Writes http://commoncog.com. Talks about books, career moats & the art of business, from the perspective of an operator. Yes cats.

In Judo, the Four Rules of Gripping are:

1. Don’t let your opponent get a usable grip
2. If they get one, break it
3. If you can’t break it, attack
4. If you can’t attack, prepare to defend or counter. 

The 4 rules are profound because they give you a syllabus.

For eg, (3) tells you to build fake attacks.

I talked about the 4 rules of gripping in Judo yesterday and some of you seemed to like it, so I think I should expand on it a bit more.

Each of these rules are actually a lot deeper than you might think.

Again: I’m not sure how well these composes over to BJJ, and I don’t do jujitsu, so please exercise judgment!

Writes http://commoncog.com. Books, protocols, and the art of business, from the perspective of an operator. Yes cats.

Can we make this simpler, at least for beginners? Yes: for the vast majority of people, they cannot throw if they don’t have a lapel grip.

So your job is to just deny them the lapel grip. (Sleeve doesn’t matter).

If vs a right hander, deny their right lapel grip. Reverse for left handers.

Note that ‘usable grip’ doesn’t mean ‘no grip’! If they have a lapel grip but low on your body, near your stomach, that’s a useless grip. You’re fine.

The key insight is that Judo is actually a game of putting your opponent is situations where you have a usable grip and they don’t.

I don’t know if Farcaster likes long threads, but let me continue lol:

(2) implies knowing how to break grips. There are lots of videos on grip breaks so I’ll skip over this, except for two points that don’t seem to be emphasised enough (but everyone picks up on it eventually).

If you’re up against a strong gripper, you might not be able to break their grip. This is why this is rule 2 in the 4 rules, not rule 1.

Prevention is always better than cure.

Also, all competitors do grip exercises to strengthen their grips.

Second, there is a window of 1.5 seconds before someone solidifies their grip. The best time to break a strong person’s grip is then.

So if you’re up against a really really strong gripper (e.g. someone above your weight class), you need to break within that window.

I've already talked about Rule (3): which is that every Judo player should have in their arsenal some bail-out throws.

Such 'fake attacks' are really an adaptation to the Judo ruleset, so are least likely to be useful outside the sport.

They are hard to counter, and tend to result in a ground fight.

Anyway, the last thing is (4) — prepare to defend or counter.

This just means: go learn some defence and counters. Which, to be fair, every decent judoka eventually learns on their own.

It's just the Four Rules that are not as widely known.

(1) Don’t let your opponent get a usable grip hinges on: “what is a usable grip?”

If you think about this, the only sane definition is “a usable grip is one where your opponent can throw”

But each opponent is different! So one implication is you need to deny whatever your opponent wants.