While attending the recent Judo World Championships in Tokyo with four of my junior players, one of them turned to me and said, “They don’t seem to be trying to get out of pins.” I had noticed that as well over the years, and had a pretty good idea why this was so.

The easy answer is that late in a match, fatigue is the main reason that players don’t seem interested in trying to get out of pins. This is especially true now that a 10-second pin earns you a second waza ari to win a match. But let’s dig deeper into understanding the “can’t get out of a pin” phenomenon.

For starters, ne waza defenses/escapes are often not an integral part of Judo curricula. One of my colleagues, a distinguished coach at the international level, told me that practicing escapes from pins amounted to practicing losing. I look at it as practicing not to concede a score, just like turnouts are practiced to prevent landing on your back. If defense win games in team sports, why can’t defense win matches in Judo?

We tend to teach and practice techniques that have an official Japanese term attached to them. Since many escapes and defensive techniques have no official Japanese terms, they are just an afterthought. Farther down the line, in the absence of official nomenclature, these skills are not required for promotions. Demonstrating the Go kyo no waza and the Nage no kata gets you promoted to shodan. However, you probably can’t name and demonstrate six ways of getting out of Kesa gatame.

There are ne waza principles, such as the “mass v gap” principle for escapes from pins, but how many coaches know them, teach them, and require they be applied in practice? How often in randori do we require the tachi waza-ne waza transitional play, during which these preventive/defensive ne waza skills are developed? How often do we try to develop in our players the mindset that when you are knocked down it’s the opportunity for your own attack?

Besides the tachi waza-ne waza link that leads directly to a pin, there’s the ne waza-ne waza transition that goes from a turnover to a pin. During the Tokyo Worlds, I was amazed at how often players would lie flat or turtle up, not recognize that they were in the process of being turned over, and not effect any kind of preventive measures. Once pinned, there was no response to free themselves. So, why’s that?

An educated guess is that only one side of a skill is practiced. If we take Sankaku jime to Sankaku gatame, how often do we practice preventing the Sankaku jime in the first place? And do we drill to immediately bridge and turn once we are caught in the Sankaku gatame? This is expressly what situational drills are for.

Finally, if fatigue is a critical issue, we should take a page out of John Wooden’s book. Wooden, the esteemed UCLA basketball coach, realized that while his players practiced free throws as a stand-alone training segment, they were not successful during game time. So, free throw practice soon became part of the scrimmage. This more closely modeled the reality of game play, and his players became better free throw shooters.

If you want your players to be more successful against ne waza skills, teach and practice the principles under game-like situations, develop a nomenclature for evasive/defensive ne waza techniques, require those techniques be part of your rank system, and allow for tachi waza-ne waza transitional play during your practices.