Gripping Playbook

The companion guide to The Grip Fight: Kumi-Kata for the Developing Player. The First Month plan in this series taught you the standard grip and the beginner games built on it. This playbook is the layer above: the full grip map, the pairing tables that connect grips to throws, the breaking sequences written out step by step, and the drills and round formats that build a grip game on purpose. Print it. Work the plan at the back. Bring it to class and let your instructor correct the parts your hands get wrong.

How to Use This Playbook

Work it in order the first time through. The grip map tells you what exists. The pairing tables tell you what each grip is for. The breaking sequences give you the exits. The drills and round formats are where the skill is actually built, and the four week focus plan at the back assembles them into training. After that first pass, the playbook becomes a reference: look up the grip that beat you on Tuesday, find its break, drill it Thursday.

One rule runs through everything here. Grips are held loose and tightened at the moment of the throw. Every drill in this guide is failed by a player squeezing at full strength from the first touch, however clean the rest of the work looks.