On the structure of Judo matches.

In January 2010, I was fortunate enough to visit the USA and taught a clinic at OKCDT in Oklahoma City.

We recorded some video of the teaching and me chatting about the concepts and ideas behind what was shown. Mike Darter has kindly placed it online so people can watch it. So I am including it here for anyone interested:

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_uqLlF7MM&playnext=1&videos=tsww8wMh1Ac )

In the clinic we taught “Cowboy Judo” which was a method of training using the structure of Judo as defined by researchers, rather than relying on pure opinion. Not the whole clinic is shown and perhaps it is not clear to some viewers what we are promoting here.

Basically the model is this; each Judo match is broken into short segments of action approximately 20-30 seconds long. This is the time between Hajime and Matte. Within each segment, we have a sequence of events that is consistent:

Hajime – Grip – Move – Attack – Transition – Matte

What we covered was each of these segments and linking the segments. The idea being that rather than just teaching a throw, we teach a throw within the context of the grip-move-attack-transition framework. So low sleeve and mid lapel grip-backwards movement-ippon seoinage-transition to ippon. Or transition to ne-waza, etc.

Rather than having training where people spend long periods doing kumi kata, if we promote this style of training within the framework grip fighting is limited. It also discourages wandering around the tatami after grips are taken.

A mis-conception we found common on the Judoforum.com was that we were encouraging players to break grips. This is not the case, what this framework hopefully encourages good attacking Judo.

Please let us know what you think.