Taisabaki - who teaches it?

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Interesting topic. I was thinking last night (first class for a new batch of beginners) whether to specifically lay the seeds for happo-no-kuzushi or simply set the scene and let them derive the obvious. I ended up going with the latter (teaching ogoshi & kosoto gari). I think though that I would like to make the taisabaki & kuzushi thing more obvious at some point (say, in a month or three when we've gone thru the first set of the gokyo). IOW, give them the 'problem', let them work out solutions, then let's discuss how/why it works like that.

I think the issue with HNK is that it in part assumes rigid body mechanics (like tipping a cube over a corner). This type of thing is pretty easy to counter (imagine that same cube standing on a furniture cart, so that when you try to tip it, the wheels would roll back and the whole thing slides out of the way), so I think it might be of limited use ultimately.

Actually, that might make for an interesting set of explorations / drills. HNK, followed by counters to HNK. Not for a while though!

Come to think of it, the biggest issue I'm having is trying to distill years of experience and knowledge into something that's easy to pick up for someone brand new, without trying to do an instant brain dump. It seems to be a delicate balance between 'here's the situation and here are the constraints...I'm not going to explicitly tell you what to do; work it out' and 'pay attention and do exactly as I say'.
.....

I'm envious you have such observant students. Perhaps your experience is different, but I've seen people with decades of judo that never grasp or 'derive the obvious'.

I don't mean to be critical, but I find it curious that someone with 'years of experience and knowledge' would not use the methodology developed by the founder of judo and his direct students, knowledge forged and refined over some 140 years of teaching, and several thousand man-years on the mat with literally millions of judo beginner students. Does your experience indicate that these methods do not work?

As far as the happo no kuzushi, if correctly applied, it is _not_ easy to counter. Typically you pull or push in an exaggerated fashion to demonstrate grossly, yes, thus creating the opportunity to counter, but if someone 'counters' the happo no kuzushi without moving their feet (thus taking away your cart analogy) they have to move their center of gravity in the opposite direction (as in, 'stick your butt out' to counter a forward kuzushi). Let them do so until they are overly committed, then dump them on said butt. After giving that brief introduction to the second lesson, then you can go back to lesson one - the happo no kuzushi.

I was teamed with a middle-aged judoka a few nights ago for uchikomi - he'd taken judo in high school and college, nothing for the next 20 years - and we were working on osoto-gari. Everything was wrong - kamae, grip, no kuzushi, maai, right hand was dead / left hand was wrong, step, wrong leg motion..... on the plus side, his gi was nice, and his belt was tied correctly. So, I broke it down to the basics of a throw to introduce the basics he claimed he'd never heard before (or forgotten if he'd heard it before) and he was starting to understand how all the basics work together to make a basic, static throw. Kamae, maai, proper grip, kuzushi..... it was starting to come together after 5-10 minutes. The gent is not stupid, just ignorant.

But a more senior (and pretty short) sensei with a great emphasis on competition, from the far side of the dojo decided that his problem was our height difference, and stepped in to demo some weirdo henka waza that started with punching me in the jaw and crow-hopping forward into a two or three step hacking side throw that, if it had a prayer of working, would probably wreck my knee, and had near no resemblance to osoto-gari. I played tackling dummy for a while, then got away as soon as politely possible. End result, for the rest of the evening the middle-aged judoka attempted to practice a really bad, completely inappropriate 'technique' he has zero chance of using on anyone with a brain and would hurt someone with a low level of experience, and left not understanding the very basics of osoto-gari or any other throw. Since the guy will never compete, I just wondered what the point was, other than the senior sensei thought she had a solution for someone my height, when her problem is her inability to set up someone for the throw in a normal fashion. (Maybe next time I'll punch her first and wreck her knee instead   .... naw, too easy, and her ego would never recover.....)

In my mind, all because the senior sensei failed to recognize that the problem was not our height difference but the gent's lack of understanding of the very basics of the throw (or any other throw, for that matter) as you would introduce through the happo no kuzushi, trying for a competition solution to a much more basic problem.

I couldn't help but notice the difference in stepping between the old footage and new footage. In the old, it had an underlying energy and purpose; in the modern it was dance-like. In the old, heels touched but the big toes never actually came together whereas in the modern, most steps ended with the performer's feet parallel and ankles touching.

