Slow learner #2

Reviews, Videos, and Everything Else Trollshido
1

i was debating if i should start a new thread on what i was thought about kuzushi, as maybe this deserves its own thread, but whatever, i’ll just post here… i thought about sharing my thoughts in judoforum.com for a long time, but frankly, i didn’t have the guts. they have some amazingly knowledgeable judo people there, but the majority there are not exactly the progressive type…

the word kuzushi was mentioned already a few times in this thread. it is a word that is thrown around a lot in judo. this is something almost every single judo instructor i met will try to drill into every single judoka. recently there was a bjj instructor who was using the kuzushi concept for ground work. ‘oh your kuzushi was bad’, ‘your kuzushi was good’, kuzushi this, and kuzushi that…
and i’m sick of hearing about it…

about 13 years ago, i met my mentor, who was a well known judo coach, and he told me something that was simply shocking to me.

“kuzushi is a myth”

i was like, “WHAAAATTT?” i thought kuzushi was what defined judo throws. i mean, kano practically invented/discovered the concept of kuzushi for judo! it is what makes judo unique and effective!!! he went on to explain what he meant. he said, everyone is taught to create kuzushi to the direction where you want to dump your opponent. so, if you want to throw someone with ogoshi, you pull. if you want to dump someone with osoto, you push. he said, you don’t create kuzushi you need for ogoshi by pulling, but you have to PUSH first. once you push, the oppponent will always push back, and that is when you enter into your throw. it was pretty radical stuff he was saying. what he meant was that it is not that kuzushi doesn’t exist, but the context of how it is taught has fundemental flaws.

the problem i see is that kuzushi is used too often as a catch all word to describe deficiencies. i’ve come to realize that for me, timing (sometimes referred to as ‘debana’ or 'the moment of opportunity) and positioning is far more important than focusing on kuzushi. kuzushi is something that i have not focused on for a long long time.

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[quote=marcusdbrutus;2300043]…Um, that’s not radical, champ. In the uber traditional, kata style ippon seoinage, you’re taught to push first and execute when uke pushes back. Kuzushi isn’t a ‘myth’, and it doesn’t refer to just yanking somebody where you want them to go. It’s just a term that means breaking the opponent’s balance.

Example: you push real hard in hopes of getting a push back so you can go for ogoshi. But oops, you’re stronger than your opponent and he stumbles backwards. What do you do, abort the throw and hold him in place? Or drive in for kouchi gari and dump him on his ass?

I think you just had crappy teachers to begin with.[/quote]

thanks for providing that one example with seoi. what do you mean by kata style though? i can’t remember ippon seoi nage performed in kata that will require tori to push before throwing.

i don’t like your ‘Example’ though. you are giving an extreme example with the sole purpose to discredit my opinion. i wasn’t speaking of charging at people. pushing and pulling comes in different strength and subtleties.

he said ‘kuzushi is a myth’ more to grab my attention. it isn’t that it doesn’t exist, the terms is thrown around too much and kuzushi is taught as a mere push and pull by many instructors. please do not presume the abilities of my teachers from one anecdote.

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my ‘myth’ anecdote doesn’t go over very well whenever i talk about it.
what i was trying to get across was, kUzushi is a concept that is over simplified and over emphasized in judo.

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[quote=kenikim;2300060]my ‘myth’ anecdote doesn’t go over very well whenever i talk about it.
what i was trying to get across was, kUzushi is a concept that is over simplified and over emphasized in judo.[/quote]
That’s because your original interpretation of kuzushi is erroneous. Your mentor’s “improved” definition is only one part of kuzushi, or off-balancing. You originally thought kuzushi was simply pushing uke into position for a throw is not only flawed, but goes against the principles of Judo. That being minimum effort exerted for a maximum result.

In wrestling we were taught the same principle as your mentor mentioned. The most efficient way to get your opponent into position for a takedown/throw is to get him to react to your stimulus rather than trying to take him down outright.

The great Samboka, A. Kurrinoy, has some of the most amazing kuzushi I’ve ever seen. Go look him up on youtube to see what I’m talking about.

It’s hard to post something in the basic forum that’s on topic, yet it is so stupid that I consider moving it to Trollshido.

Congratulations, you’re that guy.

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one experience i had that sort of cemented my attitude towards defocusing of kuzushi was when i tried freestyle wrestling.
when i was 20, i was getting pretty seriously into judo, and i started wrestling at my university, as i thought it would help with my judo.

well, it didn’t improve my judo, at least not immediately, and i learned that i was a sucky suck suck wrestler, at least for awhile. i was tossing guys left and right a lot, but i still lost on points from singles and take downs… man, that pissed me off.

anyhow, while i dabbled with wrestling, i encounters a few wrestlers who were excellent throwers. most wrestlers are great take down artists, but aerial throwers are few and far between, unless you bump into a greco guy, who are really few and far between. my standing seoinage took good 2 years to develop to a proficient level after countless hours of uchikomi and dedication. and it was a bit of a shock to me to see some wrestlers who could perform arm throws just as well as i could, without uchikomi training and the concept of kuzushi. sure, wrestlers move and throw a bit differently than judo folks because of the difference in the ruleset, but our fundamental body movement and mechanics are pretty much the same. i’ve never heard of wrestlers talk about mystical kuzushi or unbalancing people. they just picked people up and threw. i am sure there are judo people who carry over the concept of kuzushi to other wrestling sports and do very well, but it wasn’t the case for me.

