Technical Analysis: Shoulder Throw
Last week I discussed how to work up to throwing a much bigger person. The post was inspired by the difficulties that a very small woman (5’1″, 115 lbs) at my dojo was having when attempting to do a shoulder throw (ippon seioi nage) on a much bigger man (6’1″, 210 lbs). No, the shoulder throw is not the ideal self-defense takedown for her in that scenario. Yes, there are throws that she could learn to do on a much bigger guy more easily. The point of the post was how to approach the difficulties that come when learning to do a shoulder throw (or other similar throws) on a much bigger person. (more…)
How to Throw Big When You’re Small
In the past year, I’ve picked up a few students who are smaller women. When I say small, I mean like 12-year-old small. These women are between 5’0″ and 5’2″. They are truly petite. I’ve been working with them lately to help them with their throwing. They may not have confidence in their ability to throw a 6’3″ guy who is over 200 lbs right now, but ironically, they’ll be better at throwing down the line if they stick with it. (more…)
One Way to Remove Strength from Takedowns/Throws
This week I was pondering a particular technique, our neck twisting takedown. In this takedown, you take hold of your uke’s head, draw it to your shoulder (or chest depending on your height), then you turn their head as you turn your entire body, taking them to the ground. It’s a great technique, but it’s fairly technical. If done incorrectly with an overuse of strength it can strain your uke’s neck. As a result, I wanted to come up with a way to help reduce the use of strength when students execute this technique. This post is about what I came up with.
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Doing Hip Throws
The more years I do hip throws, the more I seem to get out of it. At first it was simply the joy of slamming someone down on the ground effortlessly… Who am I kidding? I still enjoy that. But now I look at the hip throw and see how it has many parallels to life in general. Here are a few examples:
“Break the balance first and the rest is easy.” When throwing someone, you break their balance first otherwise it is much more difficult, sometimes impossible, to throw them. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that when trying to accomplish a goal, it’s important to do all the necessary preparations first so that things proceed smoothly.
“If you want to break someone’s balance, you have to get lower than their centre of gravity.” When it comes to hip throws, you have to bend your knees and get your hips lower than your uke’s hips. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that if you follow sound strategy and put your efforts on the right things you can accomplish much more with a lot less work.
“Once you’ve broken the balance, don’t wait; throw your uke immediately.” When beginners start doing hip throw, they often wait too long before throwing once the balance is broken. This leads to the person getting tired as they support their uke’s weight, particularly if uke is heavier than them. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that there’s no point in carrying emotional burdens. It tires you out and makes life seem heavy. Once you’ve dealt with a problem appropriately, “throw” it away and move on.
“Even the very small can throw someone much larger with proper technique.” I’ve taught women the size of a 12-year-old to throw men twice as heavy than them. Many of these women thought it would be impossible, but they were able to do it thanks to good technique. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that even when things seem impossible, it’s always worth it to try, armed with the right information. Life can be full of surprises.
In addition to the above, I’ve learned that I’ve been doing Jiu-jitsu for waaaaay too long. 😉
How to Use Your Whole Body to Improve Martial Arts Technique
One of the things that is very much appreciated by students of the martial arts is how regular training not only makes you good at the martial art you’re studying, it also has a way of making people better at other physical pursuits. One aspect of this comes from the way martial arts helps you to integrate your entire body into your movements for maximum power and efficiency. Whether you’re throwing a punch, applying a joint lock, batting a baseball or throwing a football, there are three things you can do to help integrate your entire body.
1. Initiate Movement from the Hip. When you initiate any techniques with hip rotation, it allows you to coordinate the power of your lower and upper body for more efficient, more powerful movements. When throwing a punch, for example, if you initiate the punch with the rotation of your hips, it allows you to engage the muscles of your leg, core, upper back and shoulder muscles. When you start your movement from the hips, all the muscle energy of these body parts can be coordinated. The energy then travels up through the body and materializing into your punch, much like a whip. See The Difference between Fine and Gross Motor Striking Skills Part 2 for details.
2. Stay Loose. For your body to be used like a whip, it must be loose and supple. Think of how a whip works. It flexes all the way up the length of the whip so the energy can travel through and explode out the end. If there is any stiffness in the whip at any point, the energy would stop dead at that point. This is also true of the body. If you’re throwing a punch, and you’re stiff in the shoulders, for example, it won’t matter how well you use your hips. The energy would get caught up within the stiffness of the shoulders, preventing you from using your whole body. You must therefore stay relaxed and loose so the energy can travel.
