Every once in a while, as I've said before, you absolutely nail something and enable yourself to see just how far you've progressed in your studies. It happened last week, even though I've just gotten to writing it up, in our studies of Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata.

I've been terribly busy, guest teaching in a university theater class on Shakespeare, since I've done a bit of hacking and slashing on stage over the years. It's been interesting to see the students grapple with new ideas - or ideas new to them, at least. All kinds of scholars have pronounced all kinds of stuff about the works of William Shakespeare, but we're not burdening them with any of that. We're guiding them as they sort things out themselves, mainly just making sure they're being sufficiently thorough in their analyses.
It's exactly how the study of kata should go, in my estimation, so it was particularly gratifying to knock a technique out of the park from the very get go.

I had my doubts at first. Uke's attacking with an uki goshi. If there's one throw my guys know how to do, it's uki goshi. It's the very essence of balance, center-based movement, and efficiency, all the usual stuff I'm spouting off about. It's the first throw I teach and the foundation for everything that follows.
My guys all know how to get into position without the victim feeling a thing and make the drop in a fraction of a second. I would always say, 'Don't touch him. You're a ghost. He doesn't even know you're coming in - and then suddenly your center takes his out instantly and unanswerably.'
(Back in Washington DC, the fellows surprised me with the gift of patches and T-shirts bearing a logo they designed for the Yuurei-Do dojo, the Way of the Ghost dojo. They came up with the name based on how I was always telling them to move.)

I wondered how we were going to apply Mifune's four checkpoints against a throw with no discernible kuzushi and a split second of engagement. The counter in the kata is a simple yoko wakare.
I've countered uki goshis before - and I think I got this from somewhere else in the Mifune book some time ago: as you're going over, you have very little time or means to break him, so you put your right hand against the front of his belt. Grab the knot, but drive your stiff arm straight in. That pushes his hips back; he's broken, and your trailing left hand on his shoulder or arm will roll him the rest of the way.

Oh, ye of little faith: Mifune's four checkpoints seemingly lengthen time into larger, more manageable segments. At the very least, they divide your thinking into reliable objectives, even if things remain pretty quick. I killed my partner on my first attempt, and vice versa. We had two minutes of conversation, in which we pondered, 'OK, what are we doing here?' and we saw the solution right off the bat. It's anticipatory Judo.

UKE: FLOATING HIP THROW; TORI: SIDE SEPARATION
They're in right natural posture, and uke makes his attack on the customary third kata step.
[paraphrasing, plagiarizing] When uke tries the right uki goshi, tori assumes a slight defensive posture and TAKES THE INITIATIVE by stepping his right foot in front of uke to apply the yoko wakare.

That's essentially how Mifune wrote it. The phrases 'slight defensive posture' and 'takes the initiative,' are his. Taking the initiative makes all the difference if you're going to counter someone moving as stealthily as a ghost.

1. Kuzushi. By definition, we're going to extend or use the force that uke applies against us to break his balance. If he were coming in for a conventional entry, we'd feel the tug forward, mainly on our sleeve, and maybe a bit on our lapel before he lets go to bring his arm around behind us as he turns. That's what we'd use to launch our center of gravity over and ahead of his, like a surfer trying to get ahead of a wave.
However, if he's in ghost mode, and there's no perceptible force bringing you forward, you're going to have to mirror the motion of his entry. He's still going to turn in the same way. You just have to keep your shoulders square with his, and opposite them, as if your sternums are connected by an eight inch metal bar.
As he turns in for the uke goshi, you're already ahead of him turning for your yoko wakare. That's what Mifune means by taking the initiative. Don't wait for him to throw you.

2. Uke's tsukuri: Imagine that you turn as he turns, your center goes over his, and you wind up in front of him with your body horizontal in mid air. The picture freezes. Tori is at the level of uke's hips or the tops of his thighs.
Uke's going to be broken. His shoulders will be out in front of his feet, and hanging from them, by way of your grip on his sleeve and lapel is your (tori's) entire body weight. Uke won't be able to contain the weight, so he'll roll.
It's important to realize, however, that it was your motion, your taking the initiative that got his shoulders going forward as he entered for the throw. You're moving his shoulders at a time when he's moving his shoulders, so he can't really resist. [This technically belongs back in the Kuzushi section, but] you won't get this resulting tsukuri unless you've moved early enough.
If I tried this too late on one of my guys, which is to say after he stopped moving, I would just hang off him as he stood there.

