Jiyu Ippon Kumite Playbook

Mat Manual companion guide to "Jiyu Ippon Kumite: The Step Between Drill and Fighting." Print it. The article explains what changes when the counter is no longer set. This book trains it: entry standards restating the gate briefly, attack menus by level, the defender's-choice progression from one answer to a family to free choice, uncertainty ladders, exchange scoring, and logs that record reading and distance, not impressions.

Name: ______________________________ Dojo: ______________________________ Current grade: ______________ Gate test passed (date, from the Ippon Kumite Playbook): ______________

BEFORE ANYTHING: SCOPE AND SAFETY ☐ This book starts at the gate. Students who have not passed the gate test in the Ippon Kumite Playbook do not train from this book, however keen they are. The gate is a pass/fail standard, not a suggestion. ☐ Speed and contact are agreed out loud before every set and written on the session log. Either partner, or the instructor, lowers them at any time without discussion. Raising them needs the standards in this book, never enthusiasm. ☐ Head-level contact follows your school's rule exactly. Where the school stops counters short of the head, short means the set distance, graded on every rep, not an estimate made mid-exchange. ☐ A stopped rep is a completed rep. The stop word or signal ends any exchange instantly, including one that was going well. ☐ Pain that is sharp, in a joint, or still present the next day ends this work and gets reported to your instructor. Exchanges are cheap. Wrists, knees, and ribs are not.

Part 1: Entry Standards: The Gate, Restated Briefly

This book does not re-teach basic ippon kumite. It checks, briefly, that the gate behind you is real, because every part that follows spends the skills the gate certified. An instructor runs this check once, at the start of the block, with the full basic menu at your school's gate speed.

A student who fails one line is not failing this book. They are being sent back to the right book, which is the honest outcome the gate exists to produce. Record the result below, get the instructor's initials, and only then start Part 2. Students who passed in a previous block re-run the stillness and distance lines only: those decay first.

Gate re-check: Distance ☐ Stillness ☐ Ground ☐ Counters ☐ Zanshin ☐ Control ☐ Instructor initials: ______________ Date: ______________