"Make your practice a friend in the morning, and your discipline a pillow at night." Training: Group Practice generally includes: "組打/組討" The term kumiuchi, or “grappling and striking” has long been used within the Japanese martial tradition. Early forms of warrior hand-to-hand combat involved both clinch-fighting and striking along the lines of sumō, using hands, kicks and stomps, as well as striking using the hafts and ends of weapons, and grappling in armor, or yoroi kumi-uchi . Watatani Kiyoshi, an authority on martial arts, called kumi-uchi “the backbone of jūjutsu .” We use kumi-uchi to refer to basic training in grappling. It can be likened to a combination of sumō and the style known today as “combat jiujitsu,” which involves open-hand striking on the ground. It is done wearing keikogi (or a "gi")or without one ("no gi"), and t raining weapons can be included. The intent is to develop a practical foundation for hand-to-hand combat an...
"They do not have any rough, noisy, and loud pastimes except wrestling, which they practice as an exercise and art for war." - João Rodrigues (1561 - 1633) This Island of Japon Some practitioners of pre-modern Japanese martial arts - koryū - augment their training with some form of combat sport practice in order to add "live" or "freestyle" fighting, as many koryū either eschew sparring practice entirely, or do not place much emphasis on it. This includes weapons' disciplines, where practitioners may add an art like kendo, more rarely another Asian weapons or historical European art with sparring. And jūjutsu, where people tend to study judo or, increasingly BJJ ("Brazilian" Jiujitsu). 1 I've done Judo and jiujitu (to black belt level), but explored sumō as well. While I have been interested in it from very early on, after reading up on Chinese wrestling and sensing a connection between them, I first experienced sumō-like training in A...