Thing I've noticed about TMA and "purity"

I think the opposite problem exists too in MMA.

For instance, the idea that Ronda Rousey only uses "one move", as if to suggest an armbar from the back is somehow similar to a flying armbar, when they are most certainly distinct techniques.
 
"Guard of the Galaxy"!? Are you serious???

Sounds like some 10th Planet shit. They always have goofy names for their moves.

It's true that Bravo is good at ridiculous names but this one is from Braulio

http://www.graciemag.com/2013/06/br...es-the-goal-is-to-nullify-opponents-pressure/

Uchi mata, it's true that in judo the same move would have 2 forms: the one you use in combat and the classical. However I do believe that learning the classical form is part of the process to learn the combat one.

Tl;dr People should learn a proper textbook uchi mata before the can-can variation. Textbooks throws are fundamentals you need to understand judo. Textbook Ogoshi is maybe not a popular throw in actual sparring but learning it is part of process ending with a nice and practical "hip toss"
 
I don't think there's a big difference between koshi guruma, uki goshi, and ogoshi. And I'm a Judo black belt. Harai has a different throwing action, so call it something different. Okay. Literally the only difference between Koshi guruma and O goshi is hand placement. Judo has too many names.

wait wait wait! they are very different. so different that you cannot just mix them up and flow from one another. way different throwing mechanisms.

o goshi is like a quarter squat, uki goshi is like a hip twist, and koshi guruma is throwing down with the hip as a pivot point.

it's not about hand placement any more than sasae and hiza guruma are about foot placement.
 
I think it's more of an issue of ego and people trying to find something to be "proud" of which I understand to an extent.

That being said, an armbar is an juji gatame, a double leg is a double leg, etc etc. I think a lot of people just want their art to be unique when really a lot of principles are similar between arts.

I'm sure if we looked far back enough we could find a lot of our techniques used today in ancient sculptures/art.
 
wait wait wait! they are very different. so different that you cannot just mix them up and flow from one another. way different throwing mechanisms.

o goshi is like a quarter squat, uki goshi is like a hip twist, and koshi guruma is throwing down with the hip as a pivot point.

it's not about hand placement any more than sasae and hiza guruma are about foot placement.

Hiza and sasae are only about foot placement. You pull, block, and rotate. Where you put the foot is largely a matter of taste that doesn't affect the throwing motion. And you can argue all you want that koshi guruma and o goshi are totally different throws, but the distinction is practically meaningless and getting hung up on those distinctions distracts from what you really need to focus on to get hip throws to work, namely good pull and foot placement. Do whatever you want for kata and demonstration of the principles of the throw, but in randori there's no real distinction and worrying about the minutiae of hip placement is a waste of time.
 
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Hiza and sasae are only about foot placement. You pull, block, and rotate. Where you put the foot is largely a matter of taste that doesn't affect the throwing motion. And you can argue all you want that koshi guruma and o goshi are totally different throws, but the distinction is practically meaningless and getting hung up on those distinctions distracts from what you really need to focus on to get hip throws to work, namely good pull and foot placement. Do whatever you want for kata and demonstration of the principles of the throw, but in randori there's no real distinction and worrying about the minutiae of hip placement is a waste of time.

Sorry but you've got the fundamentals all wrong. Tsuri komi throws have that lifting and uprooting action, whereas gurumas have you turning uke like a wheel and generally you pull down not up. It's a completely different action so that you need to know which one you're going for beforehand during randori. It sounds like what you are really doing is the same throw with different hand and foot placements. Like doing sasae but placing on the knee and calling it a hiza.
 
Sorry but you've got the fundamentals all wrong. Tsuri komi throws have that lifting and uprooting action, whereas gurumas have you turning uke like a wheel and generally you pull down not up. It's a completely different action so that you need to know which one you're going for beforehand during randori. It sounds like what you are really doing is the same throw with different hand and foot placements. Like doing sasae but placing on the knee and calling it a hiza.

What's the difference between and uppercut and a hook? Yes, there's a difference in the platonic ideal of how you throw each one, but in practice they bleed into one another and it's often very hard to distinguish between the two because the punch comes at an intermediate angle. In the same way, when you're doing a hip throw you pull, get your hips in, pop and lift, and rotate uke onto his back. You can get as pedantic as you want about how the specific angle you entered at altered the throwing motion and made it one throw instead of another, but it's pointless to do so. Hiza and sasae: what do you call it when your foot is on his shin, near his knee? Does it change the hand motion and body rotation that is common to both throws? No, not at all. Another meaningless distinction. If I hit your with a foot sweep as you step forward but then keep my foot sticky to drive you over to finish, is it de ashi harai or kosoto gari? Who cares? It just makes the art more obscure and harder for new people to understand.
 
