- John Mellon
- Apr 1, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 2, 2025
Wally Jay and the Evolution of Small-Circle Jujitsu
Ask anyone to compile a list of the martial arts movers and shakers of the 20th century, and you’ll likely see Wally Jay’s name near the top.
A three-time Black Belt Hall of Fame inductee — 1969 Jujitsu Instructor of the Year, 1990 Man of the Year and recipient of the 2011 Honorary Award — Jay founded small-circle jujitsu.
After spending decades teaching and refining his system, he passed away in 2011 at age 93, no doubt secure in the knowledge that he’d groomed a successor who was fully capable of continuing his life’s work. That successor is his son Leon.
Since he assumed the mantle of the small circle, Leon Jay has overseen the system’s development. In fact, he’s established an international reputation for being a martial arts technician and, more important, a teacher who can convey the superior mechanics for which the art is renowned.
The 10 Key Principles of Small-Circle Jujitsu
The essence of small circle’s techniques and mechanics is described by 10 key principles that Wally Jay formulated:
Balance
Mobility and stability
Avoiding the head-on collision of forces
Mental resistance and distraction
Focusing to the smallest point possible
Energy transfer
Creating a base
Sticking, control, and sensitivity
Rotational momentum
Transitional flow
At any given moment, more than one of those principles will be applied, Wally always said, and during the execution of a combination, it’s likely all of them will be in play. Naturally, the development of small-circle jujitsu that’s taken place under Leon remains consistent with those principles.
One field that’s captivated him is the refinement of techniques through the use of pressure points. Wally discovered the value of a number of points decades ago through trial and error, and Leon has committed himself to conducting a structured study of this discipline. This is precisely how Wally hoped his art would continue to evolve.
The Small-Circle Philosophy
“My father always emphasized that you should never be afraid to be open with what you have,” Leon says. “We were at a seminar one time, and Remy Presas was teaching. One of his young students came rushing in and said, ‘Professor Remy is stealing your techniques!’
“My father thought about it for a second, looked the student in the eye and then reassured him. ‘Yes, and I’m stealing all of his,’ he said. ‘We call it sharing.’ That’s the small-circle way: Always be ready to share what you have, and you’ll get back more than you give away.”
In that spirit of sharing, Leon Jay and I present these three small-circle jujitsu defenses. We’d feel honored if you were to “steal” the moves and make them part of your self-defense arsenal.
Triceps-Tendon Armbar
The triceps-tendon armbar is a core technique of small-circle jujitsu, as is evidenced by the fact that several variations of it exist to suit different defensive scenarios. That makes it an ideal move to demonstrate how mechanical efficiency functions in the art.
One variation of the triceps-tendon armbar happens to be the technique Wally Jay used to start almost every seminar he taught. It illustrates a fundamental mechanical principle of two-way action.
Taking a volunteer from his seminar audience — usually a young, athletic-looking black belt — Wally would square off with him. Once each party had assumed a relaxed neutral stance, Wally would ask the volunteer to punch him with either hand. As soon as the young man had raised his arm a few inches, Wally would grasp the wrist with his matching hand (right for right, left for left) and rotate it outward.
He’d place the palm of his other hand on the volunteer’s elbow and then form the hand into a fist. As he pulled and lifted with the wrist-holding hand with the intent of moving it toward his same-side hip, he’d drive the knuckles into the triceps tendon, rolling the elbow while pushing inward and downward.
Wally dubbed this the “confrontation triceps-tendon armbar” because rather than applying it from a grab or other static starting point, it was designed to be a dynamic response to a punch.
Leon demonstrates the technique in the accompanying photo sequence. To better understand the move, note that the short tendon running from the base of the triceps into the elbow is the location of a golgi tendon organ (GTO).
Once activated, the GTO instructs the joint to disengage rather than continue to resist and risk a bone break. Activation of the GTO is akin to a fitness instructor at the end of an exercise telling the class, “And relax…”
This small-circle technique illustrates two-way action. Leon pulls and lifts the wrist while pressing and pushing at the elbow. Practitioners of Wally Jay’s art regard this as superior to merely securing the wrist and applying leverage at the elbow.
The use of the GTO is also significant. Wally was always searching for the most efficient way to overcome resistance, and he found that various GTOs and other pressure points could be incorporated into the system to make it more efficient.
Not surprisingly, Leon is continuing that tradition.
Outward Wrist Twist
This technique can be found in aikido, aikijujutsu, hapkido, shorinji kempo, and almost any grappling system that includes wrist manipulations and throws. I’ve studied several of these arts and still find the small-circle version unique.
In part, that’s because it can be implemented in a basic way using two hands, yet the mechanics are so effective that single-handed application, with either a matched (“cross-body” in small-circle parlance) or unmatched grip, is both practical and powerful.
