2: Before you hurt someone

A word about safety

Several years ago, my wife was working toward her black belt in karate. She had spent an enormous amount of time learning how to punch and kick, and I thought she was as tough as anyone I knew.

In preparation for her grading, we went to the gym to work on the heavy bags. And she utterly embarrassed herself. She threw a front kick into the bag, and, instead of knocking the bag to the wall, she knocked herself on her butt. My wife didn’t put enough weight into the kick, so its  power was transfered to her body, not the bag. It was not a beginner’s mistake. Although she had practiced that kick thousands of times in the air and against imaginary opponents, she had never really used it. When the time came, the kick worked against her, not for her. Had she been called upon to fight, she really would have been better off not having practiced at all.

Judo is different, and it is uncommon among martial arts. It is practiced at full speed with full power, on an unwilling opponent.

To be able to continue practicing like this, judoka need to take care of each other. Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, made this one of only two tenets of judo. They are: ‘mutual prosperity’ and ‘best use of energy’. These are dependent, meant to be taken together and taken to heart. Take care of your partner, and prosper with her.

Principle 1: Don’t hurt anybody

Despite what you might think, beginners are some of the most dangerous people in a dojo. White and yellow belts are especially dangerous because they do not know their opponent’s weaknesses. And everybody, everybody, has weaknesses—Chuck Liddell’s elbow joints are no stronger than a teenage girl’s.

As a beginner, you should try to cultivate a cautious attitude. Certainly, don’t assume that a more senior belt is better than you—take it from me, some of us are no good at all. Know, too, that the differences between the belts are quite small. If you are big, strong, or fit, you will start off very good at judo. There’s no magic to it, no chi or feng shui. Excellence at judo is the product of skill and strength, and the multiplicand counts as much as the multiplier.

Newcomers make two serious mistakes that endanger others. They go too fast, and they throw too hard.

Going too fast
If you are starting out, go slow at every stage. Judo is something like chess. There is little to be gained from rushing, and the end of the match can usually be seen several steps in advance. A good fight unfolds almost inevitably. The winner thinks ahead farther, reacts a little better, has a strategy, secures a position, and thereby wins.

If you are starting out, you would do well to learn to be especially careful on the ground with arm locks and chokes. It is, for example, very easy to dislocate an elbow. When you feel like you have a lock on your opponent, start moving at a crawling pace. If your lock is good, your opponent will not be able to escape, no matter how slowly you apply it. If you can only win by moving quickly... well, frankly, you're no good at all.

While arm locks are particularly dangerous, there are many other ways to maim and kill. Incomplete throws and wrapping throws must rank among the most dangerous techniques we have.

Throwing too hard
When you throw your opponent, you will be tempted to look where she is going to fall. Everybody is.

Don’t look down.

You need to finish every throw. Almost all judo throws are finished by looking over your shoulder. This rotates your shoulders, thereby rotating your opponent’s body. Rotating generates power, but it also puts your opponent into a nice sideways position, so he will land on his side and not on the back of his neck. Looking in front of you instead changes your throw into a slam. These slams can kill.

While I’m on the high horse, do not ever try a throw you cannot complete successfully. Many people use wrapping throws, for instance, because they are very powerful and can drag an opponent to the mat even if the thrower’s technique isn’t very good. Alas, wrapping throws are also very destructive. They ruin shoulders by pulling the arm away from the body at the very moment and place of impact. The body goes down, the arm goes up, and the ground pushes the bones of the shoulder apart. It’s nasty. Two of my friends have separated their shoulders this way. It takes 8 weeks to heal—every day of which your opponent will be thinking of how to murder you.

Principle 1a (corollary): Don’t hurt yourself

I chose the wording of Principle 1 with a little care. “Anybody” includes you, dear reader. Don’t hurt yourself. Protect yourself.

On a very practical note, you should know a simple rule: Lose early, lose often. It is very dangerous to try to fight when you have been caught in a throw. Your primary goal in the dojo should be to save yourself from injury, not defeat. To do so you need to accept loss, enjoy the flight, and do a complete, safe, breakfall. On the ground, protect yourself by tapping early. There is no point in getting knocked out unnecessarily or in straining an elbow. Tap early, tap often.

Sometimes, you will feel like your partners do not share your commitment to peace, harmony, and enjoying old age sipping oak-aged liquor with a hound by their feet. You may find yourself quite afraid of some people around you. Over the course of my training, I have been quite afraid of many people in my dojo. In fact, I’m afraid of some even today. Sometimes, my fear has been misplaced, and my partner has turned out to be a gentle judoka. Sometimes, my fear was well-founded, and my partners abused my trust. Sometimes, I wanted to take the fight outside so I could run my opponent over with my car.

It is perfectly natural and perfectly right to be afraid of some people, and it takes only the smallest amount of courage to deal with them conclusively: the courage to say "no". If you are afraid of someone, avoid him. I regularly avoided training with some of my colleagues when my dojo had many bad characters.

Judo is like every other martial art. It attracts dicks and small-minded thugs who want a safe place and an excuse to bully. Recognize the assholes as an inevitable part of learning a fighting art, and then avoid them. As judo cannot be practiced alone, with luck they’ll soon find themselves not practicing at all. Perhaps—perhaps—they will find themselves practicing only with each other, and pulling only each others’ shoulders out of their sockets, thereby rendering themselves little threat to anyone at all.

We should be so lucky.