Throwing — One Principle, Seven Rule Sets

Overview

A judoka, a freestyle wrestler, a Swiss Schwinger and a glíma wrestler all put the same human being on the ground. They do it with the same physics, the same leverage, the same centre of gravity. And still none of the four throws looks like any of the others — so little, in fact, that on first contact the four of them frequently cannot even grip one another.

The reason is simpler than the variety suggests: the grip determines the physics. Where you are allowed to hold the other person dictates which forces you can apply at all — and therefore which of the two possible throwing mechanics is reachable. A long-sleeved judogi permits something a short-sleeved shuai jiao jacket simply cannot offer. A ban on holds below the waist deletes half the physics and forces the other half into its most spectacular form.

This article places seven throwing systems side by side — judo, freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, shuai jiao, sambo, glíma and Swiss Schwingen — and traces each back to the same physical foundation. It is the companion piece to The Roundhouse Kick in Six Systems and follows the same thesis: the technique is not the invention but the solution. The problem is set by the rule set.

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The Physics: Only Two Principles

The most important ordering achievement in this field comes from the Italian physicist Attilio Sacripanti. At the 5th International Symposium of Biomechanics in Sports in Athens in 1987 he presented a classification that reduces all 77 judo throwing techniques to two Newtonian principles (now openly available as arXiv:0806.4091):

1. The Physical Lever

The body of the thrown person rotates around a fixed point — a fulcrum that the thrower creates and holds. That can be a hip (o goshi), a leg (uchi mata), a foot (sasae tsurikomi ashi) or a shoulder (ippon seoi nage).

The decisive requirement is a block. Without the fixed point for the body to tip over, there is no lever.

2. The Couple of Forces

Two oppositely directed forces, applied at different heights of the opponent’s body, generate a torque — with no fulcrum at all. The upper body is sent one way, the legs the other. The body then rotates around its own centre of gravity, because it has nothing else to rotate around.

Classic examples: the foot sweeps (ashi barai), the major outer reaps (o soto gari), and virtually every suplex in wrestling.

Kuzushi, Tsukuri, Kake

Both principles presuppose the same thing. In his reassessment of the scientific foundations of Kōdōkan judo (arXiv:1206.1135, 2012), Sacripanti describes the core sequence as a triad:

Phase	Japanese	In physical terms
Breaking balance	kuzushi	projecting the centre of gravity out of the base of support
Entry and fitting	tsukuri	building the fulcrum or the couple of forces
Execution	kake	energy transfer

Kuzushi is nothing mystical but a geometric statement: as long as the projection of the centre of gravity falls inside the area spanned by the feet, a person stands. Once it leaves that area, they fall — regardless of how strong they are. This is why throwing systems are the one field in martial arts where a substantially lighter person can reliably control a substantially heavier one.

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The Seven Systems Side by Side

System	Grip on	Legs grippable?	Preferred principle	Victory by	Thrower stays standing?
Judo	judogi: sleeve, lapel, back	banned since 2010/11	lever	ippon: back, force, control	not required
Freestyle wrestling	bare skin, head, legs	central	couple of forces	pin or points	no, you go down with them
Greco-Roman	above the waist only	strictly forbidden	couple of forces, extreme	pin or points	no
Shuai jiao	short-sleeved jacket, belt	permitted	lever and couple	opponent touches down, thrower stands	yes, mandatory
Sambo	kurtka with grip tabs, belt, legs	permitted	both, plus leg locks	total victory, throw, submission	for total victory, yes
Glíma	fixed harness at hip and thighs	no, the grip is fixed	couple of forces, from stepping and timing	opponent’s torso touches the ground	staying upright is mandatory
Schwingen	jute breeches at the hip	via the breeches	lever, from the breeches grip	both shoulders in the sawdust	one hand must stay on the breeches

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Judo — The Lever System

Among all seven, the judogi is the most generous tool: long sleeves, a firm lapel, a stable back. It allows a point to be created and held on the opponent’s body far away from their centre of gravity. That is precisely the precondition for a long lever arm — and the reason judo is regarded as the technically finest of the seven.

Sacripanti’s classification assigns the majority of classical judo throws to the lever group: the thrower places hip, leg or shoulder beneath the other’s centre of gravity and tips them over it. The thrown body rotates around that block.

The 2010/11 rule change. The IJF banned direct leg grabs — morote gari, te guruma, the classical kata guruma. The trigger was a statistical analysis finding that these techniques were being used as low-risk opening attacks, producing a competitive picture the federation judged technically impoverished.

