Getting stuck in collar sleeve can be quite a difficult situation to deal with and being stretched out and controlled so well only leads to being submitted quickly.
In situations where earlier efforts to better your position have failed we have to start risking more to get out or just stay safe. In the case of the featured video we risk a sweep after giving up the top position to try break grips.
It’s important to recognise the risk you are taking in these situations and try to minimise it if at all possible. However, after you achieve your goal of either escaping or taking pressure off, it is even more important that you capitalise on the moment and go back to attacking and imposing your game on the other person.
In most cases where you have been in a bad position and successfully recovered to a better position, your opponent will try to attack again. If you reward yourself with a rest after a recovery action then you are setting yourself up to be back in a bad situation – keep fighting until you’ve reached a point like top side control or back where you can take a bit more of a calculated rest and control the fight at the same time.
The ‘Domoplata’ is a mounted shin choke (Gogoplata) named after Marcelo Garcia black belt Dominyka Obelenyte, the 2015 female black belt world champion (weight & absolute) who is well known for her use of this attack.
At first glance the Domoplata may appear to be unnecessarily complicated when compared to other mounted submissions due to the numerous positional adjustments involved in its setup. This relatively high level of intricacy can seem overwhelming and may even lead one to the conclusion that the attack is impractical or unrealistic.
However, given the fact that one of the world’s best female grapplers is frequently able to apply this technique against male and female opponents of the highest calibre, as students of BJJ it is important that we look deeper into the details of the technique so that we can begin to understand why it is so effective despite its complexity.
One of the most common mistakes committed by lower belts when in an attacking position such as mount is to rush to the submission attempt before first negating their opponent’s ability to escape. For example, they will attempt an Ezekiel choke without first establishing a grapevine to control their opponent’s hips and be easily reversed by a basic bridge and roll; Or they will recklessly fall back for an armbar without first dominating the armpit, and find themselves on their back with nothing but an unsubmittable forearm in their crotch and a relieved opponent on top of them.
In contrast, advanced grapplers understand that although attacking positions generally guarantee our safety from the risk of submission, against skilled opponents these positions must typically be further developed in order for us to safely attack our opponent without the risk of allowing an escape or reversal.
With this concept in mind we should observe that, in isolation, every step of the Domoplata setup stands as a relatively achievable and maintainable development of our mounted position. Therefore, we should not view the Domoplata as one big exotic move but as a series of small conservative moves that will enable us to transition safely into a dominating finishing position.
The Kimura Trap leads to an excellent series of transitions and submissions. It has been popularised by David Avellan and frequently utilised by such names as Andre Galvao, Keenan Cornelius, Andris Brunovskis and Dominick Cruz.
It is also an example of one of the most difficult positional concepts to understand in Jiu Jitsu: A Position of Transition.
Positions of Transition are positions where control is not exerted in a traditional pinning or riding fashion.
Pins are dominant positions in which control is exerted by restricting and controlling the opponent’s movement and Rides are dominant positions where control is exerted despite the opponent’s movement.
A Position of Transition’s primary method of control is the gateways it creates to other positions or submissions. However, unlike pins and rides, the ability to remain in these positions is comparatively limited and these gateways are created almost exclusively through the opponent’s choices.
In this example it is easy to see how the attacker’s options are essentially dictated by the choices of the defender and it is equally easy to see how the attacker has little means to force any particular choice upon the defender.
Why is any of this important?
Well, despite being easily entered into from a variety of situations and allowing a series of extremely powerful actions, Positions of Transition are comparatively under utilised. And they are not uncommon – Kimura Trap, Harness, Two on One and Seatbelt are all Positions of Transition if used correctly.
Secondly, realise that due to their action/reaction type nature, Positions of Transition take significantly more drilling than more conventional positions to make use if their full potential.
Training in a martial art can be one of the most rewarding and positive experiences you can have in your life providing benefits to you physically, mentally and emotionally. That said, getting started can be daunting and for a lot of people just walking through the doors of an academy for the first time is incredibly intimidating.
While taking a deep breath and simply turning up for a class will generally work out for the best there are still a few things you can do to ensure your early experiences lay the foundation for a rewarding martial arts adventure.
Before You Go to Your First Class
Do your research.
Not all BJJ academies are the same; some focus on sport jiu jitsu, some on MMA, some on self defence and others will cover the full spectrum of the martial art. There will also be significant differences in the gym cultures which is what will really determine whether or not you continue training.
