Sutemi waza

I always liked the Sutemi waza set of throws and I kind of gravitated to them. Recently my instructor started drilling Tomoe nage. He said he wants me to focus on it because he feels I do it well. I have to admit I do Yoko-Otoshi more often and never thought of doing it. He said “your just suited to sacrifice throws” I looked at the whole set of throws the other day and found I had been doing a few of them all along.

In talking to other instructors I find that a lot of people don’t care for Sutemi Waza. I hear a lot of things like “People are too fast” “You won’t be able to catch them” It reminds me of when I taught Tae Kwon Do and people used to bitch about techniques they could not perform so I am not sure if this is the same kind of attitude? I realize some of these techniques put you at a disadvantage in certain instances but it really doesn’t bother me.

NittyRanks wrote:I always liked the Sutemi waza set of throws and I kind of gravitated to them. Recently my instructor started drilling Tomoe nage.  He said he wants me to focus on it because he feels I do it well. I have to admit I do Yoko-Otoshi more often and never thought of doing it. He said “your just suited to sacrifice throws” I looked at the whole set of throws the other day and found I had been doing a few of them all along.

In talking to other instructors I find that a lot of people don’t care for Sutemi Waza. I hear a lot of things like “People are too fast” “You won’t be able to catch them”  It reminds me of when I taught Tae Kwon Do and people used to bitch about techniques they could not perform so I am not sure if this is the same kind of attitude? I realize some of these techniques put you at a disadvantage in certain instances but it really doesn’t bother me.

Philosophically, sutemi jûdô throws go to the core of its principles: one sacrifices his position and balance, and by giving up the self one obtains victory. Kanô, as with most of the things he did, did not originally invent this, but adopted it from Kitô-ryû. At the highest level, by removing anything connected to the ego, the actions of the opponent have no protagonist and become useless; remove the Self and no resistance is neceessary.

In reality, the use of sutemi often destroys someone's judo development because people attempt applying them before mastering kuzushi and debana. Without mastering either many of their standing techniques fail, but sutemi by relying on one's own mass and power still enable them to drag someone into the ground. Technically though, sutemi are often a technical disaster. If one does not master kuzushi and debana in standing techniques, then one can't do them in sutemi either.

The major downside of this is when people realize that they hence can drag someone to the ground, many of them do not even bother focusing on mastering kuzushi and debana and their entire judo stagnates and remains poor.

This is a general comment, as obviously I do not know you or your judo. So, I don't know if it is, like you suggest ... that "many people don't care for sutemi-waza". In competition, sutemi are mainly used as counter or to salvage failed techniques, something which often appears to be the main motivator to apply makikomi-waza.

On the other hand, there are many historic examples of fine use of sutemi-waza. The late Nagaoka Hideichi, 10th dan, was an expert in sutemi-waza (no surprise given his education in Kitô-ryû jûjutsu). Many of the middle-aged jûdôka on this forum will also with great fondness recall the fine technical jûdô display which Kashiwazaki Katsuhiko gave while still in his prime, making frequent use of yoko-tomoe and tomoe-nage, and hikkomi-gaeshi, or the spectacular makikomi of Endô Sumio on the Russian power beast, the late Vitali Kuznetsov during the 1979 World Championships in Paris, open category.

Your post is almost discouraging but I understand why, I just gravitated to it I guess. I would not sacrifice learning Kazushi and there is a lot of technique involved with so much to learn in Judo as it is. I do have standing techniques that are not sacrificial in nature. Also Sutemi are not that easiest of techniques to master. Like anything else they take timing and a certain amount of technique to execute.

On a very practical basis - and I do not mean to draw parallels to the OP here - I find that many inexperienced players will 'flop and drop' when they become frustrated with standing techniques failing against an opponent or they become desperate to get a throw in. Almost always, the opponent escapes the sutemi attempt and gets an easy entry to a pin. As a result, I do not teach sutemi waza until pupils are well versed in standing throws.

Focusing on tomenage didn't do this guy any harm...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WKJWTjVDSlQ

Point taken.

DougNZ wrote:On a very practical basis - and I do not mean to draw parallels to the OP here - I find that many inexperienced players will 'flop and drop' when they become frustrated with standing techniques failing against an opponent or they become desperate to get a throw in.  Almost always, the opponent escapes the sutemi attempt and gets an easy entry to a pin.  As a result, I do not teach sutemi waza until pupils are well versed in standing throws.

That's my policy and practice regarding sutemi waza. Also in line basically with what Cichorei Kano wrote above (and previously).