The effect on technique was larger than a rule clause suggests: with the leg grab went judo’s simplest way of applying a couple of forces below the centre of gravity. What remained was the route through the grip on the fabric — that is, the lever. Anyone watching competitive judo today is watching a system optimised into its lever half. Since 2025 the IJF has begun to relax the ban again.

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Freestyle Wrestling — The Couple-of-Forces System

Wrestlers have no fabric. Bare skin, sweat, no grip that holds — and with that the long lever arm structurally drops out. What remains are the anatomical handles: head, neck, armpit, wrist, hip and above all the legs.

The characteristic mechanics follow directly. The double leg is the couple of forces in its purest form: the shoulder drives the upper body backwards while the arms pull the legs forwards. Two opposing forces, no fulcrum required. The opponent’s body rotates around its own centre of gravity.

The second major difference is the landing. A wrestler goes down with the throw. Because victory is the pin — both shoulders on the mat — the throw is not the end but the transition into ground control. A judoka throwing this way surrenders their advantage; a wrestler who stays standing surrenders the match.

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Greco-Roman — Physics Under Constraint

Greco-Roman is the most interesting of the seven, because here a single rule generates the entire technique: no holds below the waist. No leg grabs, no leg trips, no hip entries with leg contact. The rule traces back to the Napoleonic soldier Jean Exbrayat, who regulated lutte française in early 19th-century France.

The consequence is inescapable. If you may neither grip nor block the opponent’s legs, you cannot create a fulcrum below their centre of gravity either — the lever largely drops out. That leaves the couple of forces. But a couple of forces needs two application points at different heights, and both must lie above the waist. The distance between them is therefore small, and a small lever arm demands large force.

That is exactly what you see: the Greco-Roman wrestler lifts the opponent clear of the ground and rotates them in an arc over his own head. The suplex is not showmanship but the only remaining solution. Where judo works with a lever arm of a metre, Greco-Roman works with thirty centimetres and has to pay the difference in trunk strength. It is why Greco-Roman wrestlers have the strongest backs of any throwing athletes.

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Shuai Jiao — The Throw That Has to Stay Standing

Shuai jiao wears a jacket, but a short-sleeved one. The difference from the judogi sounds marginal and is fundamental: the sleeve grip and the grip in the crook of the elbow — the basis of nearly all gripping work in judo — are simply unavailable. Grips are taken on the jacket, the belt and anatomical handles.

The second defining rule is the scoring: the opponent must touch the ground while the thrower remains standing. A throw you go down with does not count. That excludes an entire technique family — the sacrifice throws (sutemi waza) that use your own balance as a weapon.

What emerges is a system of fast, upright grip exchanges and throws designed for immediate recovery of your own stance. Shuai jiao stands closer to wrestling than to judo despite wearing a jacket — because the legs may be gripped and because no long sleeve lever is available.

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Sambo — The System That Banned Almost Nothing

Sambo is the only one of the seven that removed hardly anything. The kurtka is a short, tight jacket with grip tabs at the shoulders, worn with a belt, shorts and wrestling boots. Leg grabs are permitted, leg locks are permitted — precisely the technique group judo forbids.

The result is the broadest collection of the seven: judo lever throws via the jacket grip, wrestling couples of forces via the legs, and leg locks as the continuation on the ground. Anatoly Kharlampiev, who systematised the art in the 1930s, intended exactly that — sambo was explicitly created as a synthesis, not as a school of its own.

The practical effect shows in MMA: sambo grapplers bring a repertoire neither a pure judoka nor a pure wrestler has, because both gripping worlds are trained instead of one.

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Glíma — When the Grip Is Fixed

Icelandic glíma inverts the problem. The wrestlers wear a belt around the waist and further belts on the thighs, connected to the main belt. The grip is taken at the start — one hand on the hip belt, one at thigh height — and then never released.

That removes what constitutes half the work in all six other systems: the grip fight. Both have the same grip, the same lever length, the same preconditions. What remains is pure timing.

Two further rules shape the picture:

• Staying upright is mandatory. Bending is treated as a major fault. That forbids lowering your own centre of gravity — the universal defence against throws.
• Continuous stepping. The wrestlers move constantly in a circle. This stígandi prevents stalemate and generates the moments of imbalance from which a throw becomes possible in the first place.

Physically, glíma is therefore an almost pure couple-of-forces system in which the only variable is timing. You win when the opponent touches the ground with the torso — the region between elbow and knee. A wrestler who is thrown but lands on hands and feet has not lost.

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Schwingen — The Breeches Grip

In Swiss Schwingen both fighters take hold of the other’s short jute breeches at the hip, one hand at the front and one at the back. The bout takes place in a sawdust ring twelve metres across.

