In 1964, when judo debuted at the Tokyo Olympics, it had already built up a strong international following. Still, the Japanese were the dominant competitors by far, and Japan was the mecca for judoka around the world.

The Judo community at the time was aware of the rise of Dutch judo giant, Anton Geesink, because of his surprise victory at the 1961 Judo World Championships in the open weight class, the only non-Japanese to ever win an international title at the time. But Geesink’s victory at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics let the entire world know that judo was very much an international sport.

After winning the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, Geesink put his energies into coaching others in judo. He wrote a book in Dutch called “Mijn Judo,” in 1966, which was translated into English the same year. I recently got a hold of that book, My Championship Judo, and saw that Geesink’s development as a judoka was a series of building blocks of techniques he learned throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

“My Championship Judo” is predominantly a training manual, explaining and showing in detail the key judo techniques. But at the end of the book, Geesink talks about how his development went through different phases of focus: Ashi-Waza (leg work) to Uchi-Mata (over-the-thigh throw) to Sasae-Tsuri-Komi-Ashi (which Geesink called “Lifting Leg Block”), and Ne-Waza (ground work). This four-part series will share Geesink’s insight into each of those techniques.

When Geesink was a teenage judo sensation in the Netherlands, he loved his leg work. He said that he played a lot of football where legwork was important, where speed and mobility were vital to success. Thus Geesink believed, is why he developed his Okuri-Ashi-Harai technique, a throw under the category of Ashi-Waza (leg technique), so early in his career.

Here’s how he explains the Okuri-Ashi-Harai technique in his book, My Championship Judo:

To perform Okuri-Ashi-Harai I have put my left leg closely round my opponent’s right leg in order to get my foot against the outside of his ankle. As he has not drawn his legs together, he can turn his right foot so far that my foot gets only as far as his instep. Now Okuri-Ashi-Harai has become impossible and I again product a combination. I quickly take my foot off his instep, place it about 2 inches in front of his toes and keep tugging at him, so that his full weight is transferred to his right leg. (See picture 1.) I have acquired a splendid position for O-Soto-Gari. I raise my right foot high to the front (picture 2) and with a terrific sweep of that leg I shear my opponent backwards of his feet (picture 3).