3. Breathe Strategically. Your breath is a good way to both focus your movements and relax your body. By initiating your breath from deep within your core from the diaphragm or from the Hara/Tanden area, it helps you maximize the use of your core muscles. Breathing out also helps release tension in the body, allowing energy to flow freely. You can do all this by timing your breath with your punch, initiating your breath as your engage your hips and completing your breath as you make contact.
By using these 3 principles effectively, you’ll see a big difference in how much power you can generate and how much more effortless it will feel. These principles can also be used to improve joint locks, breakfalls and throws, though it’s easier to describe when it comes to strikes.
How to Be a Good Uke (Training Partner)
When people first take up Jiu-jitsu, they find the idea of willingly letting someone “beat you up” a little odd. They don’t know whether the idea in being an uke is to be a difficult, resisting attacker to make the applications “more realistic” or whether they should be trying to make it easier for their partners by going to the ground actively for them. As with most things, the secret to being a good uke is somewhere in between.
When your training partner is just starting out, you shouldn’t offer much in the way of “active” resistance as an uke. Attacks that you make on your partner should be slower and done with less intensity so your partner can focus more on learning the defensive techniques without being put under too much pressure.
As a student gains more experience, you can increase the speed and intensity. When your partner strikes you as their uke, protect yourself in a way that won’t interfere with the person’s training. Turn your chin away for strikes around the head/neck area. Breathe out and tense your abdominal muscles when receiving a strike around the midsection. When receiving a strike to the groin, trust in your groin protector and in your partner who will do the strike in a controlled fashion.
When someone is taking you to the ground, try to stay relaxed and focused on doing a proper breakfall to protect yourself. Don’t go to the ground prematurely (i.e. before your partner has properly taken your balance). But don’t actively fight being taken to the ground. In our style, Can-ryu Jiu-jitsu, we use strikes to weaken, distract and/or off-balance a person. If the person lands their strike in the proper location, the throw or takedown comes much more easily when done with real power. You must pretend a little, knowing that as long as the strike was on target, your partner should have been theoretically been able to set you up for the takedown. The reason for this is that it is simply not safe to practice on your partners with full power when connecting on target. Only use active resistance against throws when it is the purpose of the exercise.
When someone is practicing applying a lock, don’t use your strength to resist the application. If your partner knows proper technique and they fight through your resistance, your strength may give out quite suddenly and then you have all that extra force being put into your joint, which could easily result in an injury. If you’re free grappling with your partner, resistance is expected because that is the point of the exercise, but then in that case neither of you are playing the role of uke, so it’s a different situation entirely.
Have fun and play safe everyone!
Throwing & Being Thrown as a Workout
The following day after a recent Shorinji Kan class, I woke up with sore muscles all over my body. This surprised me because I’m in pretty good shape and I hadn’t thought the class overly intense. And yet my muscles seemed to disagree with that conclusion.
After some thought I realized that the class had done more throwing than I had done in a while. I had led classes that had throwing in them, but I hadn’t actually taken part in such a class in some time.
Throwing, and particularly being thrown, is a great all-over workout. It uses all the muscles in your body from your neck down to your legs. And if you enjoy the training of throwing and being thrown, you don’t even notice how much work you’re doing at the time. If you do a lot of it, you can build up good endurance for martial arts training.
That’s why I like to do power throwing as an exercise on occasion in my classes. Students basically do their throws with a partner repeatedly with speed and power for a set amount of time, usually around 2-3 minutes. One partner throws the other and immediately after being thrown the uke bounces up and throws his or her partner in return. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the time period is up. I usually give my students a 1-minute break after which the students do a second round.
I highly recommend this as an intensity exercise for students with enough throwing experience. Throwing and being thrown repeatedly over longer periods of time is also a good way to develop the endurance that is required for higher level belt tests that are longer in duration.
Why Small People Have More Trouble When Starting a Martial Art
Being a smaller woman, I have naturally attracted a few students who are smaller in stature. One of the things they like about training at my Vancouver Jiu-jitsu dojo is the fact that they can relate to me physically. They see me throwing and applying joint locks/ submissions on much larger people and it’s easier to imagine that they too can do these things. That being said, when you start out as a smaller individual with no martial arts experience, the challenges can seem insurmountable at first.
