Cichorei Kano wrote: Ben Reinhardt wrote:
Oh, I forgot. One good nagekomi is worth 1,000 bad uchikomi. 5 good nagekomi is worth 20 good uchikomi, easily. Complete skill performed correctly in context versus stopping in the middle?
Thank you for the considered response to my post.
Cichorei Kano wrote:I think one has to be careful with that statement. You know as well I that if taking it literally, this is highly unlikely. I do not believe that there exists any exercise if you do it only once that you would have the same effect as doing another exercise 1,000 times, irrespective of the exercise is performed poorly or not. That is simply impossible in terms of basic motor learning and physiological concepts. To actually test that statement would require prospective research design, but it would be the kind of study I would not particularly like because of the likely high number of confounding variables.
Of course I was not writing literally. I wrote in the context of an overall training program, in which uchikomi do have a role to play, if done with some semblance of a final skill desired.
Another exercise done incorrectly (I used the word "bad"), or in such a way as to develop bad habits. Which is how I see a LOT, if not most (yes, I know, not specific research, and based on my experience).
I have seen many, many, judoka who have developed horrible habits from doing uchikomi incorrectly. How many, well, into the thousands over the 32 years of my doing judo, I'm sure. Myself included in that number. I've had to teach "remedial judo" to hundreds (or attempt to do so) of judoka over the 20+ years I've been teaching Judo and figured out that bad habits developed in uchikomi were a primary reason for the problems. Is the solution to work on doing better uchikomi ? Perhaps, but I've had good success on working on actually throwing.
Cichorei Kano wrote:So, I think really what it is, is personal experience of opinion expressed in an aphorism.
As I basically explain above. I judge my ideas against results, and, over the years, the results gotten from modifying training to include more nagekomi and other training methods that more closely resemble whole skills have gotten better results. What kind of results ? Students who can actually do Judo. And I do not use only success in shiai, or necessarily primarily success in shiai, as the only measuring stick.
Cichorei Kano wrote:I rarely use nage-komi anymore when teaching. The reason is simple, it's a boot camp of exercise. Well, it depends on what one understands under "nage-komi". The name really only indicates that one comes in and throws the opponent. So, throwing your opponent twice is nage-komi. However, that is not how the exercise is understood by most jûdôka, to whom nage-komi actually means repetitively throwing your opponent, until one of you no longer can move.
I use it all the time. We used it without a floating floor (my original sensei/coach), although admittedly not tatami over concrete. I now practice judo on a floating floor. If I had only (modern) tatami or inferior matting on concrete or other solid flooring, I would have to modify my practices for safety purposes, regardless of how good the ukemi of the students involved. Nage komi CAN be a bootcamp exercise, but does not have to be. Like any form of training, it can be abused/misused.
As have been uchikomi.
I have never thought of nage komi you describe, and it was not taught to me as such, and I do not use it as such. Anyone who might claim to have any sort of modern sports coach training who does so is a liar, stupid, sadistic, or perhaps all three. I think we've both seen that combination over our judo lifetimes.
Cichorei Kano wrote:In my experience, the only people who can take this kind of exercise are elite jûdôka. For the rest it's a good exercise to destroy your own club and make sure that half of it won't show up anymore after some time. The reasons are obvious. The exercise was designed to be used on a proper floating floor on spring floors, which virtually no dôjô in the West still has. How many of those are there even in the entire US ? Fukuda's in San Francisco, the Seattle dôjô, I don't know of any others; I am sure there are some others, but I don't know of them. And those I have pointed out are indeed dôjô with a tatami where you could safely carry this out. But many dôjô have a third-class tatami, an old wrestling mat, lying on concrete. Sure, the really tough ones, you know the ones who once climbed the Himalaya barefoot in short pants carrying on each should another climber who couldn't make it, the one who prefers drinking boiling lead over coffee, sure they can take anything, but the average jûdôka and certainly children, no way. Medically, nage-komi probably isn't even safe if one really starts doing a lot of them. The repeated impact causes increased muscle breakdown which leads to myoglobinuria and which could in case of underlying suboptimal kidney function produce serious problems.
I have not taken a survey of how many dojo in the US, for example, have some sort of floating floor. Of course, if one is doing judo on crappy old wrestling mats (been there and done that more than once) on concrete (or even excellent wrestling mats on horsehair padding on concrete, as I did for years at TCU Judo Club in Ft. Worth ,TX), repetitive throwing of any sort isn't going to feature as a primary training method. At that point, randori is dangerous let alone throwing in a controlled manner ! When we designed our new dojo, I specified a floating floor with modern and in good condition tatami, and that is what we built, so obviously I agree with on that one !
Like anything else, nage komi are used as appropriate for the given situation and goals considering all factors involved, at least that is what I do.
