Russian Sambo before WWII

[sdf]

http://video.mail.ru/mail//sverchkov.78/1/2.html

[ashe]

so how is sambo different than judo?

[Dmitri]

Leg locks... and the SC jacket.

[ashe]

and the gammy russian chicks...

[sdf]

so how is sambo different than judo?

Sambo is melting pot of different systems, so if you find some resemblance with others MAs it's pretty normal things

[CaliG]

I've been told that basically the Soviets took old judo and figured out ways making it easier to use the techniques.

Usually what they would do is use the influences from the folk styles of the Soviet Union as well as Mongolia, China and central Asia.

The big difference I've seen is that sambo/Russian judo players are much more interested in controlling their opponent before they throw them than what you see in Japanese judo where they tend to rely more on speed.

For example they'll grab a leg/pants and then sweep you, so you can't regain your balance, where as the Japanese styles will rely more on timing and speed to pull off the sweep. Also unlike the Japanese judoka, the Russian judoka don't shy away from using wrestling techiques.

I think of it as judo made easy or street judo. Good stuff.

Thanks for posting this.

[Fubo]

I've always liked this video.

Does anyone know who the instructor in the white gi at the beginning is?

[CaliG]

I think he is either Vasili Oschepkov or Victor Spiridonovhe.

The founders of Sambo deliberately sifted through all of the world's martial arts available to them to augment their military's hand-to-hand combat system. One of these men, Vasili Oschepkov, taught judo and karate to elite Red Army forces at the Central Red Army House. He had earned his nidan (second degree black belt out of then five) from judo's founder, Kano Jigoro, and used some of Kano's philosophy in formulating the early development of the new Russian art.

Sambo was in part born of native Russian and other regional styles of grappling and combative wrestling, bolstered with the most useful and adaptable concepts and techniques from the rest of the world.

As the buffer between Europe and Asia, Russia had more than ample opportunity to evaluate the martial skills of various invaders. Earlier Russians had experienced threats from the Vikings in the West and the Tatars and Genghis Khan's Golden Horde from Mongolia in the East. The regional, native combat systems included in Sambo's genesis are Tuvan Khuresh, Yakuts khapsagai, Chuvash akatuy, Georgian chidaoba, Moldavian trinta, Armenian kokh, and Uzbek Kurash to name a few.

The foreign influences included various styles of European wrestling, Japanese jujutsu, and other martial arts of the day plus the classical Olympic sports of boxing and Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. Sambo even derived lunging and parrying techniques from Italian scherma fencing.

Sambo's early development stemmed from the independent efforts of Oschepkov and another Russian, Victor Spiridonov, to integrate the techniques of judo into native wrestling styles. Spiridonov's background involved indigenous styles of Russian martial art. His "soft-style" was based on the fact that he received a bayonet wound during the Russo-Japanese War which left his left arm lame. Both Oschepkov and Spiridonov hoped that the Russian styles could be improved by an infusion of the techniques distilled from jujutsu by Kano Jigoro into his new style of jacket wrestling. Contrary to common lore, Oschepkov and Spiridonov did not cooperate on the development of their hand-to-hand systems. Rather, their independent notions of hand-to-hand combat merged through cross-training between students and formulative efforts by their students and military staff. While Oschepkov and Spiridonov did have occasion to collaborate, their efforts were not completely united.

Each technique was carefully dissected and considered for its merits, and if found acceptable in unarmed combat, refined to reach Sambo's ultimate goal: to stop an armed or unarmed adversary in the least time possible. Thus, the best techniques of jujutsu and its cousin, judo, entered the Sambo repertoire. When the techniques were perfected, they were woven into Sambo applications for personal self-defense, police, crowd control, border guards, secret police, dignitary protection, psychiatric hospital staff, military, and commandos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28martial_art%29

[Fubo]

cool, thanks

[Andy_S]

Seems like a good backgrounder on Sambo - albeit one that (to my eyes, at least) rather underplays the Japanese influence. Interestnig to note, though, that one of the founders fought in the Russo-Jap War, where the Russians got a royal arse kicking from the boys from Nippon. That experience could well have made him think, "Job tvodjemaj, comrades, it might be worth looking at Jap MA!"

Would be nice to see a similar backgrounder on Systema.

[sdf]

Seems like a good backgrounder on Sambo - albeit one that (to my eyes, at least) rather underplays the Japanese influence. Interestnig to note, though, that one of the founders fought in the Russo-Jap War, where the Russians got a royal arse kicking from the boys from Nippon. That experience could well have made him think, "Job tvodjemaj, comrades, it might be worth looking at Jap MA!"

Just to follow your brilliant logic... How come in 1945 Nippon boys after got their arse kicking by Soviets boys didn't adopted systema ?

[Dmitri]

...cause it didn't exist?

[ashe]

good stuff guys.

[sdf]

...cause it didn't exist?

I was actually jocking:) But in fact Russian had their own MA systems way before Sambo. However, those systems weren't wide spread and passed strictly within family members cricle. For example Kadochnikov got his knowledge from his grandfather.

[CaliG]

Seems like a good backgrounder on Sambo - albeit one that (to my eyes, at least) rather underplays the Japanese influence. Interestnig to note, though, that one of the founders fought in the Russo-Jap War, where the Russians got a royal arse kicking from the boys from Nippon. That experience could well have made him think, "Job tvodjemaj, comrades, it might be worth looking at Jap MA!"

Well they do say judo a lot of the time when referring to sambo.

I think that's partly to pay tribute to the Japanese.