If you have ever studied a grappling art like wrestling, judo, or aikido, you learn two things very quickly. One, gravity is real and two, the ground hits back. I trained with a judo coach for some time and he used to tell us, “Karate guys hit people with their hands and feet, but judoka (judo students) hit them with the ground.” I have used that particular saying ever since. The most difficult aspect of studying a throwing art is learning how to be thrown. You will never learn to throw an opponent if you don't understand how to fall.
A bad landing can have physical and mental effects on you for weeks. I started studying jujitsu when I was 20 years old and like all beginners, most of my first classes were centered on falling practice. The first couple of months were pretty painful. You have to teach your body to do something you’ve learned not to do your entire life; fall down. And when you hit, you hit hard no matter how you land. Learning how to fall is definitely a skill that requires lots of repetition, just like anything else. But the key is building up the courage to let yourself go and accept it. The Japanese term for this is, sutemi.
The term for break falls is ukemi which is used in martial arts like aikido. But the founder of Okazaki Jujitsu, Seishiro “Henry” Okazaki, used the term sutemi to describe not only the physical aspect of falling, but the philosophy behind it. Sutemi literally means, “abandonment” or “self-sacrifice.” Now, that makes sense if you know your way around judo or jujitsu because “sacrifice throws” are used frequently. Remember the old cowboy movies where one dude throws the other by rolling onto his back and taking his opponent with him? This circular throw, tomoe nage, is an example of a sacrifice throw. You sacrifice your standing position in order to gain a tactical advantage.
Letting go of a stable position to achieve a better one does not come naturally to most folks. After working as a therapist in a nursing home for 10 years, I saw a lot of people scared to death of walking because they had fallen so often. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I was in the parallel bars with a patient who I knew had the strength to stand and even take a few steps. Despite the stability of the bars and a gait belt that I held onto firmly, it was a struggle to get some people to budge. Certain patients would actually fight against us by resisting and pushing back in order to stay seated. No amount of coaching or education would change these people’s minds. Sadly, in many cases, we had to give up and let them spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair.
If you think about it, we are all guilty of this kind of fear in some way. Maybe we’ve been hurt in a relationship or lost money too many times. Perhaps we have been disappointed by family, by friends, by life (maybe?). Maybe God hasn't answered a prayer or answered it on our timetable, so we give up and stay in the wheelchair. We watch other people take chances and walk, but we convince ourselves that another fall will break us and after a while, we don’t even try.
There is a great deal to learn from practicing sutemi. A good teacher will start training you from the ground up, slowly allowing you to build your confidence and technique. The hardest part for most people is learning how not to look before they hit. I tell students all the time, "Trust me, the ground is there...you don't need to look for it." They look anyway. Second but just as challenging, resisting the urge to reach and allowing your body fall - abandoning your fears. When we try to keep people and/or life at arms length, we only get hurt worse in the end. You cannot achieve great things if you can't let go of fear.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been hurt and I’ve seen other people injured taking taking a fall even with proper form and technique. In the past 38 years, I sustained two permanent injuries because my mind was not in the right place. The first happened at a demonstration and I was too worried about how I looked in front of the crowd. Eh, AC joints are overrated. Another time I broke my elbow because I was grappling with a guy I really didn’t like and was far too concerned about throwing him before he threw me. Bad move. These injuries happened because I let my ego get in the way. You see, you have to abandon everything to perform and understand sutemi properly. “Self-sacrifice” means more than giving up a stable position. It means giving up your ego, giving in to other’s needs in order to achieve harmony. There are many times I wish I would have done a better job at sutemi as a husband, father and friend.
Sutemi is a concept and practice I really appreciate about Budo, “the path to enlightenment through martial training.” So, I’m older now and I use thicker mats to practice falling and rolling, but I still get in there and let gravity to do its thing. I carry some injuries and a bad fall could hurt me for days. But I’m not going to sit out on life. Neither should you.
Dave Magliano
Jissenkan Budo
Dojo Cho
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