The art and science of grip fighting

Grip fighting doesn't come naturally. You either learn it through trial and error or you get taught it.

If you join a judo club, you'll be taught throwing techniques. Not all clubs teach grip fighting skills though. This is surprising because in order to throw you need to get your favorite grip and unless you know how to grip fight, you will not be able get that.

In Japan, the top players absolutely excel at grip fighting, not so much because they are taught grip fighting skills but more so because they do so much randori that these skills get developed along the way -- through a mixture of osmosis and trial and error. You have to be good at grip fighting or else you won't be able to survive in the top dojos there.

In the US and Europe, grip fighting skills and tactics are taught, sometimes in incredibly intricate details. Perhaps that is due to the fact that unlike in Japan, in many places in the West there simply aren't that many top players around so the opportunity to do 10 to 15 randoris a day simply isn't there. As such, there is less opportunity for learning through trial and error. In places where there is no abundance of top players (i.e. most places) gripping skills need to be taught.

Malaysia is one of those places where there is very little judo. Ironically, perhaps because many of the clubs here have a strong Japanese influence, gripping skills and strategies are seldom taught. The concept of "teaching gripping" just isn't there. Teaching throws, yes. Teaching groundwork, yes. Teaching breakfalls, most definitely. But gripping? No.

You do have some players with quite strong gripping skills. These usually come from the sports schools. Why is that not surprising? Because sports schools are the one place where there is an abundance of players. And they do randori five to six days a week. If you do randori practically every day, for four years straight, your gripping skills are bound to get good even if you are not formally taught a single thing about gripping. You just pick it up along the way (as mentioned earlier, through a mixture of osmosis and trial and error).

When you fight stronger senior players regularly, you end up picking up their gripping skills. And when you fight very frequently, you devise different ways to overcome your opponents' defenses. It might take a long time for grip fighting skills to develop this way but these sports school students have four to five years of daily randori for that happen.

What if you don't belong to a sports school? You're out of luck if you rely solely on the instructors because grip fighting simply is not taught. If you're resourceful you could watch a lot of videos and analyze how the top players do it. There are also videos that you could buy where top players teach you their gripping secrets. Most of these videos are from the West (US and Europe).

Most Japanese videos do not teach much gripping beyond the basics although a video by double World Champion Hirotaka Okada does explore at length his method of grip fighting (which is pretty impressive).

I was very fortunate because very early on in my judo career I was taught some very sound grip fighting principles. My coach also gave me videos to watch and analyze so I had the best of both worlds -- specific instruction on grip fighting and video examples to analyze.

Over the years, judo rules have changed and gripping is now very heavily regulated. There are a lot of grips that you cannot do or cannot maintain without immediately attacking. This can be very challenging. That's why gripping training is all the more crucial for competitors.

Anybody who trains at KL Judo will notice that many of our players grip fight. It's part of the culture of the club. You will not see our players each maintaining a sleeve-lapel grip and moving around like they are doing the waltz. Just watch any of our randoris and you will see some very heavy gripping going on during our randoris.

We have a bunch of beginner who are just embarking on competitive training. Instead of leaving it to trial and error, which is a long process, I will be teaching them some gripping fundamentals as well as some tactics they can use to get an upper hand during a grip fight.

There is a popular phrase in English that says, "You can walk and chew gum at the same time," which means it's possible to do more than one thing at a time. When it comes to grip fighting it's absolutely necessary to be able to "walk and chew gum at the same time".

Your primary objective must be to get the grip that you want. Although you also want to deny your opponent the grip that they want, this must not be your primary objective because you will eventually get penalized for negative gripping.

So, from the get go, you must fight to get your favorite grip. You secondary objective is to also deny uke their grip while you are trying to get your grip. If all you do is focus on getting your grip, uke might be able to get the grip that they want and dominate you. So you have to "walk and chew gum at the same time", i.e. you have to impose your grip while simultaneously negate (block or break) uke's grip.

This is very hard for beginners to do. They usually can focus only on one thing at a time. But this is a skill they need to develop. There is no choice, if they want to be good at gripping.

So, are there strategies for how to get the grip that you want? For blocking or breaking uke's grip? For dealing with situations where uke has managed to dominate you with their grips. Yes, there are, for all these things. They are just not taught in most clubs. But we do at KL Judo. The beginners will get their first lesson on grip fighting at Tuesday night's session.