Poignant.

[AndrewLewis]

Is it typical for BJJ schools to allow low-level newbies to be choked unconscious, possibly to the point of losing control of their bowels?

If someone is told "if you feel some pressure on a joint or any pain, tap. If you feel dizzy or like you're passing out from a choke, tap. That will tell the person submitting you you're giving up and they'll stop."

If the person being choked didn't tap, that's on them. The exception to this is if both hands are pinned and the person can't tap.
The person on top can't tell when a person is "near passing out". They can tell they either passed out or didn't.
If the person choking felt the tap and didn't stop, they're a piece of shit and that behavior is grounds for being kicked out of most academies and being ostracized by the community as a whole.

I've only seen two people get choked out in my nine years of training, and I've never seen anyone shit their pants.

[Mark E. Hurling]

I've only seen two people get choked out in my nine years of training, and I've never seen anyone shit their pants.

This latter point is no doubt from the tale of Lebell having accepted Seagal's challenge that he had never been and could not be choked out. So Lebell did and Seagal went out and well . . .

Shit happened.

[Mark Rippetoe]

No doubt.

[AndrewLewis]

This latter point is no doubt from the tale of Lebell having accepted Seagal's challenge that he had never been and could not be choked out. So Lebell did and Seagal went out and well . . .

Shit happened.

Reminds me of the advice a friend of mine gave me before my first competition when I drank coffee during warm up:
"You can win or you can shit your pants, but you can't do both."

[Mark E. Hurling]

Reminds me of the advice a friend of mine gave me before my first competition when I drank coffee during warm up:
"You can win or you can shit your pants, but you can't do both."

I came close probably, once upon a time on the mat. I haven't competed since 1975 in judo. In that last match, I got my ass handed to me by the biggest Asian I have seen in real life to this day. He was 6' 7" and 280 lbs. at least. The match lasted less than 45 seconds when he countered my harai goshi and threw me so hard I wasn't completely sure I hadn't crapped myself as tweetie birds circled my head after I crash landed. Happily, my white gi pants remained unstained.

[Mark Rippetoe]

He countered your harai goshi?? I've never once seen a harai goshi countered by anybody. This must have surprised you. How did you cope?

[AndrewLewis]

He countered your harai goshi?? I've never once seen a harai goshi countered by anybody. This must have surprised you. How did you cope?

All of the modern judo techniques are just Japanese descriptions of the movement. Harai Goshi just means "hip sweep."

If he had said "I competed in wrestling in '75 and the guy countered my under-hooked hip sweep so hard I almost shit myself," would that have been much different?

[Mark Rippetoe]

It would have been less pretentious.

[CommanderFun]

I am currently working as a sports agent representing an ornery silverback gorilla who identifies as a human football player. The NFL, in its bigotry, still refuses to allow my client to compete. It saddens me to see the hate on display in this thread, and I see my client and I have a long way to go before society will accept him. #LetBoboTackle

[Mark E. Hurling]

All of the modern judo techniques are just Japanese descriptions of the movement. Harai Goshi just means "hip sweep."

If he had said "I competed in wrestling in '75 and the guy countered my under-hooked hip sweep so hard I almost shit myself," would that have been much different?

Huh. Didn't know a throw like that existed in wrestling. But then I know jack about that particular sport, other than some of it's similarities to Judo and Jujitsu. Thanks for the fetchin' up AL.

As to why I use a pretentious language like Japanese for some things related to martial arts is the same reason Latin gets used for so many things scientific, medical, legal, and religious discussions. The specific words and phrases describe particular techniques and things that are easier to look up than say, an under hooked hip sweep. Kinda like using moment arm and center of mass to describe certain things by certain expert persons.

But to the actual nugget of a rhetorical question among the dung of the trolling. i.e. How did I cope, and someone else's never having seen such a counter before, not directed at you AL.

I coped by getting raised to chest height on this large Taiwanese Judoka (that means Judo guy) and then hurled to the mat and landed upon by that same guy. I suspect I was at least mildly concussed since despite tucking my chin on my chest, the force of the landing overcame the strength of my sternocleidomastoid (like the use of Latin here?) and my head snapped back on the mat, rebounded on his own head, and then recoiled back to the mat again. I coped rather poorly with a headache that lasted several days unabated. I also went to work on patrol that night on graves. Not fun.

As to counters for the technique I mentioned, there are a few. I'll do my best to use SS-ese so as to make it more understandable and less pretentious.

One is to drop the hips under the center mass of the guy trying to throw you. Not really an option for the big guy, since I was 5'11" at the time and he had over 6" of height on me.

Another is to use some lateral hip drive, kinda like pushing the hips up and forward doing a clean or a snatch. There was probably some element of this that was done by the big guy. My memory is a little weak from several decades of time passed and some moderate head trauma.

In my own case, I believe it was simply a matter of too much weight and strength and skill for me to overcome. This competition was a fund raiser for the SIU Judo team and the Taiwanese involved were touring the US as part of their Olympic team. Big guy was a 5th degree black belt (or Godan in Japanese) and I was a mere Ikkyu, the last degree of brown belt before making the cut for black belt. So besides the size difference, there were other major factors for me to deal with. Being a participant in this and having graduated a few years before and only training with the team, I was deemed expendable and got the short straw with this guy.

I might as well have tried to throw a planted light pole with a gi (that's the pajamas Judokas wear) wrapped around it. That's how much I moved him when I moved in for the throw. He looked down at me and grinned and my stomach turned a loop before he even launched.