Principles and concepts for Martial Arts: Principles of Martial Arts for Judo, BJJ, Wrestling, Sambo and other grappling arts (Knowledge for Grapplers Book 1) by Galibert Sylvain

Author:Galibert, Sylvain [Galibert, Sylvain]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Breaking balance – making your opponent reach

This one is subtle and far reaching, both figuratively and literally.

People are lazy. Instead of moving their feet and keeping a perfect base at all time, they will bend over a little bit and reach for things. It’s only natural. If something is just a couple inches away, people will just bend a bit, stretch their arm and grab it anyway. Suppose your phone is about 10 inches to your right. Would you stand up to pick it up properly? No, you would just lean a bit to get it. Going slightly off-balance doesn’t matter in day to day life.

Grappling is different. As we have seen earlier in the section of Kuzushi, it only takes a few inches to significantly weaken your balance.

The idea here is to convince your opponent to reach and bring himself off balance. It’s one of the most elegant skills of grappling: You are not pulling your opponent, you might not even be touching him and yet you are putting him off balance. There are several ways this can be done. Here is a typical example:

Offer a target that your opponent wants. In Judo, the opponent often wants to secure a nice grip on your lapel. Position yourself in such a way that your opponent can reach comfortably for the lapel, but as he goes for it, lean back slightly. 9 times out of 10, your opponent will lean a couple extra inches to secure that lapel instead of moving his feet in the right position.

Similarly, if you step to the side just as your opponent takes his grips, he will most likely follow without adjusting his feet.

This should be a very subtle movement: if your opponent needs to reach more than a couple inches, he will realize he is exposing himself too much and bail out. Same thing happens if you withdraw too fast.

Conversely, if you step in “too close” to your opponent, his immediate reflex will be to lean back.

In this fashion, you can actually break your opponent’s balance without touching him. Of course, you want to establish a grip or you won’t be able to throw, but using this principle to create Kuzushi is quite valuable as your opponent will have a hard time figuring out what’s wrong and you can get a step ahead of him.

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