We live in an age of information so it’s easy to check out the Facebook page, business reviews and website of anywhere you are considering training. If you are uncertain how to do this click —>here<—
Go to the website.
So you’ve found a place that looks good. Now go back to the website and actually read it.
Read the class descriptions, view the timetable, check out the cost and find out whether or not there is a free trial. You should also see if there are starting requirements as some places will have specific beginners courses or insist that you do a number of one on one sessions before jumping into the group class.
Email or call the academy.
It’s always a good idea to actually check in with the academy before you turn up; There may be a special event or some other unusual circumstance that would make it a less than ideal time for your first session.
Turn up about ten minutes early.
Not thirty.
If you turn up this early then, depending on how the academy in question is organised, the coach will either be busy or not there yet. Just give yourself enough time to find the place, introduce yourself and fill out a small amount of paperwork.
During Your First Class
Expect some culture shock.
Every martial art has its own culture, traditions and social expectations and they can seem totally unfathomable to a new student. To add to the confusion no two academies are exactly alike even within the same style. Jiu Jitsu, which is generally considered to be comparatively informal when it comes to martial arts, will still have a number of rules of etiquette including, but not limited to:
You might be expected to line up in rank order at the beginning and end of class
You might be expected to bow whenever you walk on or off the mat
You might be expected to refer to the instructor as “Professor”
You might be expected to slap hands and/or bump fists with your training partner
You might be expected to line up and shake everyone’s hand after training
You might be expected to say “Oos” way too often and in ways that make no grammatical sense
Or you might not.
Hopefully the coach or a senior student will explain to you ahead of time what’s going to happen and what is expected but there’s no guarantee so be prepared to just roll with whatever happens – people will understand that you are new and learning “how things are done”.
So to recap:
If you haven’t done a martial art before then there are many things that are going to seem unusual to you.
If you have done a martial art before then there are many things that are going to seem unusual to you.
Expect to feel unfit.
Unless you are transitioning from another kind of grappling art, expect to feel very unfit during your first few sessions of BJJ. Even if you run marathons and crossfit every day a typical BJJ training session will get you very tired. It’s not that jiu jitsu is unusually demanding, it’s that the physical demands of any martial art tend to be very specific and this, combined with your lack of knowledge on how and when to relax, will quickly wear you out. The plus side is that this feeling is short lived. A couple of weeks of regular attendance and you’ll feel like you’re back at your base level of fitness.
Expect to be terrible.
Martial arts are complicated and it can take many years of training to become highly skilled, but for some reason a decent number of people seem to assume that they know what they’re doing before even completing their first lesson.
Realise that you are a danger to yourself and others.
If you are doing any kind of full contact martial art, such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the potential for minor and major injuries is present and, as a beginner, you won’t yet know how to take care of yourself.
This means that your training partner is doing all the work to make sure that neither one of you gets hurt. So rather than fighting as hard as you can “to win”, realise that your partner is fighting to keep you safe. Keep it light and remember that you are here to learn. This will have the added benefit that your higher ranked partner is less likely to decide that simply crushing you is the easier option.
If you come with a friend expect the coach to split you up.
There is no surer path to injury than having two beginners train with one another.
After Your First Class
Expect to be sore in ways you haven’t experienced before.
You’ve just used your body in ways it’s never been used before so expect a few new muscle aches to crop up the next day. After a few more classes your body will adapt and these new aches and pains will cease to occur. This would be exactly the same if you had just lifted weights for the first time or spent an hour trying to learn how to play squash despite never having picked up a racquet before.
If you did some kind of sparring then you’ve probably picked up a few bumps and bruises too. Like the aches, these are largely the result of experiencing something new – in this case significantly more body contact than you were previously used to – and these will also diminish as you begin training more regularly.
You will have questions. Many, many questions.
If your question starts with “What if” then please just stow that sucker in the back of your brain/write it down on a piece of paper and set it on fire. Understand that generally these kind of questions are answered with time and training and that the answer is frequently “It’s a fight, try not to let them do that”.
Other questions though – questions about the gym, the gear, the training, the coaches and the art itself – should be asked without hesitation. Common questions include
How do memberships work?
What kind of training gear do I need and where do I get it?
How do I tie my belt?
How do I care for my hair while training?
How hard should I go in sparring?
The Next Few Weeks
Start with two or three classes per week.
I know you’re excited and want to get as much out of this new experience as you can but you really need to ease into it. I’ve seen a number of people get started with BJJ and immediately jump into six classes a week and less than a month later they miss a class and I never see them again. Those who become long term students of the art start off with two or three classes per week and might, over time, build to more frequent training.