3. Tori's tsukuri: Mifune's other key phrase was that tori assumes 'a slight defensive posture.' Yes, that means he drops his center a bit and has his legs ready to react, but that also means he makes his upper body all one piece. He's going to freeze his arms and grip at the angles they're in so he can keep what he has as far as distance between him and uke as he goes for the roll.
In that freeze frame where tori is at hip level, horizontal in mid air in front of uke, notice that his center of gravity is in front and just below uke's. He's going to make a center over center throw just like any other.

4. Kake: In fact, the throw will be over in a fraction of a second, when uke's center goes over tori's and uke commences his free fall. Definitely, the throw is concluded before tori has fallen to the height of uke's knees. Tori might hit the ground an instant before uke does, but uke's the one who wasn't planning on going over.
He'll make a very smooth roll, by the way, hitting the ground as quietly as a ghost.

It was a dark and stormy night . . . . and quite the dramatic struggle when I finally figured out the Utsuri Goshi. It was also quite some time ago, back when we were working on the Gonosen No Kata. I was paired with a 250 pound monster whom I was supposed to stop in his tracks, pop in the air, and dump by switching my hip from behind to in front of him.
The other night, in studying Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata, I faced Utsuri Goshi once more, in far more prepared fashion. I knew a bit more about kuzushi and tsukuri this time around. My partner was my same size, which was nice, and this other variable was slightly significant: Mifune's version is a lot easier than Kawaishi's.

I'm probably going to have to rephrase that last bit. It might just be that Mifune's version is a lot more sensible - a lot more anticipatory - than Kawaishi's, or my poor understanding of it.
In the Gonosen No Kata, uke attacks with a harai goshi. In our place, a harai goshi is very much like an O Goshi. The hips get all the way 'around,' which is to say that the person throwing turns his body a full 180 degrees. The back side of his hips is fully flush with the front of his victim's hips. The sweeping portion of the throw consists of contact between the thrower's calf muscle and the throwee's shin bone - yet, blah, blah, blah, as I always say in class, the throw is still 95 percent in the hips, the rolling his center over yours.
That turn, the bringing the hips all the way around and all the way across the front of tori's made the Utsuri Goshi very difficult. Tori stuffs uke just as contact is made, so that would mean his hips are behind uke's. Clutching uke by the midsection with just one arm, the one that had been on his sleeve, tori, pressing with his legs, then has to drive uke up and away enough to give himself time and distance to switch his hip (he'll only have room for one) to the front of uke. As uke comes down bladder first, he breaks over tori's hip and is thrown in an uki goshi, for all intensive purposes.

Having a partner that outweighed me by 80 pounds made it a rough evening, but I figured I'd be pretty foolproof if I got it to work. My solution was to key upon one of Kawaishi's directions, to bring uke's upper body to tori's rear. Tori's hips stop uke's down below, but tori makes a heaving or rocking motion with his upper body so that uke's torso continues to move laterally. The result is that uke rotates in space. His center of gravity stays in place while his body seesaws - or cartwheels, if he's sideways.
That swung his legs out of the way, and I could make the switch with my hips. I wouldn't say there was no lifting at all, but I couldn't lift him much.

Now, here are the key questions: To what extent was I cutting him off at the pass? When I jammed his center with mine, did I allow him to come all the way in and across for a full-on harai goshi?
(I think that in the vast majority of cases, I did.)
Should I have stopped him sooner? That would have made everything easier. Is that what Sensei Mifune is teaching in the NWUNK?

In short, yes. Uke's maneuver is labeled a 'half-hip shift.' Only one leg is overlapping tori's, and judging from the photo, his only option would appear to be one of those crazy, hopping uchi matas, though tori is low and has his midsection clamped.
Mifune is heading uke off at the pass. We know this because we've been working on our light and rapid tai sabaki so we can react like lightning. Also, he writes something interesting: uke tries a hip technique, 'in the form described before.' Uke was going for the Full Monty, not a sloppy uchi mata from a mile away; he just tried hane and harai goshis in his previous attempts. This defense is catching him all the more early and out of position.

Suffice it to say this was a way easier way to operate than it was a few months ago. I wrote Pick Your Battles as a title because seemed that Mifune was using the Utsuri Goshi for an entirely different situation. He was; he was creating an entirely different situation. Pick the nature of your battles, is the message.

Still, I wasn't THAT wrong when it came to the Gonosen No Kata. The instructions do say, 'Tori blocks with his abdomen, and flexes his legs. Uke butts against him, is repulsed and so to speak rebounds against tori's hara (stomach.)' Those are their parentheses.
It says also, the pivot of the effort is tori's stomach and left hip.
Okay, good: so I did follow the directions, but I've also learned something new in the meantime.

