Ashiwaza Masterclass

Ashiwaza Training
The players had an ashi-barai and kosoto-gari masterclass on Monday night. Here are clips of them training.
Posted by KL Judo Club on Monday, October 19, 2015

On Monday night,  a few players underwent an Ashiwaza Masterclass. Well, specifically the techniques of De-Ashi-Barai and its similar (but conceptually different) cousin, Kosoto-Gari.

There are many other techniques in Ashiwaza and I had intended to cover many more last night but time did not permit. When you zero in on a technique and really break it down and have the players do the necessary drills to learn the technique, it actually takes up a lot of time. And as the players learned (to their surprise and to mine) they were actually very tired. I guess when you really focus on something, it's tiring.

De-Ashi-Barai is a foot-sweep and as such it classified as a technique that requires finesse. A technique that requires finesse cannot be forced. Timing and a good feel for the technique are crucial. There are some techniques where you can force it through and catch your opponent even if they see the technique coming and are trying to block it. De-Ashi-Bari is not one of them.

So, how do you train a "finesse" technique?

Like all techniques, you have to do drills. But precisely because it calls for finesse, the drills you'd do for something like this would be different from the drills for say, Kouchi-Makikomi, which is more of a "force" technique than a "finesse" technique.

What I had the players do was a semi-circular movement drill that required the partners to move in concert (with tori leading and uke following) and then having tori initiate a De-Ashi-Barai just at the right moment when uke is taking a step forward.

This is actually a common movement for demonstrating De-Ashi-Barai in Japan. And I believe it's a good one for learning this technique. My approach to training is generally quite unorthodox and not very Japanese but I do like some of their approaches. Their emphasis on randori, for example, is something I really believe in. Their approach to teaching timing for ashiwaza is another that is worth emulating.

I'm not a big fan of uchikomi in general. So much repetition of a movement done in an unrealistic situation doesn't help a player learn how to throw. I much prefer nagekomi on a crash pad for teaching a player how to execute a throw properly (followed up with trying out the throw in randori). But for techniques that require finesse, such repetitive semi-circular movements (not sure if you'd classify it as uchikomi or not) is necessary.

Finesse techniques like De-Ashi-Barai are very dependent on the sense of movement and timing. So doing those movements is necessary. As it is, the players had difficulty catching uke's advancing foot at just the right time, even with a cooperative uke who was moving in sync with tori. So, they must practice this repeatedly until they can get a sense of timing for it.

The natural question someone might ask about the value of the drill of having people move in concert and then having tori initiate the foot-sweep is whether it teaches them to apply the technique in a real randori or competition situation.

If all they did was this initial drill, then they will never learn to apply it in a more realistic, non-cooperative scenario, of course. But it is necessary for them to have an understanding of timing for a finesse technique like this.

After that, they can try to do this in a free moving (but still cooperative) drill. And finally of course the real test is to begin to use it in randori. If they've done lots of drills already and have a sense of the timing required for such techniques, then during certain moments in randori, they will suddenly recognize the right opportunity and moment to put in that foot-sweep.

So, that is how the Masterclass went last night. They practiced this technique for well over an hour. After that they did a bit of Kosoto-Gari but we will go into that in more detail in the next Masterclass session.

In time, I plan to go through the entire syllabus of common competition techniques, of which there is quite a wide range. So the Masterclass will go on for a long time.