I know from experience almost all the accidents that can happen on a tatami, in randori, in combat, or in training. I also know, but I do not want to know them, the accidents deliberately caused by dangerous techniques. Those are the most serious. People do not realise it, but several people have died from a judo accident, rupture of the cervical vertebrae, poor resuscitation following a strangle. There have been many cases.

When there is an accident, do you intervene?

Through my experience of practice and teaching, I know roughly what one can do and what one cannot do with someone who has had an accident, at least when I have seen the accident. When I know what happened, I almost always know how to act.

Did you learn techniques in order to intervene?

At one time, when someone passed black belt, their teacher would strangle them and resuscitate them. And then he would teach them the resuscitations. I was initiated when I was a brown belt, because I was already teaching.

That was the secret part of judo teaching, kwatsu?

It was kwatsu, yes.

Did you yourself strangle your students in that way?

I never did it. It happened that I strangled students in randori and resuscitated them, but I never wanted to do something spectacular like that, because there were unnecessary risks. But one must know the process of strangling and the process of resuscitation through kwatsu.

What exactly is kwatsu?

Kwatsu is a technique originating in Chinese medicine. It is very old, it was already taught in Japan with jujutsu. Kano transmitted it with judo. Like acupuncture, it acts on points on the body, and provokes reflex reactions of resuscitation or recovery for emotions, for pain, shocks, fainting, bleeding.

Is kwatsu different from Western methods?

It is not different, it is simply that no one dares to intervene in the case of an accident. If people had a little knowledge, if they dared, they could at least begin by touching the body. Here too there is a question of experience and sensation through touch that is an integral part of judo, a tactile sensation one acquires through practice. I always start by gently palpating, I see what is displaced, in what direction it is displaced and in what direction one can act. Never brutally, always gently, turning, searching, one can put it back easily. If one is not sure, it has happened to me, then it is always possible to send the person for an X-ray.

Who taught you?

My teacher, Mr Philippe, taught me, but I was led to do it before learning.

You treated before knowing?

It was necessary. I took risks, it is true, but one must take risks when one is responsible for a class. If one does not put a dislocation back immediately it damages the ligaments, and it is much more difficult to put it back afterwards. Whereas there is not much risk in putting it back as soon as the accident has happened. Now people prefer to take an injured person to hospital. But at hospital, before being treated, one sees an intern, then the consultant, one is anaesthetised, one has an X-ray, and all that lost time makes the joint harder to reduce. They reduce a dislocation under X-ray, it is absurd.

Today, since people do judo in stadiums, they treat in hospitals. The dojo is no longer considered the place for complete work of the body.

The medical profession is opposed to that. It removes from doctors a certain prerogative that someone could treat in their place. If it is done well, some are not foolish and accept it. But others are against it. From the moment it is not a doctor who intervened, we are threatened with after-effects, complications.

Waiting for help to arrive, remaining under observation in hospital, are these ways of fixing oneself in the face of a situation? One freezes?

And afterwards it is much more serious because it has been immobilised.

So healing is acting in continuity with what has happened?

I had an unhappy experience this year. I fell ill in December and I stayed lying down for a week without eating, without drinking. One has to be mad to do that, knowing perfectly well that it is not what is appropriate. The day I began to react in order to get out of this illness, which was an ordinary flu, it was too late, I had done considerable damage in my body. It is an ordeal that supports what I am saying. We human beings are made in such a way that immobility is not good for us. For us, it is mobility that is appropriate. What is immobile is dead. One cannot be immobile, ever. Whatever happens to me, if I immobilise myself it is finished, I fall into an abyss. If I mobilise myself, I come out of my abyss.

Is it with that idea that you act on the tatami in the face of an accident?

If something happens on the tatami, I must be ready to intervene immediately. I cannot lose time taking off my shoes or my jacket. That is why I am in a judogi, whether in competition or training. When, for example, someone has something wrong with a knee, I intervene immediately. In that case people, even doctors, straighten the leg. One must not straighten the leg, it is truly a mistake. The first thing is, on the contrary, to fold the thigh above the muscle and bend the knee as far as one can without causing pain. Then to tip it from side to side to see whether there is an injury and where it is located. Those are the manipulations one must do. One must do them calmly and with mastery.

I heard you dispute the way some physiotherapists treat the injuries one gets in judo. Their method did not seem right to you…

Not always.

Why?

Recently I disputed the method of a physiotherapist who had recommended that someone with knee pain lift weights on a machine. He proposed strengthening the knee to compensate for ligament failure, whereas the body’s logic imposes another form. Each person must feel it for themselves. In that case, it had no logic at all with improving the knee. What would he have done by lifting weights with his foot? He would have strengthened his calf a little, his thigh a little, but he would not have improved his joint.

What did you advise in that case?

I advised working the knee with the weight of one’s own body rather than working it seated on a specialised machine. The fewer artificial supports one takes, the better one will get out of it.

Which is a way not only of working the knee, but of working the whole body with it, of not isolating the various parts of the body?

If he had only rehabilitated his knee, the rest of the body would no longer have had action and would have weakened. After the knee, one would still have had to spend time mobilising the body again to recover the dynamism capable of compensating for a dangerous action, otherwise one would have risked a new accident. In the same way, instead of working in fragmented sessions, I advised him to exercise his knee all the time, during his daily activities.

I have seen other people come here to the dojo to consult you, people other than judoka?

Yes, it is true. It happens sometimes.