Expect to be corrected.
When you start training in any martial art there are two very common scenarios. Scenario one is that you feel like you are doing the technique or drill correctly but you are still being consistently corrected. Scenario two is that you feel like you are too uncoordinated to do the technique or drill correctly but you are still being consistently corrected. Neither scenario is correct.
You are not doing the movement correctly but you don’t know it yet because you are untrained.
You are not doing the movement correctly but you are not uncoordinated, you are untrained.
Accept the correction, continue training and never forget that, despite what movies and your mother tell you, it is statistically very unlikely that you are either amazing talented or particularly inept. You are paying a coach to teach you when you show up, help you when you want it and correct you when you need it.
Recently I was listening to social media entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk talking to an aspiring entrepreneur. He posed the question, “Are you losing belief, or do you just wish it was happening faster?” I instantly applied this question to my own BJJ journey, and the kind of thoughts I know many people who train also have.
BJJ is full of ups and downs, and you often spend a great deal of time thinking, “why am I not progressing?” Or how you can feel good one week about your game, but the next feel much worse.
I think in these situations Gary’s question, “Are you losing belief, or you just wish it was happening faster?” is the perfect question to ask yourself in order to help get over those humps and stay positive. I’m willing to bet that a majority of the time you just wish you were better, and didn’t have to worry about being swept, missing opportunities, getting subbed, and other BJJ woes.
So how do you speed up the process? Its simple, more mat time! Get to the gym more, and spend as much time as you can in that environment. If you’re already living at your gym, then concentrate on smarter training. By this I mean apply yourself in class, and study the techniques the coach is teaching, both inside and outside the gym. Spend time at home watching matches and techniques, going over techniques, moves and sequences in your head.
BJJ is unique in that I don’t think it takes very long for someone to go from just starting and doing one class a week, to then filling out all their spare time with classes and investing a lot of time into improving.
So if you’re doing all this and still feeling frustrated, there’s one other key aspect to focus on, and that’s developing patience.
Stay patient and believe in your training and keep positive. If you put in the time you will see the rewards! Its only a matter of time, and patience.
Don’t get down about it, keep training and doing the best that you can, and everything you want in your BJJ will appear, but you have to keep training. If you slow down in a slump, or take some time off, you’re only going to make it harder on yourself if improving your BJJ is something you truly want.
Simon is one of our coaches who specialises in one-on-one and small group training. Below he shares his experience and thoughts on participating in the Gymnasticbodies method of training.
I have always enjoyed doing bodyweight training. I think we should all be able to control our bodies in space, whether it is in a basic functional way, or by taking it to the next level with acrobatics and fancy movements.
Last year I participated in the Gymnasticbodies (GB) Level 1 Seminar hosted by Coach Christopher Sommers. You can read my review here.
So with my little boy Ash being roughly two months old at the time, and needing to spend more time at home (with not a lot of sleep), I decided to make the Foundation series my main training focus.
Both programs require only a limited range of equipment, so I could do a lot of it at home, and use the equipment when I was at the gym (gymnastic rings and a pull up bar).
I started the program at week 5 to 9 for each phase, as the earlier phases were very basic. I also knew it would take me nine months to get through all of F1.
One of the good things about the GB website is that it has all the programming set out for you, so you only have to concentrate on the week that you’re up to. It also has a follow along format so you don’t get to confused with all the shorthand.
There are also a range of videos you can watch if you need to remind yourself of the form and technique for both strength and mobility.
The Foundation Series uses strength and mobility in each area of the program, and it always includes strength, followed by mobility/flexibility. So if you skip the mobility you’re technically only doing half the work.
For example: Bent Hollow Body Hold (FL/PE1 60sec) then Cat Cow (FL/PE1>iM 5reps)
Here’s where all the training leads to:
Front Lever (FL)
Straddle Planche (sPL)
Side Lever (SL)
Manna (MN)
Single Leg Squat (SLS)
Hollow Back Press (HBP)
Rope Climb (RC)
While I say that I completed all of F1, I couldn’t do most of the Single Leg Squat section due to partial meniscus tear in my left knee from BJJ, it just wasn’t stable enough for me to trust it.
As I am writing this, I just had a look at the F1 programming again and they have changed the SLS programming to what looks a lot easier or achievable for people who are limited in the use of their lower body.
