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Excerpts from Judo for the West…  

In addition to reassessing the value of training and relating it to existent circumstances, another main object of the book is to reveal the actual bones of the game.  I have, in other words, tried to clear away some of the cobwebs and dust accumulated over the past half-century, which have obscured the true value of Judo training.  

The skilled man invariably has very little knowledge of how he really performs his skill and what he told the class was usually quite different from what he did.  The result: confusion and bewilderment.  

Originality, of course, starts with the coach; it is he who must set the pace, he who must break away from restrictions of irrational traditions, he who must stimulate his group or class into originality and spontaneity.  It is the coach's responsibility to see that the method he uses does the most to help each person attain fulfillment of their desires.  

There is a commonly accepted dogma in judo circles that if one wants to improve skill, practice should be with a higher grade. This appears to me to be fallacious. If repetition is an essential part of skill improvement and all authorities agree that it is, then the throw must be repeated often. To quote Knapp, one among many, "The skills involved in physical education and physical recreation are usually complex and require many repetitions and considerable time." …To do this he must, in fact, practise with people of lower skill standard than his own.  

Judo in the past has tended to encourage blind following, the unquestioning acceptance of well-masticated phrases; in fact it has discouraged individual thought altogether.  The worship of the "black belt" has gone a long way in producing a mental blank in most judo men. To ask searching questions of the black belt has been considered an impertinence- almost sacrilege! The title "black belt" has carried with it the implication that whoever holds it has some mystical union with universal omniscience.  Thus, utterances of the black belt have been accepted without question- even when they are directly contradicting some other black belt's pearls of wisdom.  The listener thinks it is his own stupidity which cannot reconcile the two statements. For the good of judo this attitude of unquestioning acceptance must cease!  

The use of the legs was always seen as a means of "jacking up" the opponent in order to throw him down.  Because of the static conditions in which the theory was evolved it could easily be shown that this was an extremely effective way of throwing. The only snag was that such circumstances were nothing like those met in real competition where the opponent is moving fast and trying to stop any possible attack. Because of such facile demonstrations and because the Japanese judo men insisted they did it this way, Britons for several generations have been slavishly trying to follow it.  

To me, this is a good example of the need for Britons to devise their own methods of training.  If it is true (which I doubt) that the Japanese are strong in the legs and we are weak, why try to copy them? Why try to use a national asset we do not possess? Why not turn our (so-called) weakness into a strength? If we cannot use the bent legs because of our weakness, why not keep them straight?  

As said before, a skill can only be learnt in the conditions it has to be performed in.  Therefore, any method of falling must be taught during the throwing action.  In my opinion, arm banging whilst lying on the floor has very little, if any, transfer quality.  

In my opinion, because of the complete difference of uchikomi and competitive movement (randori and shiai) i.e. non-movement, non-completion of throw, passive partner, etc. etc., there will be negative feedback from the practices of uchikomi.  That is, not only will uchikomi not help to improve the skill of throwing, but will actually hinder any improvement.  

Certainly this has been true in the past, techniques taught in isolation with no reference to ways from getting from one position to another. Indeed the whole immobility aspect was underlined because the first holding technique always taught was kesa gatame, a particularly "dead end" hold with virtually no possibility of development into other holding types. (For this reason I am completely against kesa gatame as a first technique and I only teach it at an intermediate stage at the earliest.)

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