"Higher Judo: Groundwork" by Moshe Feldenkrais

During the manic phases of what I call “manic-procrastination disorder,” I usually end up misplacing my productive energy into judo stuff. At the end of an hour-long binge, I had was a proud owner of a new judo website and a funky old newaza book called “Higher Judo: Groundwork.” The first print ran in 1952 and it had apparently become quite rare, but luckily enough it had be reprinted in 2010 in paperback. You know me and my obsession with ground work, right?

So, who was Moshe Feldenkrais? Apparently, he was a pretty big deal. A pioneer of judo in France who hung out Jigoro Kano, as well being a scientist of sorts, he was interesting enough on his own to convince me to shell out $17 for his book. This was the last in a series of judo and jujutsu literature, meant for experienced judoka. Though I usually like to read the foreword, the 2010 one speaks more about judo as it relates to the development of the Feldenkrias Method—something I can’t even begin to pretend to care about. 

In terms of judo content, “Higher Judo” contains 300 line drawings (traced from actual photos of Feldenkrais and Mikinosuke Kawaishi) with accompanying commentary. Unlike most instructional books that stick to explaining 1 or 2 pictures at a time, Feldenkrais works to tie together different positions, constantly referring back to earlier pages. This has the advantage of synthesizing the work, but is also makes the 200-page book frustrating to read through. Therefore, it may be better said that “Higher Judo” is meant for brown belt judoka and black belt-level readers.

“Higher Judo” represents one of the first attempts by a judoka to capture “proper” newaza instruction in print. There are definitely other instructionals covering newaza, but it seems that the goal of judo print during the mid-20th century was capture judo through a series of photographs. The line drawings lack color, which is a choice probably made to draw your attention to the text. Even if you are a visual learner, the best photography of the 1952 was not that good, such that the crispness of the line drawings is actually superior from an instructional standpoint.

In the paragraph above, I put quotes around the word “proper” newaza instruction because it seems to be the least standardized part of judo in proportion to how often we have to deal with it. The fact that Feldenkrais, an apparently reknowned grappling expert and contemporary of Kano, poured so much detail into this book is very interesting. I say this because I’ve never seen judo newaza taught in his terms, which reinforces my idea that unlike tachi waza, the judo community have yet to place a standard on the whole of newaza technique. There are a set of techniques required for grading, but the proper application of ju on the ground deserves more attention than it currently gets. The positional nature of newaza lends itself well to didactic instruction, which is exactly how Feldenkrais attempts to teach it. Here is the table of contents:

Example of "Higher Judo" Content

1. Judo Practice…17

2. Uniqueness of Action…42

3. Where We Start and Why…46

4. Principles of Ground Work…53

5. Some Useful Exercises…56

6. Ground Work Tactics…67

7. Starting Ground Word…77

8. Six O’clock Approach…87

9. Right or Left Approach…121

10. Head On Approach…160

11. The Astride Position…181

12. Opponent Facing the Ground…207

Sometimes I think that judoka have this illusion that they’ll open a book by a pre-WWII black belt and find the entire catalogue of modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu techniques which, quite frankly, is ridiculous. The farther you move from the founding of Judo, the more you can see how the sports have evolved into totally different things—for better or worse. Even if you have no sense of historical accuracy and think that BJJ comes from Japanese Jujutsu, what people are doing in modern competitions does not resemble old school, “true” Gracie Jiu Jitsu (as Relson Gracie will gladly tell you).

Anyway, as a grappler you should not be looking to “Higher Judo” for the answer to your ne waza woes (which can only be solved with more practice). It serves as a historical piece and has a lot of great ideas concerning the general approaches to groundwork and principles that guide them. More importantly, as students who hopefully will spend time amassing experience and knowledge to become teachers someday, “Higher Judo” shows what happens when a smart person really thinks about grappling in-depth, as a science. His work is imperfect, but given the time when it was published is was far ahead of its time in that it recognized problems in instruction and the practical application of classical techniques. If you can get past the foreword and the constant plugs for the Feldenkrais Method, “Higher Judo” can be a great tool for the further development of your judo. 

Link to buy:

http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Judo-Groundwork-Moshe-Feldenkrais/dp/155643927X 

Thanks for stopping by! You're alright.

-Ben

The Final Destination

Not a review of that awful movie series, sorry!