i am not proposing that kuzushi doesn’t exist, personally i am somewhat neutral in that regard, but contrary to some people’s opinion, i don’t think kuzushi should be over emphasized. timing and positioning is just as critical as kuzushi, if not more so. and part of me thinks people just like saying kuzushi a lot because it is a special judo word for the japanophiles. there is a bit of a mystical quality when one says ‘kuzushi’ instead of just ‘unbalancing’. but please do not take my opinion as a generalization of the judo community as a whole. surely, not everyone who does judo or uses japanese terms is a japanophile.

earlier in the thread, Conde Koma said that he couldn’t get hip throws to work until he started lifting people first. i only do 2 hip throws proficiently. uki goshi and utsuri goshi. and these are throws that i NEVER practiced. ever. they sort of started to happen. i’d practiced harai and ogoshi for years, and i have never pulled them off against good oponents, yet i have a pretty good utsuri goshi and ukigoshi and the way i do them, there is nothing in my movement that resembles ‘kuzushi’ in a traditional sense. kind of like Conde Koma described, when i do it, i hoist people up first, then i rotate to finish the throw. i don’t think a lot of people equate kuzushi with lifting. lifting or hoisting has a strength connotation, where as kuzushi concept sounds more technical and refined.

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[quote=jnp;2300093]That’s because your original interpretation of kuzushi is erroneous. Your mentor’s “improved” definition is only one part of kuzushi, or off-balancing. You originally thought kuzushi was simply pushing uke into position for a throw is not only flawed, but goes against the principles of Judo. That being minimum effort exerted for a maximum result.

In wrestling we were taught the same principle as your mentor mentioned. The most efficient way to get your opponent into position for a takedown/throw is to get him to react to your stimulus rather than trying to take him down outright.

The great Samboka, A. Kurrinoy, has some of the most amazing kuzushi I’ve ever seen. Go look him up on youtube to see what I’m talking about.

It’s hard to post something in the basic forum that’s on topic, yet it is so stupid that I consider moving it to Trollshido.

Congratulations, you’re that guy.[/quote]

what i was told was an anecdote.
he said that to me to get a point acrossed.
it gave me a lot to think about. i don’t agree with 100% of what he said.
no teacher is that good, and no student should be that stupid.

i have had a few instructors and i think their interpretation or understanding of kuzushi was erroneous, and what my mentor has told me forced me to rethink my understanding of judo, and i don’t think that is a bad thing at all.

7

Just because they don’t associate it doesn’t mean that’s correct. Kuzushi as a concept, to me, needs to apply in 4 dimensions. You’ve got the 2 dimensions of the mat (forward/back, right/left), the 3rd dimension of height (lifting/dropping), and then the 4th dimension of timing, the debana. “Unbalancing” applies in all the dimensions, and you can succeed with a throw with any one of them. Taking all of them into account, however, just makes it much easier to get opportunities.

Anyway, I think the main point here is that we all agree with what you mean (there’s more to kuzushi than pushing/pulling), but to us it’s not a huge revelation. Who knows, though, there might be someone just starting judo who reads this and “gets it.”

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[quote=kenikim;2300131]well, it didn’t improve my judo, at least not immediately, and i learned that i was a sucky suck suck wrestler, at least for awhile. i was tossing guys left and right a lot, but i still lost on points from singles and take downs… man, that pissed me off.

anyhow, while i dabbled with wrestling, i encounters a few wrestlers who were excellent throwers. most wrestlers are great take down artists, but aerial throwers are few and far between, unless you bump into a greco guy, who are really few and far between. my standing seoinage took good 2 years to develop to a proficient level after countless hours of uchikomi and dedication. and it was a bit of a shock to me to see some wrestlers who could perform arm throws just as well as i could, without uchikomi training and the concept of kuzushi. sure, wrestlers move and throw a bit differently than judo folks because of the difference in the ruleset, but our fundamental body movement and mechanics are pretty much the same. i’ve never heard of wrestlers talk about mystical kuzushi or unbalancing people. they just picked people up and threw. i am sure there are judo people who carry over the concept of kuzushi to other wrestling sports and do very well, but it wasn’t the case for me…[/quote]
I emboldened the parts in this post that are particularly stupid.

You were tossing guys left and right, but still lost matches because you were taken down? Do you mean that despite taking them down often, the wrestlers took you down even more because you weren’t familiar with singles and doubles?

Greco guys are extremely rare? What? Maybe they’re rare where you are located, but the world is bigger than where you live genius. Greco-Roman wrestling is very prevalent internationally. Don’t talk about things you don’t know about in this forum. It irritates me quite a bit, and I’m the moderator here.

Go post in YMAS before I start to get mean.

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[quote=jnp;2300169]I emboldened the parts in this post that are particularly stupid.

You were tossing guys left and right, but still lost matches because you were taken down? Do you mean that despite taking them down often, the wrestlers took you down even more because you weren’t familiar with singles and doubles?

Greco guys are extremely rare? What? Maybe they’re rare where you are located, but the world is bigger than where you live genius. Greco-Roman wrestling is very prevalent internationally. Don’t talk about things you don’t know about in this forum. It irritates me quite a bit, and I’m the moderator here.

Go post in YMAS before I start to get mean.[/quote]

i had a habit of doing makikomi with my throws. i throw someone for 3points and the guy will keep rolling to get his 2 and get my back get more points on me as my ground game wasn’t very good. and my single and double defend sucked.

and not that many greco guys in canada.

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Excised from: The Obvious Epiphanies of Stand Up - No BS MMA and Martial Arts

kenikim, your kuzushi discussion derail of byuki’s thread has exceeded the limits of my patience. Check your private messages for instructions.