Being caught with my feet together has never ended well for me ...

NBK wrote:

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Interesting topic. I was thinking last night
.....

I just wondered what the point was ... 

Gentlemen ... for your consideration ...

I cannot wait to try that out in class!!!

*slap* "Feeeeeeel ....."

And then *slap*, *slap*, *slap* for the hell of it!

NBK - replying in specific

NBK wrote:

I'm envious you have such observant students. Perhaps your experience is different, but I've seen people with decades of judo that never grasp or 'derive the obvious'.  

Good point.

I don't mean to be critical, but I find it curious that someone with 'years of experience and knowledge' would not use the methodology developed by the founder of judo and his direct students, knowledge forged and refined over some 140 years of teaching, and several thousand man-years on the mat with literally millions of judo beginner students.    Does your experience indicate that these methods do not work?  

It's not that they don't work...it's that students don't particularly seem to want to learn them. IOW, I'm trying to (simultaneously) balance teaching skills, setting the right learning environment, making sure people have fun, get a workout AND learn some of the meta-concepts.

As far as the happo no kuzushi, if correctly applied, it is _not_ easy to counter.  Typically you pull or push in an exaggerated fashion to demonstrate grossly, yes, thus creating the opportunity to counter, but if someone 'counters' the happo no kuzushi without moving their feet (thus taking away your cart analogy) they have to move their center of gravity in the opposite direction (as in, 'stick your butt out' to counter a forward kuzushi).  Let them do so until they are overly committed, then dump them on said butt. After giving that brief introduction to the second lesson, then you can go back to lesson one - the happo no kuzushi.

My example included moving the feet, though (cube on a cart)

I was teamed with a middle-aged judoka a few nights ago for uchikomi - he'd taken judo in high school and college, nothing for the next 20 years -  and we were working on osoto-gari.  Everything was wrong - kamae, grip, no kuzushi, maai, right hand was dead / left hand was wrong, step, wrong leg motion..... on the plus side, his gi was nice, and his belt was tied correctly.  So, I broke it down to the basics of a throw to introduce the basics he claimed he'd never heard before (or forgotten if he'd heard it before) and he was starting to understand how all the basics work together to make a basic, static throw.  Kamae, maai, proper grip, kuzushi..... it was starting to come together after 5-10 minutes.  The gent is not stupid, just ignorant.  

But a more senior (and pretty short) sensei with a great emphasis on competition, from the far side of the dojo decided that his problem was our height difference, and stepped in to demo some weirdo henka waza that started with punching me in the jaw and crow-hopping forward into a two or three step hacking side throw that, if it had a prayer of working, would probably wreck my knee, and had near no resemblance to osoto-gari.  I played tackling dummy for a while, then got away as soon as politely possible.  End result, for the rest of the evening the middle-aged judoka attempted to practice a really bad, completely inappropriate 'technique' he has zero chance of using on anyone with a brain and would hurt someone with a low level of experience, and left not understanding the very basics of osoto-gari or any other throw.  Since the guy will never compete, I just wondered what the point was, other than the senior sensei thought she had a solution for someone my height, when her problem is her inability to set up someone for the throw in a normal fashion.  (Maybe next time I'll punch her first and wreck her knee instead   .... naw, too easy, and her ego would never recover.....)    

In my mind, all because the senior sensei failed to recognize that the problem was not our height difference but the gent's lack of understanding of the very basics of the throw (or any other throw, for that matter) as you would introduce through the happo no kuzushi, trying for a competition solution to a much more basic problem.  

BTDT (Been there, done that), as pretty much all of the bit-players in that sad scene, at one point or another

@ Ben:

Thanks for that. Yes, that's pretty much how I'm approaching it (part-whole-part). Yes, that's a Tomiki aikido thing, so while not ideal, figured it might make for an interesting interlude.

BillC wrote:

NBK wrote:

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Interesting topic. I was thinking last night
.....

I just wondered what the point was ... 

Gentlemen ... for your consideration ...

The whole thinking/explaining/conceptualizing thing has to be balanced with the feeling thing. Depends on age of students, skill level, base level of coordination, all sorts of things come into play.

