Ukemi

Please be aware of the fact that I'm not a jūdō yūdansha.

Therefore, your nomenclature as well as your techniques may vary from my jūjutsu style. However, I think the points I'm making here do also apply to (Kōdōkan) jūdō ukemi.

Zenpō kaiten ukemi, 1972

Chūgaeri, 1972

Ukemi off the tatami: if you want to try it, please start with performing every waza in the very slowest and lowest way possible, in the most easy format you would use when introducing the respective technique to a beginner in normal class. You can always upgrade later, if you are more familiar and confident with taking the falls at a hard surface.

While I'm training this for many years now, I still don't do it with the same impetus and force, or from the same heights as I use to do it on the tatami. As you will notice I'm no longer at my ideal weight, like I used to be decades ago, which makes the thing more forceful and therefore more difficult. Moreover, and most importantly: I don't want to injure myself, while training how not to injure myself!

In the meantime, I do most of my ukemi in the fashion shown below, even if I practice on the tatami. I think, that provides the best chance of internalization and automation.

Now, here is some of what I do at any rate, when I'm training ukemi off the tatami (we call it "Harte Fallschule" in German language):

1. Mae ukemi

a) Zenpō ukemi

In midair

Videoclip

I make VERY sure that my hands and forearms land WAY BEFORE the elbows touch the ground. Otherwise I very probably would injure my elbows.

By tautening my hands and arching the finger(tip)s up as much as possible, I also make sure that my palms slap the ground first, and much more then the fingers. As one of my yūdansha students - an emergency doctor by profession - as well as I myself had experienced, the blood vessels especially in the lower part of the fingers tend to burst if you slap the ground with to much force and with your fingers involved.

I use this type of slapping with every ha uchi I perform.

b) Chūgaeri

Videoclip

Here is how I do chūgaeri. My deeper exploration of ukemi started with an injured ankle. Since then, I stretch out, and, above all, tauten the leg at the side on which I land, to prevent the ankle from hitting the ground.

Otherwise the anklebone would hit the ground with enough force to injure, or even break it.

I also tense the subtalar joint of the other leg, which takes much of the impact of this technique, in order to prevent my heel bone from injury possibly caused by a hard clash on the floor.

Of course I do the ha uchi as described above.

c) Zenpō kaiten ukemi

Videoclip

My zenpō kaiten ukemi following the same guidelines, isn't much different from the ordinary form.

Videoclip

I also do some other type of zenpō kaiten ukemi, but using it it's more difficult to protect the ankle, and not at all possible to do it in the manner described above. However, as I think this kind of roll is considered obsolete, or, perhaps, even "wrong" in (Kōdōkan) jūdō, I refrain from depicting it further.

2. Yoko ukemi

	Yoko ukemi in midair.
	I slap very early, in the manner described above.
Videoclip	Of course I make sure to land primarily on the side off my bottom, and not on the hip joint. I debark much more padded this way! ;-)

3. Ushiro ukemi

a) Kōhō kaiten ukemi

I do my Kōhō kaiten ukemi pretty much in the same way on and off the tatami. Therefore I didn't take video, as I thought it to be unnecessary. We start the backward roll similar to the standard jūdō ushiro ukemi, but we try not to do it in a straight line, but rather diagonally, like a forward roll, but this time starting from one side of the bottom to the other side's shoulder.

b) (Ma) Kōhō ukemi

Videoclip

This is how we do a backward fall. Again, it may not be relevant for jūdōka.

Here a similar final position is the result of a different technique. In fact, the way it is achieved puts the technique in the Mae ukemi category. Of course I don't do this somersault in the air, like I perform it on tatami.

While I think you don't use this in (Kōdōkan) jūdō, it illustrates very good the function of the stretched and tensed subtalar joints: both feet land on the balls of the feet, instead of the whole soles including the heels, or even on the heels alone, transferring most, if not all of the kinetic energy developed during the fall to the heel bones in this way.

Videoclip

As the subtalar joints are still stretched and tensed, the heels go back into the air after a rather soft impact. The joints had worked like spring systems, and with that had protected the heel bones. That's the same principle as I have described with chūgaeri.

I hope that some of this at least was of interest for anyone apart from me.