How to Turn Toketa into Osae-Komi
Teach this ne-waza drill to help your judoka get past defences and into a hold down. At the end of this post there is a free Certificate for you to download and give to your judoka once they’ve learnt this skill.
If you’re interested in teaching ne-waza: then you might also like to look at the premium coaching resource: Ne-waza Turnovers. This bundle consists of 30 high resolution templates (certificates, posters and coaching key cards) to print as you teach ten ground work turn-overs and hold-downs.
Ground work matters!
Teaching ne-waza to children is essential. You only have to watch Sally Conway’s amazing escape into a hold down at the Rio Olympic Games to be reminded that groundwork matters. Yet too often, it becomes the forgotten part of any training session.
My sensei, the late Don Werner (7th Dan) would say often: “Judoka Don’t Float! At some point the contest will end up in groundwork. You better be good at.”
Don would make sure we spent the first hour of all training sessions going through several hundred ground work uchi-komi. It had a notable effect. We became fast at switching from hold down to hold down, at getting our hands in quickly and instinctively for turnovers as we drilled around 30 different moves each class and quite often this led to an advantage in a contest.
From this training emerged hundreds of ne-waza drills – like this one you can read about below. Or this one: how to teach a simple groundwork turnover.
Here’s is the first ne-waza drill and free resource of the ne-waza series:
How to Teach Newaza:
Turning Toketa into Osae-Komi
Osae-Komi = Holding
Toketa = Hold Broken
How to get past uke’s legs and into Kesa-Gatame
You come so close to applying the hold down, but your leg gets trapped. All your hard work is going to go down the drain unless you act fast and free that leg. You need to bypass uke’s defences and quickly get into a hold before the referee calls Matte.
Start in-between uke’s legs. Grab hold of the collar with one hand to keep control of uke’s upper body. With your other hand, push down on uke’s leg.
Quickly – before your partner realises what is going on – bring your knee through the gap. Kneel on the mat, trapping uke’s leg underneath. Make sure you kneel on the mat rather than on uke’s leg.
Maintain pressure downwards on the collar, and use your other hand to control the other side of uke’s jacket. Uke will attempt to curl up and wriggle away as they realise they are in trouble. Don’t let them!
Now bring your other leg through the gap and sit through into a Kesa-Gatame.
Ways to train this move
At the start, it is enough just to practise the drill with the aid of a helpful uke who allows you to extract the leg. As tori’s skill level progresses, uke can play a more active role making it progressively harder and harder (although not impossible) to get the leg out.
For advanced judoka practise the drill starting from a tachi-waza transition, that typically ends with tori between uke’s legs (eg. Ouchi-Gari.)
Free Resource:
Download & Print and Use at your Judo Club
How to get the Newaza Skills certificate?
You’ll find this free resource in the Coach Resource section of this website, along with a whole host of coaching goodies! Just scroll down until you find it, add it to the cart, and check out. At the moment it is a free resource
It will stay free until we release the next free resource in one month’s time.
So, if you want it – get it now!
Don’t miss the monthly free resources! If you want to be notified when we release the next resource simply sign up (you will also get another free resource, the Spirit of Judo Certificate ) as a thank you for signing up.
More Resources Await
Looking for more resources to teach ne-waza?
Expand your judoka’s range of groundwork skills with the Newaza Turnovers Bundle. Get 30 high quality coaching resources (including certificates, posters and coaching key cards) to teach ten different turn-overs and hold downs.