The breeches grip sits exactly where the opponent’s centre of gravity is. That is the shortest possible lever arm to the target — and simultaneously the most direct access to the centre of gravity itself. Schwingen therefore works less through wide tipping motions than through lifting, turning and setting down: you move the centre of gravity directly instead of working around it via a block.

The victory condition sharpens this further: both shoulders must lie in the sawdust, and the winner must keep at least one hand on the breeches throughout. A throw in which you let go does not count. Control is thus demanded across the whole sequence — not merely up to the throw but past the landing. Afterwards the winner brushes the sawdust off the loser’s back.

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The Three Adjustment Screws

1. The Grip

It determines the length of the lever arm and therefore whether a lever is possible at all.

What is offered	Lever arm	Consequence
Long-sleeved gi (judo)	long	lever throws dominate
Short-sleeved jacket (shuai jiao)	medium	hybrid, closer to wrestling
Breeches at the hip (Schwingen)	very short, directly at the centre of gravity	lifting and turning instead of tipping
Fixed harness (glíma)	fixed for both	grip fighting disappears, everything becomes timing
No fabric (wrestling)	anatomical only	couple of forces dominates

2. The Legs

May you grip below the waist? If the answer is no, the simplest way of applying force beneath the centre of gravity disappears — and the system migrates either into the lever (judo after 2010) or into the force-intensive couple (Greco-Roman). If the answer is yes, wrestling emerges.

3. The Landing

What counts as victory retroactively determines the entire technique.

• Thrower must stay standing (shuai jiao, glíma, partly Schwingen): sacrifice throws are out, your own balance is inviolable.
• Thrower goes down too (wrestling): the throw is a transition, not a conclusion. Ground control is part of the technique.
• Force and control decide (judo, ippon): it is not enough to bring the opponent down — they must be brought onto their back with impetus and under control. That favours large, wide throws over small placements.

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What This Means for Your Own Training

Changing style costs you the grip first, not the technique. A judoka in wrestling practice rarely fails for lack of understanding of kuzushi — they fail because their hands find nothing. Conversely a wrestler in judo instinctively reaches below the waist and gets penalised.

Kuzushi transfers across styles; nothing else does. The principle of pushing the centre of gravity out of the base of support holds unchanged in all seven systems. Learn it in one and you have learned it everywhere. The entry movement, by contrast, is bound to what the grip offers and has to be rebuilt from scratch.

The short lever arm is a strength-training argument. Anyone coming from Greco-Roman, Schwingen or glíma needs more trunk and back strength than a judoka of the same size — not because the system is cruder but because the available lever arm is shorter and the difference has to come from somewhere.

Breakfalling is not a side issue. In the systems where the thrower stays standing, the thrown person lands alone and uncontrolled. That places higher demands on breakfalling than in judo, where the thrower carries part of the landing through the grip.

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Common Fallacies

“Judo is the most technical throwing art.” Judo has the longest available lever arm and therefore the greatest room for fine technique. That is an advantage of the garment, not evidence of the system’s superiority. Under glíma conditions — fixed grip, no bending — the judoka would be technically disarmed.

“Wrestlers throw with strength, judoka with technique.” Both deploy the same two principles. The wrestler needs more strength because he lacks the fabric with which the judoka extends his lever arm. That is a statement about materials, not about training quality.

“The leg grab ban ruined judo.” It shifted judo — from a two-principle system towards a lever system. Whether that is a loss depends on what you want from a competitive sport. In 2025 the IJF began relaxing the ban again.

“Traditional folk wrestling styles are primitive precursors.” Glíma and Schwingen have narrower technical catalogues because their rule sets are narrower — not because their practitioners understood less. Glíma’s fixed grip is not underdeveloped gripping work but the deliberate decision to remove the grip fight from the sport and stake everything on timing.

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Sources and Further Reading

• Sacripanti, A. (1987/2008): Biomechanical Classification of Judo Throwing Techniques (Nage Waza). 5th International Symposium of Biomechanics in Sports, Athens 1987; arXiv:0806.4091 — the reduction of 77 throwing techniques to two physical principles
• Sacripanti, A. (2012): A Biomechanical Reassessment of the Scientific Foundations of Jigoro Kano’s Kodokan Judo. arXiv:1206.1135 — kuzushi, tsukuri and kake read physically
• Jigorō Kanō: Kodokan Judo — the primary source on the throwing system and its systematics
• International Judo Federation (IJF): competition rules — authoritative on the leg grab regulation since 2010

Related Articles

• The Roundhouse Kick in Six Systems
• Judo
• Wrestling
• Greco-Roman Wrestling
• Shuai Jiao
• Sambo
• Glíma
• Schwingen