Overthinking

One of the things my sensei likes to drill into us is the idea that Judo is very much a thinking martial art; he extended his shiai days long beyond his physical peak by becoming a more thoughtful competitor and working bouts at his own pace, emphasising control over speed and raw physicality (not that he’s any slug in that department, either).

This is an approach which I’m more than happy to pursue; with over 100 kilos to shift around the mat, I’m never going to be able to move around with the kind of speed smaller fighters do, so slowing them down, and using smarts to bring my strength to bear is going to be a far better approach; moreover, it’s one that will work at 40, 50, or however long I choose to do judo for.

It is possible to overthink, though; one flaw, especially in my tachi-waza, is a tendancy to suffer paralysis-by-analysis, where I can see what an opponent is trying to accomplish, and spending all my time running scenarios through my head rather than clobbering them. Similarly, I’ve gone backward on committing to attacks because I’m trying to avoid obvious counters when they don’t come off. Of course, coming in half-hearted makes it inevitable that they will.

With my weight and strength, the only ways a twisting, charging attack like ouchi-gari is going to fail is because I’m not putting all my effort into it, or a mis-timing.

The other peril of over-thinking is the seduction—which I feel as a constant tug—of trying to master too much. Alan competed with tai otoshi as a favoured throw and most top level of competitors have a fairly small cluster of favoured throws; but with scores of throws in the kata, it’s tempting to look at how the many different throws can be applied to different scenarios, and end up being able to do a bunch of throws badly. Some times everything is a nail, more or less. Best to have a really good hammer.