Does it change the hand motion and body rotation that is common to both throws?

Yes it does. For all your examples the point isn't to be pedantic but to help you understand how to apply the kuzushi to make your technique as effective as possible.
 
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Yes it does. For all your examples the point isn't to be pedantic but to help you understand how to apply the kuzushi to make your technique as effective as possible. It sounds like you don't care about that and are just interested in brawling.

It's funny how people who treat Judo like a TMA and are focused on technical purity look down on wanting to actually throw people in live situations. Show me examples of matches featuring sasae and hiza where the throwing motions are distinct, where one is a clear wheel and the other is a lift. You're not going to find them, because the throwing motion of both is not that pure in real life. You pull, you lift, you wheel, you block, it's not dependent upon foot placement or specfic gripping situations, it's dependent on what your opponent is giving you and worrying 'I'm going for hiza here, so I must wheel and not lift' is a good way to never throw anyone. You think high level wrestlers worry about whether their single leg is more of a sweep single or a low ankle single? You practice variations, you find a motion that works well for you based on your body type, strength profile, gripping style, etc and you go with it.

I'm not arguing that there aren't different components of throwing motions. I'm arguing that giving them distinct names and trying to draw clear lines between them is unhelpful because those lines blur the minute your opponent starts offering resistance. You should understand the different ways that you can create kuzushi and complete a throw, but you shouldn't mentally separate those methods which is what too much nomenclature causes you to do.
 
It's funny how people who treat Judo like a TMA and are focused on technical purity look down on wanting to actually throw people in live situations.

My focus on technical purity is precisely because I want to throw people in live situations.

Not understanding the differences in kuzushi will make you fail a lot more often.
 
It's funny how people who treat Judo like a TMA and are focused on technical purity look down on wanting to actually throw people in live situations. Show me examples of matches featuring sasae and hiza where the throwing motions are distinct, where one is a clear wheel and the other is a lift. You're not going to find them, because the throwing motion of both is not that pure in real life. You pull, you lift, you wheel, you block, it's not dependent upon foot placement or specfic gripping situations, it's dependent on what your opponent is giving you and worrying 'I'm going for hiza here, so I must wheel and not lift' is a good way to never throw anyone. You think high level wrestlers worry about whether their single leg is more of a sweep single or a low ankle single? You practice variations, you find a motion that works well for you based on your body type, strength profile, gripping style, etc and you go with it.

I'm not arguing that there aren't different components of throwing motions. I'm arguing that giving them distinct names and trying to draw clear lines between them is unhelpful because those lines blur the minute your opponent starts offering resistance. You should understand the different ways that you can create kuzushi and complete a throw, but you shouldn't mentally separate those methods which is what too much nomenclature causes you to do.

Silat is not as effective a throwing art as Judo. It is basically like karate, with kicks, punches and takedowns. Most of the takedowns are set up with strikes, and are more like gentle dumps. That said, if you train them seriously enough, like Muay Thai, they work.

At an Inosanto seminar, he was advocating an understanding of Silat takedowns the same as you are about Judo.

He basically said, "there are 8 or so principal takedowns, and depending on what your opponent does, you can chain most of then together. The enterance don't always give you a certain takedown, so you can pair any enterance with any takedown.

If there is nothing there, go back to striking."
 
My focus on technical purity is precisely because I want to throw people in live situations.

Not understanding the differences in kuzushi will make you fail a lot more often.

Good technique is whatever works best. Which means that what is good technique for one person might be bad technique for another. I'm 6'2", good uchi mata technique for me is going to be very different than what might work for someone who's 5'5". The only way to find out is to work on the throw a lot and determine which of the several ways of creating kuzushi works best for you in various situations.

I probably came off as too harsh earlier because I do think it's important to learn the different methods of creating kuzushi for a given throw, but I don't think it's helpful to use nomenclature to draw hard lines between them when in real life they tend to blend a great deal, and often the only way to throw someone is to offbalance them in several different ways at the same time.
 
My focus on technical purity is precisely because I want to throw people in live situations.

Not understanding the differences in kuzushi will make you fail a lot more often.
Then how come Sambo guys and wrestlers who chunk things far less precisely also throw dudes about quite effectively?
 
