Give Them The Finger(lock)

Ah, you gotta' love old Wally Jay.
There are obviously universal qualities that all grappling arts share, but Wally Jay and son Leon have really refined joint locks with "Small Circle Jujitsu".
Our fellow Dojo Rat Corey trained with the Jays in London and again back in the Midwest along with George Dillman. I met and trained briefly with Leon in Portland. Small-Circle Jujitsu is a perfect compliment to the Aikido and Chin-Na I've done, and the flow drills ease the transitions between techniques in a resisting opponent.
Look at the finger locks Professor Jay uses on the student in the video. Done correctly, I have not met anyone that will not react to a finger lock in a very predictable way. It is something a small person can apply to a much larger person, from a variety of angles.
Now, nobody carries on like in the video above, the finger lock is intended to cause pain and distraction in an opponent while you line up a knockout technique.

The Shutdown, Part 2

In a previous video we discussed the "Shutdown", jamming the opponent's weapons at his biceps. In this video, we have a flow drill that comes out of it. Don't let the appearance fool you, that shot with the shoulder is more powerful than it appears. Combined with the elbow smash and eye rake, it's a pretty devastating technique. Go easy on your training partner!

Neutralize With "The Shutdown"

Boy, we are such amateurs at video production, but we're having fun with this stuff.
-- This is a simple drill from the Small-Circle Jujitsu system, called 'The Shutdown". The purpose is to establish a control point and body awareness when you are confronted at close-range. It is best done slowly with eyes closed, feeling your way to the control point on the opponent's bicep area on the upper arm. Once you get on it, you keep foward pressure on the opponent, preventing them from hitting you. This gives you a split second to fire off your own technique. As stated, this is NOT intended to try to hold or restrain the opponent, merely to jam them up while you transition into a strike, lock, takedown etc.
This is the most basic level of this drill, others involve moving to the flank and grounding opponent by draping your arm across theirs, pressing their arm tightly against their body and hitting with your free arm. We'll try to get some of that on video next.

Get a Grip

Finger-locking Drill

Lights, Camera, Dojo Rats, Action!
We'll have to brush-up on presentation a little, but we're back in video business again.
Here's a little drill on how to acquire finger-locks. As stated, the idea is not to hold somebody down, but to provide a momentary painful distraction to hit. Like the Ryukyu Kenpo guys say, lock to strike, strike to lock.
Try to snake your fingers in to prevent him from reacting and pulling back. As with all joint locks, make sure there is no slack in the structure of the technique, preventing him from wiggling out.

Counter-Lock Flow Drill

I realize now we have to do this with a brighter background, but here's some more lock- flow stuff.

Basic Joint-Lock Flow Drill

Here is an example of a basic lock-flow drill. The idea, as you learn the drill is to keep nearly constant pressure on each lock until the next one is applied.
Another interesting thing is the person being locked has very little leverage to hit back.

How "Small-Circle Jujitsu" Changed Everything

Jujitsu Master Leon Jay (left) The Dojo Rat "Away Team" (center) and Dojo owner Stan Miller (right), At a Seminar in Portland

There are two schools of modern Jujitsu: Brazilian Jujitsu (BJJ), which rose to cult status ten years ago, and there is "Small-Circle Jujitsu" (SCJJ). Of course, this is just my interpetation, but here goes: BJJ is great on a one-to-one fight when you have plenty of time and you're not going to get run over in a parking lot or have someone stick a knife in your back while you are rolling on the ground.
Jujitsu has evolved from a Samurai kill-or-be-killed art to a sport, the same sad legacy of modern Tae Kwon Do. After World War Two, G.I.'s and Marines were returning from service with a new and devestating combat art (jujitsu) which was generally practiced as modern Judo. The art has always employed throwing and locking techniques, although at a somewhat less sophisticated level than Aiki-jitsu and Aikido. Brazil, which had it's own "Wild West" culture, had a lot of Japanese immigrants, and "Vale Tudo" (anything goes) emerged as Brazilian challenge fights. The peak culminated with Mixed-Martial Arts, and most matches are won in submissions on the ground, crappy for streetfighting.
Ah!, you say, so tell us somthing new...
Enter Wally Jay, a tall Chinese-Hawaiian with powerful Judo skills. Wally Jay is responsible for refining jujitsu techniques to the most sophisticated level I have seen, and they have since found their way into every joint-locking system around. Wally Jay's jujitsu, and that of his son Leon, Ed Melaugh, Ron Ogi and others is not a roll-on-the-ground and choke art, it is STAND-UP FIGHTING. Through his innovation of the "small-circle technique", which rotates locks on the shortest possible axis, and other methods such as "thumb-wrist entry", Wally Jay created a stand-up jujitsu that allowed for repeated joint-locking flows, strikes, sweeps and throws.
The Jays are absolute masters at fingerlocking, and lead huge Black Belts around in complete agony. Moreover, they have developed methods for snatching fingers, wrists and neck chokes that most systems had never used.
The next level of development came when the Jay's began working with George Dillman of Ryukyu Kenpo, known for it's pressure-point knockouts. The two systems meshed prefectly, with the motto "Lock to strike, strike to lock" emerging. Further enhancement arrived with Ron Ogi. Ogi is the inheritor of James DeMile's system, DeMile being Bruce Lee's top student. Ogi, and subsequently Ed Melaugh added DeMile's Wing Chun striking and a modern hybrid art was born. Professor Remy Presas of Fillipino stickfighting fame influenced the system by adding flow drills, which allow the practitioner to move smoothly from lock-to-lock-to-strike-to-lock, etc. You have to see it to believe it. Jujitsu locking and takedowns, Ryukyu Kenpo pressure-point striking, Wing Chun centerline concepts, and Fillipino-based flow drills to practice safely. It's one hell of a hybrid system.
Up here at the Rat's nest, Shima Dojo, this is what we practice on the "hard arts" side. Myself and a couple of the other guys are also heavy into Tai Chi. That may not seem compatable, but it is. The Tai Chi smoothes everything out and helps keep it one continous flow. As I said in a previous post, I'm working on uploading some video of our flow drills, hopefully soon.