Now for what I thought about the F1 program. I really enjoyed it, I guess coming from a Capoeira background means that I could pick some things up a little quicker than some other people.
The program is not a quick moving program, by that I mean it’s not a super entertaining program, but it’s not supposed to be, your focus should be on accuracy not intensity.
I like the process of the step-by-step actions that lead from simple to challenging.
Also, each exercise has a ‘Mastery’ part to it. For example: Bent Arm Chin Hang (RC/PE6) which was 5x60sec which was really hard at the start, but now it’s possible (again I checked the site and it’s only 5x30sec…)
Where my mindset differs from what they (GB) are looking for is mastery, and looking for mastery in movements isn’t why I train (but doing cool movements is nice).
When I first started Capoeira, I wanted to be good, I wanted to be able to walk into the Roda and be able to keep up with whoever I was playing, and I feel the same with BJJ.
When it comes to movement it’s always good to think about the bigger picture. Basic movements lead to more complex movements, but it’s up to you how far you take it.
For me, longevity is what keeps me motivated and focused. I want to be in this game for the long haul.
Find out more about training with Simon and his background here.
A decade or so ago the phrase “roadwork” would have conjured up the image of a tracksuit clad athlete stoically jogging through the early morning mist and up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the inspirational tune “Gonna Fly Now’.
In recent times though, roadwork has fallen out of fashion in the athletic community; now we talk about “conditioning” and flog ourselves stupid with insane high paced workouts that leave us bathing in a puddle of our own puke and sweat.
While I think it is a good thing that we’ve come to understand that running for hours on end is detrimental to the strength, health, and performance of the majority of athletes, we’ve replaced it with something just as stupid.
The majority of “conditioning” training I see people do rarely results in any kind of improved sport performance and, in fact, usually actively interferes with it.
People forget that conditioning is specific. A boxer who is fully capable of doing ten rounds of intense sparring can be left gasping for air like a pack a day smoker after just ten minutes of wrestling practice, simply because they are not yet adapted to the specific conditioning demands of wrestling.
The best kind of sports conditioning is training or playing in the sport itself, and anything that interferes with an athlete’s ability to train or play is a hinderance. That said, it follows though that anything that can increase or enhance an athlete’s ability to train or play is beneficial.
So, aside from developing strength, if “conditioning” is out, what does that leave us with? Aerobic baseline capacity training. Roadwork 2.0 if you will.
Aerobic conditioning is not domain specific so, provided care is taken to keep the level of physical stress low, improvements made allow an athlete to train in their sport longer and more frequently.
The following three methods have each shown excellent results across a variety of sports and activities.
Barry Ross Baseline conditioning
This protocol is probably the easiest and most effective I have ever come across for developing an aerobic baseline for training. The fact that it is so simple and so undemanding is probably the main reason that almost nobody will start or stick with it.
The program was developed by Barry Ross, one of the best sprint coaches in the world, who needed to improve his athletes’ aerobic base without also further fatiguing them or impacting their ability to recover from their intense sprint training sessions.
The solution he came up with was to get his athletes to walk as fast as possible for 15 minutes three times a week with the goal of walking slightly further every week. This was to be repeated for four weeks followed by a two week break before repeating.
Tempo Running
The concept behind tempo running is that as there is little or no barrier to entry to running and only in the most extreme of circumstances do people become unable to take another step. As a result it is extremely easy for athletes (or anyone else for that matter) to run too far and run too fast damaging both sports performance and their bodies. We needed a method of limiting both the pace of the run and the quantity of running performed.
For years I called the following method “Tempo Running”, before I found out that it is essentially a low tech approach to the reasonably well known “Maffetone Running Method”.
This sounds easy, but the first session crushes egos on a regular basis. All the athlete has to do is run for 30 minutes twice a week maintaining a pace which allows them to breath only through their nose. If at any point during the run the athlete breathes through their mouth, they must walk the remaining time even once they are able to resume nose only breathing.
By restricting peoople to only breathing through their nose, it forces them to work at a pace that their body can easily handle.
I got the idea after watching Russian amateur boxers working the pads and even sparring with a mouthful of water, that they were then forced to spit out between rounds to prove they hadn’t swallowed the liquid.
Steady state after high intensity training
While none of these methods are onerous, this approach is the most easily integrated into an existing routine. All that is required is ten minutes of easy, steady state aerobics immediately after an intense sport training session, six days a week.
It is important to take note that in order for this protocol to be effective, it must be performed directly after a high intensity sports training session – not as a separate session, and not after something slower paced.