Yeah, I've had that muscle breakdown thing to a small degree. Also another one to where some of my enzymes were out of the normal range. No kidney failure, though.
Cichorei Kano wrote:My suggestion would be to avoid comparing nage-komi and uchi-komi in a way of labelling one of them as 'better' or 'more effective'. I think they both add in a different way. Like uchi-komi is often erroneously used (as cardio exercise using a lousy throw), nage-komi too is often misused (as a bootcamp-like macho exercise). When both exercise are uses properly, both have their merit. I don't think that one should strive to repeat either exercise at the same number of repetitions.
I've never excluded uchikomi as a training method, so no problem there. However, uchikomi have to be used with a much caution as nagekomi. Both cannot be used mindlessly.
Cichorei Kano wrote:The merit of uchi-komi probably also extends to many cases where nage-komi is less desirable:
- the acutely injured jûdôka
- the jûdôka with chronic injury, for example as spinal hernia
- the elderly jûdôka (Daigo-sensei, though 88 years old still practices uchi-komi every day; I can't imagine the same with nage-komi)
- children
- techniques that are uncommonly hard on the body (yoko-gake, ura-nage)
- when technical skills are too low to safely throw the opponent
- when uke has a large excess of body mass when compared to tori
All good points, and I'm glad you specified. Kids can do nagekomi, but of course only after the degree of control needed is learned, safety factors are taken care of and all that.
Hey, Ura Nage nagekomi, that's what crash pads are for, don't you know ?
Cichorei Kano wrote:From training science we know the importance of the specificity of an exercise. I would not be surprised if one would carefully make measurements and analyze some things that uchi-omi and nage-komi partially train different skills. Whereas one may be inclined to immediately decide that nage-komi then is the most realistic, I would be careful in jumping to this conclusion. Nage-komi immediately leads to a throw. A simple throw is indeed what a jûdôka at basic and middle level strives for, but really it does not catch the true technical purpose of jûdô. A jûdô that like Mifune's is able to make use of a wide array of renraku- and renzoku-waza, kaeshi-waza, and the principles of sen-no-sen, sen-sen-no-sen and gô-no-sen, requires a lot more. Such a jûdô is based on sensitive communication and sensing what the opponent does, continuous action and reaction. That also means that throws which are initiated oftentimes are not at all carried through to the finish, but are part of that sensing and communication. In fact, almost always when renraku- or renzoku-waza is carried out (and we limit these to throw + throw at the exclusion of throw + katame-waza) the first (and also subsequent throws in case of more than a succession of two) are not carried out to the end. The initial skills in that case may well be closer to uchi-komi than that they are to nage-komi.
So now you get a more complicated. Nage komi are not done in isolation, but can be the end product of whatever sort of specific situation(al) drill/training one is doing, be it renraku/zoku/kaeshi etc. waza, or attempts to instill the various "sen" principles. Nagekomi can be as simple as a static O Goshi with a compliant uke for an 8 year old, or as complicated as a complex action-reaction sequence involving relative posture, grip, movement, uke reaction, etc etc etc. The more complicated the sequence, the more skill that is required of the uke-tori pair, and again, one goes with what is appropriate for the situation. However, if the end goal is to throw uke, then, well, throwing uke at the end (or the middle) of the sequence makes sense.
Now, can you do all sorts of drills and sequences of action reaction or whatever without ending up in a throw ? Sure, if that is appropriate to what your goal(s) are.
Wait, am I contradicting myself in agreeing with you ? Well, that depends on what my goal was in using my aphorism...
Cichorei Kano wrote:I would actually go one step further and add that in randori oftentimes I don't throw anymore. This is not something that started taking place consciously. After I felt I finally understood what kuzushi was about, my partners often said they were taken totally by surprise and totally out of balance and that I could have easily thrown them and asked me why I didn't. It was simple: I knew they were completely off balance and that was what it was all about. I didn't need to really bury them into the tatami. There is a point in life, in jûdô life, I hope, where one no longer needs this display of superior power, and the exercise finally can start focusing on what it really is about, pure technique where you really no longer do anything and where the opponent is out of balance all of the time since the self of the other finally has ceased to exist in randori. Isn't that what mu'i is all about ? Isn't that the point where advanced kata and randori merge ? Isn't that the point beyond mere physical display ?
What does the Zen cow say ? Mu'!
I guess if one takes training as a show of superior power...
training drives me to realize how much I don't really know or have the ability to do, and probably never will. Nonetheless, I keep training, keep throwing, keep taking falls, keep getting strangled (unconscious) to the degree my getting-older-body can take and still get out of bed in the morning (barely at times). I keep trying to learn more about how to train others, and not be dogmatic in my point of view.
However, nage komi (the non-sadistic version) are a VERY important part of training. If you like, I'l write " complete skill" training instead ? Because the concept applies in all aspects of Judo, at least as far I I understand it.
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