When you breakfall, should you be relaxed or should you instead tighten your muscles as you hit the mat? Thank you
You can't really tighten your muscles as you hit the mat because you don't know when you will hit the mat. So I would say relaxed. However, after you hit the mat, you get a sort of whiplash effect. you need to to keep parts of your body tensed and immobilized to protect your spine, head, and other vitals. You can get away with more on soft landing surfaces but if you ever breakfall on cement, protecting vitals and keeping your spine from twisting in weird ways becomes basically your only concern. I try to look at the person throwing me, this helps to prevent under rotation where I land on my head. I also try to land on my side from as close to the ground as possible, to help prevent over rotation where I land on the back of my heels or on my tailbone. However, hopefully better Judo people can tell you better information than what I say. I am just providing my opinion on the matter.
Tuck your chin, tighten your core, slap the ground with your arm(s) straight. Always worked for me and kept me from "whiplashing."
Only one thing to add. When you go over swing your arm as far as possible because the sooner it hits the more force it can absorb.
I don't believe slapping the mat does anything beyond forcing you to land in the correct position, with force spread as widely as possible.
I disagree with this. Most times you should have an idea of when you will hit the mat... even if it's just an 'ohh shhh...' moment. You should not be completely relaxed as you hit the mat either. Even with the correct body positioning your body still needs to be supported otherwise the joints become floppy and move in ways they should not as well as increase your chances of being winded by normally tightening your core. So your body should be supported by the muscles. This does not mean it should be stiff. But certainly more than completely relaxed.
I'm not sure what this is saying. You don't tend to want your arm/hand to hit the mat before your body as this increasing the chance of injury to various parts of your arm and shoulder. You want your arm to contact the mat at the same time as the rest of your body when performing most breakfalls.
My sensei did both judo and aikido and that's how I was taught. I've never had any injury this way and it even saved my butt when I flew off my bike 10 feet into the air and landed on pavement.
The more you train, the more things will slow down for you...thus opening up options to manipulate your body, even during the conduct of a throw. If you watch competitive judo you will see this often exemplified by astute judoka who manage to spin themselves to their side or front to avoid an ippon in competition. I would say, in general, you are more 'taut' than tense or loose. Kind of in between. The tightest thing on my landings is usually my calf...which I flex as I hit the ground (actually pull toes back like a karate front snap kick) to help keep my ankle from smashing into the mat. I'm not super rigid during ukemi, but I'm also not too splashy and loose. More relaxed and aware and solid.
You "know" when you hit the mat after it happens. If you think you know before that, you probably haven't been throw into furniture or walls before, nor has someone tried to break your neck on the way down. This can happen in training, doesn't need to be real situations. But we agree on not being totally relaxed. I pointed out in my previous post that you need to protect vitals and keep your spine from getting twisted in weird ways. This is at all times. You need to be relaxed to do this because if you tense up, your body will move too slowly. Only by being relaxed can the body more fast enough to immobilize parts of the body. It is what I call relaxed tension. Relaxed to move quickly within a range of motion, but outside that range of motion, rigid to keep things where they are supposed to be. In fact, I mostly breakfall in a fetal position anyway to immobilize the head and spine from being twisted on the way down. So probably I'm not the best example. Here is a video with like a million breakfalls. The one guy that likes to land more on his side is closest to how I usually break fall. Of course you don't always have a choice, it is tori that can control how you land. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k_feJJAdpc"]Te waza Kyuzo Mifune - YouTube[/ame]
One tip:- always do your damnedest to make sure that soft fleshy parts of you are the 1st to make contact with hard surfaces (mats, concrete, walls, tables etc); and progressively lower yourself onto the full impact of the hard surface contact under lessening gravity and projected force (from the opponent) using progressively fleshy parts to make the contact. Thus your hard parts e.g. bones only make minimal contact due to lessened gravity and dissipated projection force i.e. cause as little damage as possible. Also learn to develop good respiratory skill and recovery/evasion skill for what happens after the break fall i.e. you want to make the break fall advantageous to you and not exploitative for the opponent to follow up with. Everything Rebel said is excellent advice.
The most important is don't let your head to hit the ground. You will survive if you have broken bone but you may not survive if you have cracked skull.
Agree with you 100% there. If your opponent - holds your body (without releasing it) and smashes your head directly into the ground, or - picks you up, releases his hold, and throws you over and behind him, since you won't know which part of your body will hit on the ground first, your head will be the most important part of your body that you will need to protect. You will not have luxury to worry about "comfortable" landing at that particular moment. You can't control how your opponent may throw you, but at least you have control how you want to reduce your risk to be the minimum. As long as you don't have head injury, you should be able to see sun raise next morning.
if your just break falling as a drill it shouldn't really be either you should just be concentrating on slapping the mat, if its when your on the receiving end of a takedown you wont have time to think about anything you'll just do it automatically if you have drilled enough.
Something that was always stressed to me that hasn't been mentioned yet, is slapping your arm at a 45 degree angle from your body. I've done some playing around with this. The break fall doesn't spread the impact over the largest area if you have your arm at a 90 degree angle from your body, or directly next to it. Once I practiced it enough, it's pretty well instinct for my arm to hit in the 45 degree angle range.
90 degrees leaves the ribs tooexposed and close to the body leaves you too exposed to landing on your arm or over rotating ... In my humble experience Alan
at 90 degrees its too easy to post on your arm and break your collar bone, 45 degrees helps activate thr shoulder muscles that abduct the joint and so protect it. Also 90 degreed placed your elbow well away from the body so it can easily attacked.
I'm only just getting back into Judo after a long hiatus, so this is something I've been working out as well. Being as relaxed as possible seems to work for me, whilst also keeping my chin tucked into my chest to avoid pounding my head on the mat as well as whipping it. The extent of the whiplash effect as mentioned will probably depend on the length of your neck. The shorter the neck, the less of a problem it will likely be, though it doesn't compensate for proper technique. Especially when beginning Judo or similar as a adult — a time when we're generally less supple — hitting the mat can offer a considerably greater shock than as children. Even though you list BJJ on your profile, I'm assuming being thrown around from greater heights isn't usual for you? In which case, you'll learn to take the knocks and learn your own subtle tweaks (if necessary) to the prescribed ukemi technique, to offer a little extra protection. One thing to remember if you don't already: when you slap the mat — try to cup your hand slightly — this will help prevent any smarting that occurs when you do.
Agreed. You need to practice on your own but you can't just practice in a vacuum. IMO you need to experience being thrown and in many different ways. Obviously in the beginning with a certain degree of control by your partner. Also, concerning slapping the mat/ground, I see far too many people concentrating on the slap itself. It's not whoever makes the most noise that wins. If you are just training on a forgiving surface like a nice mat, you need to try a breakfall (carefully) on a hard surface without the mat sometimes and do a mental checklist on your body afterwards. Is something hurting now that you weren't feeling before on the mat? Are you banging your ankle (or rather actually feeling it now)? The harder surfaces are the great equalizer and will keep you honest with your falls and all your ukemi for that matter.