Interestingly, while it is probably the least effective of these three options for developing your aerobic baseline capacity (it’s still pretty good though) this is the only one that is even remotely likely to result in additional fat loss. While aerobic training is not particularly good at mobilising fat from adipose tissue stores, it is reasonably effective at making use of it once it enters the bloodstream. By performing some steady state aerobic training after high intensity training, which is amazing at mobilising fat from adipose tissue, you are essentially giving yourself some insurance that the fat that was mobilised gets burned.
******
You might have noticed that none of the above training protocols are particularly exciting or sexy. That’s the thing about training in an effective, productive manner – sometimes it’s boring.
And that’s what makes this training genuinely hard for people to do.
The long runs and the puke inducing work outs feel hard but almost everybody will do them because they also feel exciting but it’s a willingness to do the rote work, the punch the clock style training sessions, that is the mark of a genuine athlete.
I was a 21 year old who had just begun a philosophy degree at university. The local video store had allowed me to see the first five UFC events and, inspired by the exploits of Royce Gracie, my friends and I began ‘training’ in a garage. A few months later, a customer at the shop I was working at alerted me to the existence of a Machado BJJ club in the area, and so I went to have a look. Keen to test my garage sharpened ‘skills’, it was in May of 2002 that I showed up to my first class in my grass stained, low budget judo gi ready to roll.
Needless to say, I was soundly handled by everyone during sparring that night, but the roll that really captured my attention and imagination was the one I had with the instructor. Michael was only a blue belt, and he was a little bigger and stronger than me, but the way he handled me was such that at no time did I feel like anything I did mattered. He could have been a ten year old girl and the result would have been exactly the same. The dude was water. This was what I wanted to do.
The main thing I learned at white belt was to relax. Most of the guys I trained with back then were much bigger than me, as they were mainly guys with professional martial arts or security backgrounds, and so I quickly learned that pushing, pulling, or grabbing harder never really helps, but it does always tire you out and sometimes leads to injury. Once you can get that super-chill breathing going with a super heavyweight sitting on your face, then you can focus your mind on positional maintenance and problem solving in any situation.
2005 – 2008 – Blue Belt
Still at uni. One of only a handful of blue belts in a sea of white belts.
Cocky. The move collector. The cutting edge, half guard/hooks guard phenom.
You know JJ Machado? I roll like him.
“Stupid purple belt instructor is living in the past, man. Saulo Ribeiro and Marcelo Garcia are changing the game and this dope has us doing closed guard sweeps? Bleh. I’m off to the corner to do my own stuff with the other cool blue belts.“ – Me ‘07
Anyway, I was pretty deluded as a blue belt. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff we were doing on the side was good stuff, but my attitude towards moves I ‘already knew’ was misled. At that time, I thought the key to the game was simply to know more moves than your opponent, and that knowing a move was a simple matter of getting to the point that you could demonstrate it.
However, as I got closer to purple belt I started to understand that the new school stuff I had been doing was only particularly effective for me because of how much work I had invested into learning how to use it. This reality check made me see all of the techniques I had previously learned in a different light, and I started to move my training focus away from the acquisition of new techniques, and towards the sharpening of existing ones.
2008 – 2011 – Purple Belt
Public Servant. Instructing the no gi Saturday class.
“To be the man, you gotta beat the man.” – Ric Flair
More than half the rolling I did as a purple belt was against one brown belt. He was about my weight and one of the best brown belts in the country, and so I had made it my mission to get to the level needed to credibly compete against him. I adopted Saulo Ribeiro as my surrogate instructor by watching his three instructionals to the point that I sounded like Saulo, and then used these teachings to sharpen my defensive postures and escapes to the point that I was eventually able to give ‘the man’ a run for his money through sheer defensive capability.
When ‘the man’ got his black belt from Anthony Perosh, he gave me my brown.
So what did I learn as a purple belt? Teaching is a good way to figure out that you don’t know shit about a move. White belts will ask perfectly valid questions about your favourite move and you will not have an answer, and begin to question whether you yourself actually do the move correctly. However, hopefully this will lead you to find the answers to these questions, which will then further your understanding of the move. At purple belt I learned that furthering your ability to teach a move is the final process of developing your own mastery of it.
2011 – 2016 – Brown Belt
Tried to be a real estate agent in 2012. No training for 18 months. Came back out of shape in 2014.
