Learning Judo is like a Baby Learning to Walk

This is my fourth blog post on my new journey into Judo. See the
previous entries: Rei!, My Understanding of the Philosophy of Judo,
and Strangled By Judo.

I have a baby niece who I had the pleasure of observing as she learnt to
walk. It was exciting - as well as funny. She would stand up, look like
she is drunk, flail her arms about, steady herself, and then take a
forward step, look like she is vewy, vewy dwunk, steady herself, ... and
so on. She fell flat on her face many times. But the beauty of the
"life" program coded in her DNA is that she did not stop trying.

Well, so it seems with Judo. It is now clear to me that learning Judo
consists of executing technical moves repeatedly; doing them over and
over; it is training. You stand and watch the technical steps of a move
being demonstrated to you, you get the rationale, you can even explain
why the move works, but this all means nothing if you do not execute the
move well. Execution is far more important than idea.

The beauty of proper technical execution is that it flows like an
overpowering current. You do apply some physical force here and there,
true, but because you are altering your posture ever so dynamically and
interactively, your partner finds he has no choice but to fall in line
with your plan. You are using the known weaknesses of your partner's
human frame against him.

Once you have executed your moves with grace and control, he has no
choice but to fall, roll over, or do what you intended for him to do.
It's like clockwork. Logic. Beautiful execution = Partner crumbling.
Only if your partner is quicker than you, can he disrupt and parry your
attack before you can complete your execution.

The technical moves allow our instructor, a woman shorter than most of
us and not as physically strong as some of us, to bring down a guy
bigger and stronger than her. She causes imbalance, remains in control,
sweeps her partner's leg from underneath him, and then gets out of the way
as he falls. The moves teach us how to take on someone considerably
stronger than us. We do not need to work out at the gym every day (not
at this stage). We just have to learn the moves - just like a baby
learns to walk.

A youtube Judo clip of an exercise similar to what we do in class.

And, a hip throw.

The downside, of course, is injury. The toddler learning to walk falls
flat over and over. Sometimes she hits something on the way down.
Sometimes, just the shock of falling flat on a hard floor causes her to
cry ("I'm disorientated, I might have been injured," she seems to cry).

Everywhere I turned today, my partners told me about injury. It is a
must; it's part and parcel of training. Someone broke his big toe seven
years ago, quit Judo, and now he is back but he still feels the occasional
pain in the toe. Another guy pointed at various spots on his body where
he's had injuries, and told me he visits a chiropractor regularly.

Do the falls stop the little toddler from trying to walk? You must be
joking! And so it came to be that I realised: this is a life-long project.

The art of falling is something, I am finding, I have to learn. Me,
someone tips me, and I fall flat on my back like a log of wood. Head,
neck, and back all hit the floor at the same time. Gravely unpleasant!
It turned out I had to keep gripping my partner with one hand, thereby
hitting the floor with one side of my back.

I have been musing about injury not just because I saw clumsy and
impatient novices in action, but also because I got injured! A week ago,
an exhausted novice yanked so hard on my jacket (as described in my
earlier blog post), it hurt; three days later, I woke up and found
myself wondering if I've had a heart attack. Every time I blew my nose,
sneezed, or yawned, my chest area seized up.

An experienced player told me today that I must have pulled a muscle. I
need to warm up very well and stretch all my muscles before I train, he
said. Muscle-pulls, 'getting winded' (feeling as if all the air has gone
out of your lungs), broken something or other, ... here I come.

A clip from the film "Fight Club" - a great movie and possibly an early
motivator to get involved in the martials arts world.