How to break down a throw

Guitar players often say one of the ways they learn to play is to go to concerts and watch close up how their heroes played the guitar. There's a lot you can learn by watching and analyzing a movement. And all the more so now that we have video, which not only allows us to watch the same technique over and over again but in slow motion. We can even zoom in for a close up look at the grip or some movement that was crucial to the throw.

Back when I first started learning judo, I supplemented my training sessions with judo books. Later, when I was at the LA Judo Training Center, my coach gave me a bunch of video tapes to study. One of them featured a young Toshihiko Koga, before he was famous, doing his famous ippon-seoi-nage in the Shoriki Cup and Kano Cup in the mid-1980s.

My coach told me that there were three things that Koga did which bucked convention:
i) His legs were straight upon entry into the technique and remained straight throughout the loading and unloading of his opponents. At no point did he bend his knees. (Most textbooks will tell you to bend your knees)

ii) He adopted a left-handed grip, holding uke's right lapel with his left hand and did his seoi-nage off the lapel rather than the sleeve (granted, this is how most people do their seoi-nages but this is not how it is taught in the textbooks).

iii) He didn't turn and load uke onto his back. He began lifting and loading uke as he enters into the throw. By the time he turns towards the front, uke is already fully-loaded onto his back. Learn to lift and load your opponent as you enter, my coach told me. Again, this is not what is taught in books.

He told me to watch the videos over and over again to see if what he said was true and sure enough, multiple viewings proved to me that all his observations about Koga's seoi-nage was absolutely spot on.

He gave me many other videos to watch but didn't spoon-feed me with detailed breakdowns of each technique I was supposed to analyzed. He left it to me to do my own analysis. So I watched the videos over and over again, each time trying to spot something different or special that the player did to make their techniques work.

I became good at it. And when I returned from three months of training there, I began to make my own analytical tapes to study. I would take clips of techniques I wanted to learn and not only loop them many times but also in slow motion. I didn't have the ability to zoom in (this was pre-digital so my editing process involving connecting two VCRs together was very primitive).

In later years when digital editing was possible, I would not only loop and playback in slow-mo but I would zoom in to specific areas so I could study every aspect of the throw. This really helps a lot.

These days, whenever I see something exciting or different, that I want to learn, I would gather as much footage of that technique as possible. If the technique was not a fluke, it's very likely the player that did it would have executed it many other times before. So I would go to my archives and look for clips of that player in competition. I'd meticulously comb through all his fights and collect clips of that technique in question.

Then, I'd edit them so I could see the technique in slow motion and close up. After watching several examples of that same technique I would be able to identify common factors that made that technique work. Oftentimes it's a special grips. Sometimes it's a feint that the player would make before attacking. Other times it's situational, meaning the player only does this technique when a certain situation presents itself. Whatever it is I learn the theory behind it first.

Then I would go to the dojo and try it out on my training partner. At first without resistance. Then with some resistance. And finally I'd try it in a randori situation where there is full resistance. Sometimes a technique would work on the first try. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. But I would keep at it until I cracked it. But getting it to work once could be a fluke. So I try to figure out what I did that made it all come together like that and I try to replicate it during another randori.

One thing that is crucial though is that when you try it on the mat in a full-resistance situation (randori), you have to be willing to get countered. Leave your ego on the door and be prepare to be thrown flat on your back.

I remember when I was learning ura-nage and yoko-guruma, I had to put myself in vulnerable situations and many a time I got thrown by uchimata. But it was only by allowing myself to be pulled in tight with a high grip that I was in a position to actually try ura-nage or yoko-guruma. Over time, I figured it out and managed to incorporate these techniques into my repertoire.

This is how I pick up new techniques. It works really well for me. I hope it works for you too.