When starting out, bigger people usually have less trouble because what they lack in technique, they make up for using strength. Then, with practice and good instruction, they will make adjustments to eventually do it without relying on their strength (in theory). Smaller people don’t have this luxury when training with bigger people. They often struggle to perform the same techniques and naturally get frustrated when they can’t do them as easily.
What I often suggest in these cases is for smaller people to try out techniques that are more challenging on people closer to their size at first. That way they can develop the feel for the technical details (i.e. stance, footwork, weight transfer, leverage, balance, momentum, etc). Once the person develops that ‘feel’ or at least a sense of it, it then becomes easier to apply it on a bigger training partner.
And if you happen to be a smaller, struggling martial artist, fear not. It gets easier. In fact, you’ll have the advantage over the bigger students in the long run. Since you can’t rely on strength for shortcomings in technique, you will develop stronger technique in less time than it takes a person who continually uses strength to make things work. If throwing poses you more difficulties, check out my blog post How to Throw Big When You’re Small.
The One Way Jiu-jitsu Training Will Most Likely Save Your Neck
I don’t hear a lot of stories from students saying that their Jiu-jitsu training helped them fend off an attacker, though this is one of the main reasons people take up the art. Fortunately, my students rarely get into situations in which they have to defend themselves. But I do hear a number of stories of how their breakfalls have saved them from getting seriously injured.
Last year Robyn, one of my students, came in to class beaming. “Lori Sensei, your Jiu-jitsu class saved my life last night.”
“Oh? How’s that?” I asked.
“I stepped into a shower and the bath mat had been taken out. I slipped and did a total banana peel style fall… and landed in a perfect side breakfall. You would have been so proud!” she beamed.
This had not been the first time I heard a story like this. I’ve had students say that while engaged in other sports like hockey, snowboarding, mountain biking, etc, their breakfalling prevented them from getting serious injuries. I’ve also heard students recant tales similar to Robyn’s in which some random event caused them to fall suddenly.
My handstand breakfall even saved me from my own stupidity once. Way back when, I was riding my bike with a cane umbrella hanging from my handlebars (yes, I know this was a stupid thing to do). I made a sharp turn to avoid something on the road and the umbrella swung into the spokes of my front wheel, sending me flying forward. Instinctively, I held onto my handlebars, letting my weight go forward as I tucked my head in to land on my back. As I landed, I kept control of the bike with my hands so it wouldn’t hurt me as I fell. The only bruise I got was when the saddle hit my inside thigh.
I wrote about this story in my book, Weapons of Opportunity. Have you got a similar story of how a breakfall saved your neck? I’d love to hear them! 🙂
Improving Throws and Takedowns Using the Triangle of Balance
Oftentimes, students have trouble getting a throw or takedown to work. Ninety percent of the time, the problem they’re having can be worked out using a teaching tool I use called, “The Triangle of Balance.”
The triangle of balance is as follows. Your partner, stands on two corners of a equilateral triangle, whether it is pointing forwards or backwards. The third, invisible corner (marked with a red X on both triangles) indicates the direction in which your partner’s balance is weakest.
The easiest way to off-balance your partner in order to throw them is to draw them in either of these two directions. Conversely, if you try to throw someone against the direction in which the triangle is pointing, whereby the two corners on which the partner is standing are in a line, it will be much harder to throw them.
Whenever a student is having trouble throwing or taking down a partner, it is usually because they have not sufficiently taken their partner off balance. Sometimes it is because the partner has stepped in an unexpected direction. Sometimes it is because the student attempting the throw has not positioned themselves properly in order to off-balance their partner. By using the triangle of balance, students can often figure out how to alter their position in order to more efficiently off-balance their partner for a throw.
While the triangle of balance was taught to me by my Sensei, Ed Hiscoe Shihan, there is a well-written book called The Science of Takedowns, Throws, and Grappling for Self-Defense
We're proud to announce that Lori O'Connell Sensei's new book, When the Fight Goes to the Ground: Jiu-jitsu Strategies & Tactics for Self-Defense, published through international martial arts publisher Tuttle Publishing, is now available in major book stores and online. More about it & where to buy it.