Point pressure techniques in Judo

When talking about point pressure techniques our imagination quickly giving us picture of an old humble Chinese master who in a split of second doing flip and spin to get close to his mindless (and now astonished) challenger and making him frozen in a mid-motion by gentle touch of his chest or back and then turning and slowly heading toward sunset leaving this idiot to un-freeze on his own.

This kind of cliché gave pressure point techniques fairy-tale image that put off any self-respecting martial artist.

Well, I don’t know what pressure points this old man from our hallucinations has been touching, but every judoka and every martial artist and every combat sport player using pressure points in every training session and in every fight.

Well, we’re not making our enemies to freeze, but using concentrated pressure onto specific points to persuade our opponents to give away something to our advantage.

For SAMBO and BJJ masters the best example would be Achilles tendon pinch submission technique (don’t mix it with look-alike, but entirely different foot lock or twist). Other example is all other muscle pinch submission techniques.

In ground fighting all tussles for better position or grip involve putting pointed pressure onto opponent body.

In Aikido all core of Technique #4 is based on creating painful tension by applying pointed pressure of the base of the index finger to external part of an arm about three inches above wrist.

In self-defense arsenal more obvious techniques coming to mind such joint of upper lip and nose (used in one of defense techniques against side neck lock), Adam apple, soft spots behind years.

All nukite strikes (strikes with the tips of extended fingers) aimed to the week body points and can be seen as points pressure techniques as well.

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