So here we are, at the end of my convoluted series of newaza articles. It's been a fun journey right? After all of the build up and time between posts, my solution is frustratingly predictable: cross-training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). Practicing a groundwork-focused fighting style if your groundwork isn't good enough? Brilliant Ben! Self-deprecation aside, there is some real thought that should go into this... While I refer to the general case of "groundwork-focused fighting style," I specify Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. This is the most logical choice for a judoka seeking focused newaza practice. Why? First of it, due to the rise of Mixed Martial Arts, schools are popping all over the United States and Canada. More importantly, BJJ comes from Judo so it's principles are the most compatible with the way a judoka moves and thinks. Off-balancing, efficiency, leverage, posture, position. The fact that both judokas and BJJ players associate those words with their style points towards this unique relationship and the ease with which one side should be able to train in the others'.

Any person who has spent more than 2 weeks in a dojo has come across the guy who "did some wrestling in high school and was pretty good at it." Even those types who are able to hold their own eventually get a "Fix your posture!" from Sensei, to which they respond "Sorry, I learned not to expose my legs." He'll fix it momentarily then a few minutes later will bend over again, causing frustration for everyone else on the mat (dramatization). What's working against this student are the incongruities between Judo and Freestyle wrestling. Freestyle or folkstyle? I'm not sure what they call it in high school, but cross-training it with Judo is demonstrably more difficult than cross-training BJJ with Judo. The posture is different, there's no gi, the definition of a pin is much more narrow that what constitutes a hold-down in Judo. Doing both isn't impossible (in fact, many top American Judoka wrestled in high school/college), but why not go for the easier transition?

He'll never tap!

This all seems simple enough, but one should still approach cross-training with caution. Again, I stress the importance of congruency. "Judo" should pair well with "BJJ," but the names are brands that anybody above a certain rank can use as long as they fill out the paperwork. This isn't necessarily me discrediting the 10's of thousands of teachers out there that I haven't met, it's just that there is clearly a difference in the way some choose to interpret the "ju" (gentleness) in "judo" and "jujutsu." If a sensei teaches you to muscle your way through a poorly timed throw, he's teaching you something- just not Judo. If a BJJ teacher tells you breaking closed guard is all about arm strength, he's teaching you something- just not BJJ. I'm not advocating going up to Sensei and challenge him to mortal combat to test his legitimacy. Not only is that rude, but the typical person seeking even intermediate level instruction isn't qualified enough to make that judgement. However, it is appropriate to be wary if your BJJ and Judo instructors are teaching you completely different concepts, when the two are supposed to be closely related.

While I definitely have more to say on this topic, I think I'll get off it for a while. I want to vary the content and style a touch more, but if you have any questions feel free to message me.

Thanks for stopping by! You're alright.
-Ben

What is Kosen Judo?

Hey guys, I was in the middle of continuing my newaza segment when I realized that there is an unreasonable amount of ground to cover in just one post. When I read articles on the history of Judo or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu they always amalgamate their shared history into a few short paragraphs. Worse than that, they tend throw in a bunch of terms in italics, as though to say to their reader "Screw you, Google it!" In today's scary world where proper nouns double as verbs and attention spans are short we have to consider the consequences of just saying things without explaining them. In cases where a writer is presenting their interpretation of history as canonical, partial information is as bad as false information. For example, in my original piece I was just going to throw in "Kosen Judo" with a tiny blurb after explaining what it is. Limiting that explanation to a footnote seems to imply that the context it brings to the discussion isn't all that important, when it really is.

I'm sort of doing it here to some of you, but for those who know who Mitsuyo Maeda is look at how he's typically treated in the founding story of BJJ. He almost never gets a proper introduction— Maeda becomes this random figure who teachers the Gracie family how to fight for a while, and then through their own genius the Gracies become really skilled at newaza. One has to ask however, what the hell was Maeda doing in Brazil in the first place? Which of the Gracie kids did he actually teach? All of these details reveal something valuable about the history of the sport. Maeda was one of the Jigoro Kano's delegates sent around the world to promote Judo, which at the time was just starting to replace the name "Kano Jiu Jitsu." What does this say? For one, it says that anybody who claims that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu comes from traditional Japanese Jiu Jitsu is full of it. Not only that, it shows that the techniques and principles of BJJ, in fact, come from Judo! If one reads one of those short histories of BJJ, what tends to happen is this over-glorification of individual fighters. Sure, the Gracie family is full of genius and hard working people, but it is the combination of that and being able to build on a well thought-out system of martial arts that made them successful.

 

But I digress.