Then how come Sambo guys and wrestlers who chunk things far less precisely also throw dudes about quite effectively?

Most Judo guys who are really good at throwing aren't concerned with nomenclature or the purity of their kuzushi either. They mostly just practice a small number of throws a lot, get strong, work gripping and setups, and then go out and attack.
 
Judo is kind of schizophrenic IMHO.
You spend one half of the time studying canonical forms and the other half drilling/using live sparring forms.

Yes the hip toss's principles are bleeding in each others but, I still think that learning a technically pure form is a good thing to understand each part. You learn that it's possible to throw with a rotation, an elevation, a pull, a push... Then you combine this and figure out YOUR throw. You say it's inefficient but I think it's necessary because each judoka has his own way to do the same throw. We adapt the move to our bodytype/personality/game... My uchimata is really "leggy" with a focus on pulling, yours may be more "on the hips" or may have more rotation.

But when you teach, you have to show the standard canonical stuff so everyone can craft his own judo game.
 
Good technique is whatever works best. Which means that what is good technique for one person might be bad technique for another. I'm 6'2", good uchi mata technique for me is going to be very different than what might work for someone who's 5'5". The only way to find out is to work on the throw a lot and determine which of the several ways of creating kuzushi works best for you in various situations.

I probably came off as too harsh earlier because I do think it's important to learn the different methods of creating kuzushi for a given throw, but I don't think it's helpful to use nomenclature to draw hard lines between them when in real life they tend to blend a great deal, and often the only way to throw someone is to offbalance them in several different ways at the same time.

You are right in the sense that one can figure out what works for them through trial and error. Most of Judo learning is like that, and even if taught properly the student still has to acquire the feel.

However, I think we can do better, especially when teaching. You need to understand the details and differences to properly diagnose a problem.

Instead of telling the student "figure out what works for your body" like it's done in so often, you can tell them precisely how to adjust a throw for a particular opponent. This is not an ability many coaches have.

It's not about the names for me. It's that the throw and opportunities for them are completely different, so that I need to know what I'm going for when coming in.

For example, I prefer hiza guruma with uke's leg back and sasae with leg forward. I pull up for sasae and down with hiza. If you don't know why and when you do them, you'd easily mix up the combination and end up with 4 random possible combinations, of which only one is effective. And that's not even including taller/shorter, lefty/righty, grips, bent or upright, etc. You've got to know what you're doing and not just feel it out all the time.

So says I anyway.
 
Then how come Sambo guys and wrestlers who chunk things far less precisely also throw dudes about quite effectively?

You should give more credit to them. Why call it an ankle pick vs knee tap vs high crotch, etc. when it's all a single leg?
 
You should give more credit to them. Why call it an ankle pick vs knee tap vs high crotch, etc. when it's all a single leg?

Those are different for teaching purposes. But I've never seen two wrestlers sit around and argue about whether a particular single was a sweep single or a low single, nor have I ever had a wrestler telling me I was doing a high crotch wrong because it wasn't a perfect replica of the way his instructor showed him to do a high crotch. I wish I could say the same for Judo.
 
That's why I say reification is the problem, treating abstractions as though they represent discrete realities. When you have any grappling movement that has variations along a *spectrum* that isn't discrete (like your average hip throw), then for training purposes you can point out how the ends of the spectrum are different from each other. That's perfectly fine for pedagogy, where you might want to emphasize one form of movement and oppose it to another possibility at the end of the spectrum.

The problem is when people get confused and think these are, in the real world, actually discrete realities rather than just arbitrary points on a spectrum that are selected for pedagogical purpose. That's when you get people debating whether a throw in competition was "really" x or y, as though you are talking about some either/or dichotomy that actually exists in reality as opposed to a pedagogic/heuristic device. Anytime you are having a spirited debate about what a move "really" is, it's a sure sign that you are confusing a *potentially* useful pedagogic distinction with the empirical reality.

A related over-emphasis on terminology comes with the idea that specific joint locks attack a specific joint "when done right," as opposed to the reality that any advanced grappler knows ... they commonly attack a region of the body as a structural unit, and the isolation claimed in theory rarely exists in practice, nor should it.

This kind of debate is particularly common in judo relative to other grappling sports, but you will sometimes see it crop up in BJJ discussions about leglocks ... was that really a kneebar or heelhook? Or wasn't that a toehold attack with a foot lock grip? Etc.
 
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