Before coaching some of the World’s best players at the highest levels, Yusuke Kanamaru had an illustrious competitive career, winning four All Japan Judo Championships and two World Championship medals. Here are some examples of techniques from Kanamaru’s Judo tree applied in competitive situations.

Kanamaru’s first World medal was a silver in the 2001 Munich World Championships in Germany. In the round of 32, Kanamaru produced this beautiful kneeling morote-seoi-nage against Zivan Mihailovic of Serbia. In a right against left situation, with the powerful upward drive so typical of his tokui-waza, he manages to direct Mihailovic onto his back for Ippon.

Despite Uzbekistan’s Andrey Shturbabin adopting an extreme right-handed posture in their round of 16 match, Kanamaru managed to score twice by dropping underneath the Uzbek with his favourite kneeling seoi-nage, tenaciously driving for each score. Even though he knows it's coming and has just been caught with it, there is nothing Shturbabin can do against Kanamaru’s speed and athleticism. But it’s his commitment and persistent drive that get him the score.

In the quarter finals Kanamaru picked up a yuko score on Yagoubi Noureddine from Algeria with this single-sided seoi-nage. A huge array of seoi-nage attacks in his armoury. With the Algerian pressuring to get the score back, Kanamaru adjusts his sleeve grip before switching from his right stance to launch a deep left sode-tsuri-komi-goshi scoring an emphatic Ippon.

Kanamaru then made light work of Min Sung-Ho of the Republic of Korea in the semi-final match up. Scoring waza-ari just 10 seconds into the fight with another explosive kneeling morote-seoi-nage right underneath his opponent. With Min chasing a place in the final, Kanamaru struck again just 20 seconds later, this time his left sode-tsuri-komi-goshi doing the damage for a second waza-ari and the win. Kanamaru clearly thrilled to make it into his first World Championship gold medal contest.

In an epic match that is considered by some to be one of the greatest World finals, Kanamaru faced off with Russia’s Vitalii Makarov, who went on to become three times world medallist, World Champion and Olympic silver medallist.

After being threatened with a very low seoi-nage attempt, Makarov keeps his rear leg further back, creating the space for Kanamaru to then drop into tomoe-nage. In the next exchange, as Makarov takes a deeper grip over the back, Kanamaru again tries for the tomoe-nage. With Makarov using his strong left grip to dominate Kanamaru’s’ shoulder, Kanamaru attempts his elbow-through seoi-nage, but unfortunately gets countered. This would have been the perfect situation for Kanamaru to use his reverse seoi-nage had he been able to react quickly enough, but this technique had not yet appeared on the international scene.

Undeterred, and chasing for a score, Kanamaru continued to apply the elbow-through seoi-nage repeatedly throughout the contest, coming close to scoring several times as the final wore on. Makarov did an outstanding job to avoid so many great attempts that would have thrown many of the World’s other top Judoka.

Although he did not win the World title on that day, Kanamaru put on a seoi-nage spectacle for the World to see. Each time with greater ferocity, he comes so incredibly close to scoring. An incredibly high attack rate from Kanamaru, locking in for so many committed attacks, Makarov is just able to avoid getting scored on, and wins the title.

In the Rio de Janeiro 2007 World Championships round of 32, Kanamaru again demonstrated his stunning sode-tsuri-komi-goshi as he dispatched Rocco Keith Bock from Namibia, switching from his right stance to throw left for ippon.

In the repechage, facing a strong left-handed opponent in Russia’s Salamu Mezhidov, he utilised his elbow-through seoi-nage launching the Russian into the air and rotating for a waza-ari score and the win.

Wary of Kanamaru’s seoi-nage repertoire, Sezer Huysuz of Turkey took up a bent over posture,in their Bronze medal match, hanging onto both Kanamaru’s sleeves. However, the space this created between the two allowed Kanamaru to drop underneath the Turkish fighter with his yoko-tomoe-nage for waza-ari. Closing out a tough fight, Kanamaru managed to hold Huysuz for another waza-ari and win his second World Championship medal.

The imaginative development of his Judo tree saw Kanamaru acquire the skills to win 2 World Medals and achieve a host of other incredible successes! Incorporate the principle of a Judo tree into your training and see what it can do for you!