Mini Ep. 53: Kuzushi

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free, go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And in this week's mini episode, I'm going to continue some of the strategy conversations from the last two. I do recommend if you haven't done so, going back and listening to the two prior episodes that we did on technique chaining and on shifting platforms. I'll put links in the show notes to make those easier to find. Today, in this week's mini episode, I want to talk about Kazushi, which is a related concept and very important to understand, especially when you're standing up. Kazushi is a concept that comes from Japanese martial arts like Judo. It roughly means breaking balance. And the idea is, when you are attempting to set up a throw, you don't just do a throw. Just like with techniques on the ground, and just like what we talked about in the last few mini episodes, it's very hard to execute a technique successfully against an opponent who is in perfect alignment. If they've got their base, their posture and their structure, if you haven't done anything to force them to react to you, attempting a single technique is not likely to get a lot of results by itself. And the same thing applies when you're standing up. If you are having a lot of trouble getting throws, there is a good chance that you're trying to throw or the takedown without any Kazushi, and that leaves your opponent in a perfect position to see the move being telegraphed at them and to respond accordingly. You see this a lot with beginners who will shoot a double without any setup at all. Their opponent sees it coming, there's nothing blocking them from sprawling, and so the whole thing just falls apart. This is a very common problem, especially in Jiu-Jitsu where people tend not to train enough stand-up to really get good at this kind of stuff. So one of my friends is a Judo black belt and he once gave me this advice about Kazushi. He told me that when you are trying to throw someone, you don't want to just do the throw from a dead stop. Rather, you want to focus on getting that person off balance. You want to be pushing them and pulling them. It doesn't have to be particularly technical or even pretty. You just need to get the other person moving. And that can be as simple as pushing them, pulling them. When you do that, it forces the person to move their feet to respond to you. And much like how we talked about in the technique chaining episode, music is the space between the notes, and Jiu-Jitsu is the space between the techniques. So your best window to throw someone or do a takedown is when you catch them between movements, when one of their feet is off the ground temporarily and they're settling their base because you pushed them or you pulled them and they have to move their body to prevent themselves from being knocked over or losing their balance. Those are the moments when you are best able to actually execute a throw or a takedown. And this isn't just about Judo, the same thing applies to wrestling. You should always think about how can I better set up and execute my singles and doubles? What can I do to have the person moving when I go in for that shot? Because if they are at a dead stop, first of all, they're in a better position to sprawl on you, but second, it's also easier for them to pay attention to what you're doing and to react accordingly. If on the other hand, you're constantly off balancing them, then they're going to be so focused on that, there is a chance that they might not even see the throw or takedown coming, and even if they do see it coming, they might not be able to do anything about it because their feet might not be positioned in the right place. So Kazushi doesn't always have to be pretty. A lot of the time it is simple as pushing on the person or pulling them by their collar. The collar drag is an amazing Kazushi technique because in addition to being a great way to get the person to the floor, even if that doesn't succeed, it is a great way to get the person off balance. If you are doing stand-up with someone and you are not constantly pushing at them and pulling them to force them to react, you're not doing stand-up most effectively and you're denying yourself the best opportunities to actually succeed at that throw or that takedown. So when you're standing, always look at every throw or takedown through the lens of Kazushi. What am I doing to set up this throw or takedown to make it more effective? If you're trying to throw or take someone down when they're at a dead stop, it's going to be a lot harder. And these concepts also apply on the ground as well. A lot of the time it is Kazushi that allows us to succeed with ground techniques. So for example, a lot of guard sweeps and leg entanglements involve getting the top person off balance so they have to put their hands on the mat. That allows you then to get out from underneath them, to sweep them or to enter a leg entanglement. So Kazushi is relevant on the bottom as well. It's an example of technique chaining, which we talked about two weeks ago in that mini episode. So I hope this is helpful. Kazushi is a simple concept, but it really matters when you're standing and also when you're doing Ne-waza groundwork. There's more like this at BJJmentalmodels.com. All of the episodes of our podcast are there. They're free, they're intended to be timeless. We don't run third-party ads, so I recommend checking those out and shoot me a message on social or via our website if you're not sure where to start. I'm happy to listen to what you're working on and give you suggestions about where you should focus your study within our framework. And I also tell people if you like this type of content and you really want to benefit from a complete framework in this capacity, please do consider joining BJJ Mental Models Premium. You can get that and all of the other podcast content I talked about at BJJmentalmodels.com. I'll put a link in the show notes, but as always, thank you for listening to this mini episode. I hope you found it helpful and I'll talk to you in the next one.