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John Danaher Talks The Importance Of Owning Your Favorite Technique

John Danaher Talks The Importance Of Owning Your Favorite Technique

For one reason or another a certain technique will always stand out to an individual. Whether it’s playing into your body type or your personal preferences a favorite technique will always stand out.

Notorious coach John Danaher talked just that in his latest posting:

 “The importance of tokui-waza:

So often the Japanese grappling tradition expresses great wisdom. A core concept in the Japanese tradition is that of tokui-waza or “favorite technique.”

Every athlete will naturally develop certain techniques that he or she becomes particularly adept in. Usually it is our personality and body type that determines our favorite moves, though there can be other reasons as well. Tokui waza are extremely important for our technical growth in the sport. As soon as a beginning student develops their first tokui waza, I know they are on the right track.

In our jiu jitsu life, the first tokui waza plays a similar role to our first car, first job, first apartment and first girlfriend does in our adult daily life – it is a critical first step in the path towards grappling maturity. As soon as you have a favorite move, you can add variations and combinations to it. You can develop counters to your opponents counters – IT FUNCTIONS AS MUCH MORE THAN A FAVORED MEANS OF WINNING MATCHES – IT IS A CATALYST TO FURTHER TECHNICAL GROWTH AND PROGRESS.

The acquisition of just one tokui waza will often bring about more technical growth in a given time period than any number of generalized lessons. As time passes you must develop more tokui waza. The number need not be great – I have met many fine champions who had a surprisingly small set of tokui waza. The importance is not so much the BREADTH of your tokui waza, but rather the DEPTH.

The idea of tokui waza is to develop such depth of knowledge and skill around a small set of moves, that once you enter that tokui waza, your opponents cannot match your knowledge and skill in that specific domain and you can overwhelm them there to take victory.

I am sure you can guess what Mr Eddie Cummings tokui-waza is ? Interestingly, when I first met him it was the guillotine. He is a good example of someone whose first tokui waza is not necessarily his mature tokui waza. “

 

A photo posted by John Danaher (@danaherjohn) on