortitude and knowledge before moving to free sparring is how to make sparring useful

I hope this is of help

[bushido_man96]

@Wado Heretic leaves a great explanation.  If you don't practice the standup part of the game, then your skills in that aspect of the game will not develop.  You can do all the reading and video study you want, but you have to practice with resisting partners to learn to make it work.  Have you ever asked why it is that your school doesn't work on standup?  I'm fortunate in that our BJJ school works a lot from the standup position, and we mostly start our open rolling from standup.  This gives the wrestlers that come in a pretty distinct advantage, and I learn a lot every time I get taken down and fail at a takedown.

[sensei8]

6 hours ago, Wado Heretic said:

Resistance training is about two things:

1.      Coping with the mental stress of fighting

2.      Conditioning for the physical demand of fighting

3. Maturing in said techniques.

Imho.