For me, as a instructor, I've had to try to understand how stuff works in Judo. I was blessed with at least one very good teacher who actually understood how stuff worked, conceptualized it, and could transmit his understanding, more or less. The problem came in that at that time I had a hard time "feeling" it, so to speak. Over the years, I've learned more, figured stuff out, put pieces together from various sources and come to my own understanding of a few things in Judo.

The hard part is figuring out the best way to present it to a given student or group of students.

I guess I'm missing something.

I started this thread asking how many folks teach one of the most basic aspects of judo - body movement. In order to understand that, you have to start with basic stances. The number of judoka that I meet who don't understand either is huge, having never been taught. This leads to tons and tons of problems, thinking that the hands are wrong while the stance isn't even right to begin with.

And then folks talking about feeling this, feeling that. I find it odd that judo, established by a bunch of pedagogues as a complete pedagogy, with countless books (I must have over 50 in Japanese alone; someone sent me a list of hundreds more in multiple Western languages) on teaching newbies judo, and most build on the same elements, is reduced to 'feeling'.....

So why would one not use such references and basic curriculum in most circumstances?

NBK

Ben Reinhardt wrote:

The whole thinking/explaining/conceptualizing thing  ...

NBK wrote:I guess I'm missing something ...

A friend of mine's Dad said it best ... about pregnant women ... "he poked fun, she took it seriously." I guess the winter gloom has affected your right parahippocampal gyrus ... i.e. you missed the fact that as usual I was being a smart ass!

That said, Mr. Natural, of course you know I have wondered the same thing as you. Why, with all the wonderful judo in the world are basic exercises and concepts ignored? Of course, we both have discussed why ... because people cannot teach what they never learned properly themselves ... because others in their judo ignorance gotta come up with something in opposition to the orthodox curriculum that proves what intellectual badasses they are despite a solid liberal arts education ... kind of like Tea Party folks

So in a jacket wrestling world it's no surprise that that things like taisabaki get cast adrift ... unlearned, unloved, un-mourned. Do I teach taisabaki or any basic movement like that and call it what it is? No, not really. In my club I am #2, and you know what #2 implies. I have to sneak it in because I am in a large club, with lots of opinions, and most of those are of the "just out there and get thrown a lot and you will learn" variety.

Then again on the other extreme ... I have been in clubs before that droned on and on and on and ... about "basics" but often could not get students to actually move spontaneously. I encountered one on a return trip after many years and realized without criticizing my friends categorically that to some extent my time there had been wasted. Why? Too much talking about kuzushi, taisabaki, etc. and not enough feeling. A guy at their club I was working with who had been in judo for years somehow never rose above white belt. He was supposed to demonstrate deashibarai. Admittedly, not an easy throw, especially with the World's Worst Uke (yours truly). But this guy couldn't even approach it ... bright guy, professional, physically fit ... you could feel the gears turning in his head as he tried way overthinking every nuance and detail he had ever been told about the throw ... and you could hear my dear friends on the side offering all at once "step here, move your pinky finger there, breathe in at exactly this moment" and so on.

No credit to me at all ... I asked my partner to stop and offered an exercise that my sensei ... and the sensei of my dear friends for that matter ... had inflicted on me. I asked him simply "we are going to move around loosely, and whenever I step my right foot forward in front of your feet I want you to sweep me with your left foot. I am going to fall down no matter what, so don't worry about that. I just want you to feel what happens." Yes, at first I could feel him trying to "move the arms like the wheel on a ship" or some crap he'd been told. But maybe 5 minutes later of me taking side falls on a diamond-hard mat over concrete he started to get it. He could add a little more "oomph" to my movement. Probably it did not last through the end of his next workout of "turn now, no turn left!," but for that moment the guy could do deashibarai at that right time with natural movement.

So yeah, to answer your question I probably can't perform the sacred semi-kata which some old timers 'round here present as taisabaki in whole. It's just been too long and too many miles in between. At the same time, I appreciate the taisabaki you teach in NJJ because it is immediately connected to techniques I can feel (I hope).

NBK wrote:I guess I'm missing something.

I started this thread asking how many folks teach one of the most basic aspects of judo - body movement.  In order to understand that, you have to start with basic stances.  The number of judoka that I meet who don't understand either is huge, having never been taught.  This leads to tons and tons of problems, thinking that the hands are wrong while the stance isn't even right to begin with.