What is "Kosen Judo" and why does it matter in my quest of trying to "find" newaza? Trying to avoid anecdotes and provide actual facts, Kosen Judo is "regular" Judo, taught at 5-year "kosen schools," that emphasized ground technique. During the early 20^th century, the technology for mass-produced mats was simply not good enough to project people from the high velocity impact of a committed Judo throw (even today injuries at the beginner level are fairly common). As a result of this, instructors spent most of their time practicing newaza and eventually became really good at it. They were good not only in the sense that they excelled at the skill itself, but they were also able to win competitions against judoka who were taught in the traditional way, forgoing throws completely. Basically, they would pull guard (hikikomi), which means to fall backwards and pull an opponent down between their legs in order to start mat work without being thrown. There was no rule against this until 1925, when Dr. Kano… made a rule against this. One possible explanation, perhaps the most logical, is that Kano had envisioned Judo being a system that used both standing techniques and ground techniques, and didn't want one being taught more than the other purely for success in competition. There are principles of tachi waza that don't have a ground equivalent, and given the amount of though Kano put into the system I'm not surprised that he would be a little miffed that they weren't able to executed in shiai! I would go as far as to say that the concept of BJJ and Olympic style Judo would disappoint him, a lot.  

Regardless of official rule changes, the Kosen style of Judo persisted and didn't change its format for its own tournament, which is why it is relevant to me. They represent what Judo players could accomplish if they spent as much time drilling mat work as they did doing uchikomi. Today Kosen judo, that is schools that have teachers with lineages in Kosen judo, is only practiced in what were the Imperial Universities of Japan. It is wildly impractical for me to travel to Japan and check up on them, but somewhere inside I like to believe that it's this parallel universe to BJJ schools, where the passion and rigor of newaza has not been lost like it has in the United States. That would be great! There are a lot of judoka that are credited as being great on the ground, but often that is the result of them having a strong wrestling background and is not necessarily Judo. I've learned a lot of great things from Greco Roman wrestlers, but it's not Judo. It's not as though I'm a Tae Kwon Do person going "Where's my mat work?" I'm a judoka— Judo, by definition, includes mat work and if I'm not going to Japan to learn it, where will I go? I'll save that for next time. Here's a video from a DVD set on Kosen Judo, bare with the cheesy music.

 Thanks for stopping by, you're alright!

-Ben

My Terrible Judo Guy Newaza

Now that I'm back from university I've been practicing at my home dojo which, of course, means I get to see my older brother more often. He got me into Judo when I was little, but he practices BJJ also. Not surprisingly, pretty much every time we roll he berates me for my newaza (lit. "ground technique"). I'll be the first to admit that I totally deserve it! For the decade I was doing Judo before college, I was never challenged to step up my newaza to the same extent I was challenged to step up my tachiwaza (lit. "standing technique"). At this point in my life, as I'm working towards competing at the highest levels I see exactly why this is the case.

In the heart of every modern Judoka there exists the desire to do at one of the following: 1) to be successful in competition 2) to contribute to the success of another person in competition. To cater to different tastes/philosophies there are a handful of tournaments that break away from the IJF's rules, but let's be honest here- the only tournaments that really matter are the ones sanctioned by the IJF. One of the most notable achievements a judoka can have under their belt (so to speak) is to go to the Olympics, and there is absolutely no way to get there that would allow one to circumvent the IJF (for more details about how spots will be allocated for the 2012 Olympics click here). Even if it was possible, the rules at the Olympics are always set in place by the IJF with maybe a couple of minor modifications.

For my non-Judo readers, the big deal with all of this is that for a multitude of reasons, the IJF's rules favor victory by use of throws rather than by submission or pin. That is not to say that people only win by throwing, but the fact that shortly after engaging in newaza (I guess you could call it "wrestling") competitors are stood up to start the fight standing again. Furthermore, a lot of take-downs that have a higher percentage of starting groundwork than ending the point by a throw were banned recently. My main problem with this is that it disadvantages those who have as much of a methodical, patient approach to groundwork as they do to standing technique. The whole turtle-posture to run out the clock as soon as someone hits the mat is probably one of the most disappointing things to see from a high level combatant (well, that and pulling guard from standing).

In spite of what Judo may be popularly perceived as, groundwork is just as big a part of what Judo was intended to be as throwing is. If you look at, say, Sambo or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the principles governing their ground techniques are Judo in origin since both Vasili Oshchepkov and Carlos Gracie were taught DIRECTLY by Judoka. Undoubtedly, the rules of a sport's highest competition will dictate what is taught at its lower levels. Because of this, the emphasis in most Judo schools (including my own) is on throwing rather than mat work. To what extent should teachers spend time teaching the traditions of Judo, versus what will work in competitions?

Right now in my Judo journey (which is really more a life journey) I'm trying to improve my mat work. It seems simple enough, but I've basically made the claim that my own dojo does not provide an environment where my newaza will develop to the same extent my tachiwaza has. In my next segment I'll discuss possible solutions and my take on the various mysteries and myths surrounding Judo and its ground technique. I leave you with a counter argument against Judo players being bad at newaza.

Thanks for stopping by! You're alright.
-Ben