Ukemi waza - Falling techniques

Ukemi means "body control" while falling. Due to the repeated exercise of falling techniques, you learn to control your entire body. Ukemi "passive activity" is. The result is the goal of judo, namely the willingness to throw and to be thrown. A good level of ukemi is not only for the safety of the judoka very important, it also promotes the development on the way (Do).

The basic idea of ukemi is: The force of the impact of UKE must be spreaded on the largest possible area of the tatami, and so relieve the impact. While falling is soughted to "land" on a large area and to protect the pain sensitive "rough edges" (knees, elbows, shoulders, wrists, etc.) of the body. By appropriately chopping, the impact energy is scattered much wider and partially transferred to the ground. A perfectly controlled ukemi allows UKE to drop from a certain height, high falling speed and massive impact energy without injury.

Physical studies have shown that at well executed throwing techniques (Nage waza) from the stand, the forces can be up to 12 times body weight of UKE. These force peaks can be achieved in just 0.2 seconds. Is the partner/opponent accelerated by judo techniques and be thrown, the kinetic energy can be either soft on a long way or hard on a short way stopped, whereas it has two basic forms of ukemi developed:

Soft falling - When the roll forward (Mae mawari ukemi) or backward (Ushiro mawari ukemi) we find forms of soft fall. Especially young judoka must learn the orientation in area. Medical studies have shown that the three-dimensional orientation from children will be developed between the age of eighth and ten. The trainer should not tread e.g. a six year old judoka to do the "judo roll".
Hard falling - If there are fast and explosive movements executed, the hard falling (Mae, Yoko, Ushiro- and Jiyu ukemi)) usually is unavoidable. The same goes for throwing techniques where UKE is controlled during the throwing phase (Kake) by TORI in his movement and trajectory. This kind of falling requires a lot of practice, because the coordination of the whole body - the transition from relaxation to the optimal tension, knocking resilient and instant relaxation - must be done in a split of a second and at the right moment.

There are a variety of falling techniques, but all ultimately based on the base falling exercises:

Ushiro ukemi – falling backward
Yoko ukemi – falling sideways, right and left
Mae ukemi – falling forward
Mae mawari ukemi - falling forward with a role
Ushiro mawari ukemi – falling backward with a role
Jiyu ukemi – free falling