And then folks talking about feeling this, feeling that.  I find it odd that judo, established by a bunch of pedagogues as a complete pedagogy, with countless books (I must have over 50 in Japanese alone; someone sent me a list of hundreds more in multiple Western languages) on teaching newbies judo, and most build on the same elements, is reduced to 'feeling'.....    

So why would one not use such references and basic curriculum in most circumstances?  

NBK

I teach basic kumi kata, shisei, shintai/tai sabaki, and the relationship(s) (as I understand them) as part of my "basic curriculum". Often when a new person comes to the dojo but already does or has done some judo, I have to reteach those things to one degree or another.

I agree with your observation "The number of judoka that I meet who don't understand either is huge, having never been taught. This leads to tons and tons of problems, thinking that the hands are wrong while the stance isn't even right to begin with.". I see the same thing myself over and over again.

BillC wrote:

Ben Reinhardt wrote:

The whole thinking/explaining/conceptualizing thing  ...

NBK wrote:I guess I'm missing something ...

A friend of mine's Dad said it best ... about pregnant women ... "he poked fun, she took it seriously."  I guess the winter gloom has affected your right parahippocampal gyrus ... i.e. you missed the fact that as usual I was being a smart ass!

That said, Mr. Natural, of course you know I have wondered the same thing as you.  Why, with all the wonderful judo in the world are basic exercises and concepts ignored?  Of course, we both have discussed why ... because people cannot teach what they never learned properly themselves ... because others in their judo ignorance gotta come up with something in opposition to the orthodox curriculum that proves what intellectual badasses they are despite a solid liberal arts education ... kind of like Tea Party folks

So in a jacket wrestling world it's no surprise that that things like taisabaki get cast adrift ... unlearned, unloved, un-mourned.  Do I teach taisabaki or any basic movement like that and call it what it is?  No, not really.  In my club I am #2, and you know what #2 implies.  I have to sneak it in because I am in a large club, with lots of opinions, and most of those are of the "just out there and get thrown a lot and you will learn" variety.

Then again on the other extreme ... I have been in clubs before that droned on and on and on and ... about "basics" but often could not get students to actually move spontaneously.  I encountered one on a return trip after many years and realized without criticizing my friends categorically that to some extent my time there had been wasted.  Why?  Too much talking about kuzushi, taisabaki, etc. and not enough feeling.  A guy at their club I was working with who had been in judo for years somehow never rose above white belt.  He was supposed to demonstrate deashibarai.  Admittedly, not an easy throw, especially with the World's Worst Uke (yours truly).  But this guy couldn't even approach it ... bright guy, professional, physically fit ... you could feel the gears turning in his head as he tried way overthinking every nuance and detail he had ever been told about the throw ... and you could hear my dear friends on the side offering all at once "step here, move your pinky finger there, breathe in at exactly this moment" and so on.

No credit to me at all ... I asked my partner to stop and offered an exercise that my sensei ... and the sensei of my dear friends for that matter ... had inflicted on me.  I asked him simply "we are going to move around loosely, and whenever I step my right foot forward in front of your feet I want you to sweep me with your left foot.  I am going to fall down no matter what, so don't worry about that.  I just want you to feel what happens."  Yes, at first I could feel him trying to "move the arms like the wheel on a ship" or some crap he'd been told.  But maybe 5 minutes later of me taking side falls on a diamond-hard mat over concrete he started to get it.  He could add a little more "oomph" to my movement.  Probably it did not last through the end of his next workout of "turn now, no turn left!," but for that moment the guy could do deashibarai at that right time with natural movement.

So yeah, to answer your question I probably can't perform the sacred semi-kata which some old timers 'round here present as taisabaki in whole.  It's just been too long and too many miles in between.  At the same time, I appreciate the taisabaki you teach in NJJ because it is immediately connected to techniques I can feel (I hope).

Bill, your smart-assery is at times too subtle for even my refined sense of it.

Perhaps because I have thought long and hard on the subject and need to lighten up?

Oh, those "steering wheel cues", gotta love 'em. I was victimized by that from almost my first time in Judo. That is after I had done ukemi for 3 months before I was even allowed to touch another judoka.

I think that your anecdote about De Ashi Barai also illustrates how important it is to have a good uke, despite your modesty on that account. Uke-ship is another thing that does not necessarily get emphasized or illustrated these days, either philosophically or practically.