Once again, two-way action is implemented. Specifically, the thumb (or thumbs) pushes and presses while the fingers lift and pull. The technique also illustrates the importance of multiple mechanical principles being applied simultaneously. Two-way action is combined with “focusing to the smallest point” and disruption of the opponent’s balance.
You might think this is normal — after all, the use of kuzushi, or off-balancing, is common in judo and jujitsu — but in the small-circle implementation, the wrist is bent not simply to the outside of the elbow and shoulder line. That manner of execution would result in the opponent being thrown away from the martial artist.
Instead, small-circle practitioners prefer to bend the wrist in a tightening circle, first outward and over and then inward (toward the thrower’s center) and down. The resulting forces deposit the attacker at your feet within easy reach of numerous follow-up techniques.
In actuality, the expression “tightening circle” is not entirely accurate. The path is more of a spiral that shrinks. An easy way to visualize it is to imagine the wrist lock as taking place inside a funnel. To follow the technique through to its logical conclusion, you must continue to apply force to the point of the funnel.
Finger-Lock Control
From the earliest days of his art's existence, Wally Jay sought to expand its arsenal of finger locks, and now Leon Jay is seeking to do the same. I’ve encountered martial artists from differing backgrounds who protest that small circle's finger locks aren't unique, and there's some validity to their complaint.
However, unique properties are involved, and they're emblematic of the system precisely because they express the mechanical efficiency of the style so well.
A trademark of small-circle jujitsu is the control of an aggressor through the manipulation of a single finger. It works on a psychological level, as well as on anatomical and physiological levels. Interestingly, small-circle stylists usually begin by learning to manipulate two fingers at a time because this reduces the range of articulation of the captured fingers, resulting in less to control in terms of reducing the potential for escape.
The art teaches by encouraging a question that builds on that base: If the manipulation of a small joint can confer control over the whole person, what can the defender achieve by counterattacking larger targets and exploiting bigger vulnerabilities? It quickly becomes clear that for both self-defense and arrest purposes, tiny amounts of physical force can have exponential effects.
Earlier, I said finger locks are emblematic of small-circle jujitsu, and that’s for two reasons. Externally, they are because of their visual and visceral impact. Internally, it’s because they bring together so many mechanical principles.
They begin with two-way action, continue along an ever-tightening parabolic path, and then focus to the smallest possible point. If I were to describe the essence of grappling (with the possible exception of chokes), it would be as a simple process that does two things: takes the slack out of the joint and compromises the opponent's balance.
By this definition, small circle in general and finger locks in particular are the epitome of effectiveness. Just as a wrist lock efficiently takes the play out of the wrist, which then isolates and limits any possible articulation of the elbow and shoulder, a technique that starts with the fingers—assuming the requisite skill and sensitivity are there—is an even more powerful statement of skill and control.
Because such techniques are highly controllable, they're particularly useful for law-enforcement and military personnel, who must pay close attention to the issue of reasonable force vs. excessive force.
The logic: If the worst should take place—that is, the aggressor refuses to stop struggling—the most serious consequence is likely to be a broken finger. In the execution of a finger lock, the practitioner’s control over the maneuverability of the opponent is enhanced as tiny changes of direction and angle create large and very immediate effects.
Anyone who’s endured the small-circle “dance of pain” at the hands of either Wally or Leon Jay will attest to this. It's an illustration of the principle of transitional flow, which allows the user to vary the source and direction of the pain to prevent the assailant from adapting and resisting.
Strategic Approach
“If there is such a clearly definable thing as a typical small-circle stylist, I would say we would prefer to operate as a counterfighter, allowing our opponent to commit and then punishing him for it,” Leon Jay says. “We train for that by teaching students a referencing system to resistance. No matter how tight or how painful a locking technique is, the opponent will habituate to the discomfort and then the resistance is coming! We circumvent this by maintaining each lock for only a few seconds before moving to another, which is why transitional flow was such an important concept to my father.
“Taking an opponent through several locks in sequence with no opportunities to escape is demoralizing. We’ll usually finish with a throw—the ground is another weapon, after all—then we either walk away or pin the opponent.”
It’s clear that Leon Jay is guiding small-circle jujitsu further along the strategic course his father envisioned. At the same time, he's laboring to take that message to the world—in several forms.
“Over the past few years, I've been trying to bring small-circle judo back to the prominence it once held,” Leon says. “Personally, I can't perform the art to showcase it adequately due to old injuries from an automobile accident, but two of the really great judoka my father trained—David Quinonez and Brad Burgo—are still doing it and refining it continually. They've started to teach at our camps, which is wonderful because small-circle jujitsu wouldn’t exist without small-circle judo.
"Judo was my father’s proving ground for jujitsu; it’s where he developed and pressure-tested many of his principles and technical improvements. I don’t think we can go forward without bringing that part of the art back into its rightful place at the core of the system alongside finger locks and the like. It's our roots, and you should always appreciate where you come from.”