“Wtf just happened? The little kid is a beast.” Me ‘14
Before my 18 month hiatus, I had shared many rolls with one particular teenage blue belt, and had always had an easy time beating him. I once subbed him sixteen times in a minute during a grading roll. Anyway, while I was away, not only had he grown from a blue belt boy into a purple belt man, but he had also made two six week trips to AOJ in San Diego, where he had trained six days a week.
I came back, and the kid destroyed me. He took vengeance for that sixteen sub exhibition I had laid on him back in the day, and it wasn’t pretty. Not only that, but he was using techniques that I was largely ignorant of. As I previously noted, I had stopped collecting moves back when I was a purple belt, but as a result I had not kept up with the newer tactics as I had always thought that my ‘brown belt fundamentals’ would see me through. Convinced that it must be the new moves that were allowing an inferior grappler to defeat me, I scrambled to learn about every berimbolo, single X, curu curu, fifty fifty, whateverty doo-dah I could find, only to arrive at a far scarier realisation.
It wasn’t the moves. The kid had just been training way harder than me, and was now a better grappler than me.
The colour of my belt together with all my additional years of experience didn’t change the fact that I threw everything I had at this kid over and over and never came close to getting an attacking position. I had been resting on my laurels, and now the student had become the master.
So I started training harder, and seeking more knowledge with clearer goals in mind, and slowly I began to close the gap. The kid’s a freak so I don’t think I’ll ever have the edge on him again, but at 36 I’m happy just as long as I can give the top guys a good competitive match. It seems dumb to learn it so late, but at brown belt I really learned that goal-focussed mat time is what leads to improvement in BJJ, i.e. train as often as you can, know what you are there to work on, and work on it.
It was in 2015 as a brown belt that I accepted a coaching position at the new Atos club in Canberra.
I’m still coaching at Atos Canberra as the women’s instructor and assistant instructor to the main class. I am enjoying my BJJ training as much as ever, and I am looking forward to continuing my BJJ learning long into the future.
So, that’s my BJJ journey so far. Thanks for reading, and good luck with your training.
Here’s a video of me getting promoted to black belt by Professors JT Torres, Antonio Mota, and Ben Langford at Atos Canberra.
Most judo clubs practice uchikomi. In an ideal world, it looks like this.
Uchikomi is repetition training for judo throws. The person practicing a throw goes through all motions of the throw up until the point where the person being thrown would lose their balance. It serves as a warm up, a method of teaching and correcting technique, and a conditioning exercise. Unsurprisingly, it also allows judoka to start decades-long fights on the internet about its utility. Evidence does not usually play a part in these fights.
To start with, nobody seems capable of translating it from the Japanese. Brief internet research shows that it can mean “to beat against”, “to go in”, “invasion” and, most memorably, “hitting with nothing less than the totality of one’s being”.
Please do not hit anyone with the totality of your being; it sounds metaphysically disgusting. Instead, it might be better to accept that uchikomi is a word that doesn’t really need to be translated. Repetition training will do.
Intuitively, the benefits of uchikomi seem obvious. The trainee can practice without the distraction of someone else trying their very best to stop them. You can isolate individual elements of the throw to practice technique while in motion. Moving against slight resistance will help with conditioning in a way that is specific to judo techniques. Finally, your partner can provide good feedback on form. These are all good things. Here, learn from Koga.
On the other hand, it also sets up habitual movement patterns. This can have the effect of cementing bad habits and mechanically inefficient methods, particularly where the trainee does not receive the feedback of actually throwing somebody.
More importantly, uchikomi is nothing like a judo match; the chance of transferring a skill from uchikomi to a match may not be high. Unfortunately, designing a study where someone is able to compare judo skills with and without having learned uchikomi appears to be almost impossible, so we are unlikely to get any evidence about the efficacy of uchikomi for skills practice any time soon.
Thankfully, there is one aspect of uchikomi that can be measured: conditioning benefits. Even more thankfully, Emerson Franchini is willing to do study after study after study to do so.
Roughly summarised, two sessions of high intensity interval training per week, using uchikomi, resulted in increased upper and lower body power production test results. The authors suggest that the interaction of judo training and the high-intensity uchikomi additional training resulted in an optimal combination to improve upper-body high-intensity intermittent performance. They also note that high intensity interval training adaptations are mostly muscle specific.
Put another way, it’s not clear if uchikomi is good for technique. It’s not clear if uchikomi helps performance in a match. But if you want to get fit for judo, then consider some uchikomi.
