MMA Stuff » Judo

Outside Leg Trip (Osoto Gari)

Jimmy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:56:14 +0000

One of the simplest ways to get someone to fall is tripping them. If you want to be a jerk and trip your friend while they’re carrying a bunch of stuff or you need to take the fight to the ground, you can do it by tripping. I find when sparring, trip opportunities come up often in clinch situations.

I found in my experience that successful trips can only be executed if you have your opponent focusing on something else. For instance, when clinching, throw some knees or do some dirty boxing and feel for the shift in balance. Once they’re off balance, you can really get in and trip them. Judo is the gentle art of knocking your opponent off balance and requires perfect timing and technique.

I particularly like the end of the video where they show a drill you can do if you have a wall or a ring. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Key points

Head control is important
Set up the trip, jerk them around fake a throw and chain it to a leg trip.
Remember: Break balance, then trip. Timing is everything.

Escaping the Clinch with Judo

Jimmy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:25:31 +0000

I am a big fan of Judo when it comes to MMA. The trips and throws are great to get the opponent to the ground if they are a dominate striker. The problem is I don’t know much Judo because there isn’t any Judo classes at my MMA school. However, there is black belt judo instructor who I will work with once in a while that teaches BJJ.

I found this video by Karo Parisyan who has wonderful Judo technique. Now the video below doesn’t cover any throws, it just teaches you a practical way to get out of a clinch. A wrestler or dominate ground guy will try to get you in a typical MMA type clinch to try to throw or trip you, so if you want to escape you can actually use this move to escape, create distance, or set a throw for yourself. What I noticed after being able to escape your opponents dominate clinch, you can get a collar tie and start working from there. I’ll try to post a video on Randy Couture’s clinch fighting techniques in the future.

Judo vs BJJ – The Answer is Judo AND BJJ

Jimmy — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:03:45 +0000

Whether viewing websites or MMA, Judo, and BJJ forums, the subject of Judo vs. BJJ has become yet another classic debate, akin to that of the old “Gi vs. No Gi” debate. However, the question of Judo vs. BJJ is much simpler to answer because it is simply the wrong question in almost every applicable context. In short, an Olympic level Judoka would benefit from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as much as a world-class BJJ player would benefit from Judo. And at the top level, there are multiple examples of this beginning to happen. GB’s Winston Gordon trains with Gracie Barra and holds a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Ray Stevens, former Olympic silver medallist, has been known to train with Roger Gracie. Dave Camarillo, Rhadi Ferguson, and Lloyd Irvin have become vocal advocates of cross-training these arts and have all enjoyed considerable success in both sports. Therefore the answer is Judo AND BJJ. Most top level players are starting to know this fact and rarely ever involve themselves in the nonsense of the forums.

However, trawl the forums and you will frequently see this very discussion taking place. Comments range from the petty such as a “judoka” commenting about BJJ players wearing too many patches on their Gi’s to the erroneous “BJJ player” commenting that “judoka’s are easy to double leg”. I also recently read from one judoka that “either never seen anyone in BJJ show me a move that didn’t exist in Judo”.

Such comments are harmful because they slow our progression to be the best that we can be. It is a fact that within the “Gi sports” that the average Judo club will have a far higher degree of stand-up skill per person, and the average BJJ club (who out there thinks they are in an average club – Ha, that’s another story and I’ll be shot if I go there!!) will have a far higher degree of skill on the ground. Assuming that the respective coaching levels are held constant then anyone wishing to balance their skills would surely want to practise stand-up at the Judo club and BJJ at the BJJ club. And this is why comments such as “I’ve never seen anyone in BJJ show me a move that didn’t exist in Judo” are so unhelpful and completely miss the point. Neither art is really about knowing the greatest number of “moves” and anyone who has trained in the competitive environment knows this is the case. However, such comments promote ignorance and division rather than learning and integration.

There are a multitude of benefits to training both Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Judo, from greater all-round skills, to the cross-over benefits of learning different approaches to training (e.g. speed and power to slow and technical). There are simply too many to list here. However, anyone in doubt or uncertain should consider this: the learning curve in both arts is greatest at the beginning and therefore you stand the most to gain from the early days. When I first began Judo, I found that it was much easier to throw non-Judo players at BJJ. However, some months after, my BJJ friends began training Judo and learned to stiff-arm. All of sudden, I couldn’t throw them as often (until I overcame the stiff-arm).

Therefore, forget the ancient texts, the “who tapped who” in the 1920s, the lineage charts, and the other nonsense. To compete optimally in either sport, you need BOTH Judo and BJJ and some wrestling as well won’t harm. My website “JudoBJJ” is seeking to promote the integration of these sports for the benefit of Judo AND BJJ alike.

Glyn Powditch BJJ Brown Belt Judoka MMA Instructor

http://www.judobjj.com http://bjjblog.judobjj.com/blog

About the Author

Glyn Powditch is a BJJ Brown Belt under Karl Tanswell, an SBG MMA Instructor and an active Judoka. He runs the website JudoBJJ to promote the fusion of BJJ and Judo.