Judo for the Jiu-jitsu Brain

Note: In between writing and filming for this post, I attended a seminar coached by Chris Haueter at which he coached similar material. Of course, no two coaches see or explain things in precisely the same way, but it's reassuring to see such a respected coach using the sort of methodology I'm pursuing.

On paper Judo and Jiu-jitsu have a lot in common, even setting aside their shared Japanese history. They are both grappling arts. They both make use of a jacket. Competitive matches in both arts start on the feet and can be won by submission. There's a good deal more. So much so that a person reading just the technical syllabi of the two arts might get the impression that they're interchangeable. The difference is in the emphasis, the focus of their competitions, and the pedagogy of their instructors.

In practice, Judo is the art of grabbing a person by their jacket and throwing them to the ground. Jiu-jitsu is the art of rolling around on the floor with a person, trying to strangle them, and twisting their limbs in uncomfortable directions. The two arts are also taught differently. Jiu-jitsu tends to teach set-ups then techniques. Judo tends to teach techniques then set-ups.

Grappling on the feet is more mobile than grappling on the floor. So, positions are more fleeting. In Jiu-jitsu, controlling position on the ground allows you to hold someone still enough to methodically finish them. In Judo, it is always a scramble. The Jiu-jitsu approach tends to emphasize control to maximize the availability of a desired attack. The Judo method focuses on creating deep familiarity with the attack itself so that opportunities can be recognized in the constantly shifting stand-up fight. Both arts ultimately aim to accomplish both goals, maximizing and recognizing opportunities, but their order of operation is reversed.

Both arts have good reasons for doing things the way they do, but if you transition from one to the other, it's a bit of a culture shock. As a Jiu-jitsu practitioner transitioning to Judo, the practice of learning multiple throws before exploring the tactics surrounding their use felt strange to me. It was like learning a language's vocabulary, but not its grammar. I suppose, for someone transitioning the other way, learning Jiu-jitsu would feel like learning grammar without vocabulary. Such problems resolve themselves with time and patience. Eventually instructors fill in the whole of the language.  Still, I feel the urge to restructure the information, to attempt to translate Judo into a format more compatible with my Jiu-jitsu biased brain.

To reiterate, Jiu-jitsu teaches set-ups then techniques. Judo teaches techniques then set-ups. What I want is to practice and teach the Judo technical syllabus with the Jiu-jitsu order of operations. To do that I need to catalog the basic postures of Judo and the directional pressures that are used to break posture and build momentum. Once the basic directional pressures are cataloged and practiced, specific techniques can be drilled for the resulting posture breaks. Judo takedowns can be trained using the common language of Jiu-jitsu.

This is a project I've been mulling over for some time. In the last year, I've experimented with this method both in my training and my coaching. I liked the results well enough to continue the project this year. The following videos are excerpts from a series of classes I coached in late January and early February of this year. This is the most video content I've posted on this site so far and I'm not posting this because it's the culmination of a definitive work. Rather, this is a work in progress.  Posting these video is as much about saying who I am as a coach and martial artist as it is about sharing any technical insight. Still, there's a lot in here that I've found valuable and a lot I'd like to share about both techniques and drilling methodology.