UKE: HALF HIP SHIFT; TORI: HIP SHIFT
They're in the right natural posture, and on step three, uke attempts a right hip technique (it could be any one) - 'in the form described before' - which means it's as full and earnest an attempt as any other.
Tori quickly wraps his left arm firmly around uke's abdomen. He shifts uke onto the back of his left hip, as if swinging him (Mifune's words) with the lower abdomen strengthened, and the throws him with the back hip.

Ultimately, this is done as a continuous movement, as super sensitive tori drops as he feels uke's throw commence, engages uke's center, and drives upward immediately. It was very much stop-motion when we first worked on it, as we identified the positions we had to hit and the directions in which to move.
That 'swinging him, with the lower abdomen strengthened' would indicate some degree of Kawaishi-esque rocking.

1. Kuzushi. Tori can break uke's balance by dropping his center and leading with his left hip as he catches uke in his turn. Uke will have come only 90 or 120 degrees into his turn before he's stopped. His center will be knocked to some degree out from under him, though if his bodily structure is not terribly broken he will have lost his bodily unity, as tori's clamping has taken control of his center of gravity.

2. Uke's tsukuri is that he's been caught with all motion stopped and his center substantially higher than tori's. He's lost the ability to move - at all, really, rendering him unable to escape or press the attack.

3. For jet fighters, the ideal attack position is to come in below and behind a target. Such is the case for tori's tsukuri. His center is beneath uke's, so he can use his legs to drive uke into the air.
It's important to realize that tori is not completely behind uke when he stops him with his hips. The edge of tori's left hip bone will be on the outside corner of uke's right buttock. It can even be at the side to a degree. The front crease at the top of tori's left thigh will be near the rear crease at the top of uke's right. Uke's right leg is the only substantial part that has gotten in front of tori.

4. Kake: For all these reasons, tori's making the switch to having his hip in front won't have to cover any great distance. He will have to rock a bit back with his torso as he drives with his legs, in order to swing that small bit of uke's hip and his leg out of the way.
Uke's going to come down, as his legs swing back down, right across the corner of tori's left hip for a quick deflection and drop.
Making this continuous, a nonstop drop-and-drive will take some work. It's all in the position. You'll find yourself dropping pretty low in order to ensure that you really have him. This is the nature of anticipatory Judo, I'm discovering. You must train to make that first fraction of a second quite remarkable. Challenging as that's going to be, I think it's going to be a lot less work in the long run than fighting my way out of trouble.

Time will allow for only a comparatively quick dispatch this time around, as we near the end of Kyuzo Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata.
The first item on the agenda is that I have managed to blunder into something I already knew - on some level - about tai sabaki and the hyper-sensitivity needed for applying these kinds of counters in honest to goodness randori. Last time I went into a gigantic description about moving as carefully you would if you were wearing a pair of roller skates, the idea being to link your body as both structure and network of lightning fast reflexes.
I've written about that sort of thing before, in the example of learning centered tai sabaki while seated on a rolling office chair. That was my explanation for a trick that the Aged and Wise Sensei often used to demonstrate centeredness: he'd sit on the edge of a flimsy card table, his legs dangling, and invite you to try to push him over. You could push or pull him - and the table - across the room, but you'd never get him to fall back or fall off, as the force against his arms and shoulders would be immediately translated to his hips and the table.
See, I knew that. Perhaps I know it better now, and down to my feet, the result of working on containing those uchi mata attempts that come out of nowhere.

Secondly, as we work on the ju jutsu and atemi waza portion of these evenings, the drills on slipping or deflecting blows from an attacker have made their collective point: you don't want to hang around guessing what someone is up to. The reality is that you can slip a blow or two at the onset of an encounter, but it's vital to get in and start clobbering your opponent, exploiting his weakness before he creates his chance to do the same.
I've written about Mifune's Ball, or my attempts to fathom what he might mean by that metaphor. It would seem to refer to revolving about an axis, that if one part of your body is yielding to uke's force, its opposite is coming in reciprocally. How literally one should follow that dictum remains to be seen. I have discovered in these 'sensitivity' drills, however, that as with the atemi waza you do not want to be passive. You have to come in and take some initiative.
In Judo randori you still feel everything he's doing; you still 'make him part of you'; you still translate his every exertion to maneuver warfare of your feet on the mat, but you skew his movements slightly. You make him succeed at everything he's doing, though just a bit differently than he intended. Sooner or later, a big effort on his part will render him fatally off balance. The better you get, goes the logic, the smaller the efforts you'll need to harness.
I knew all that, too. I suppose I'm just applying it more deeply than before.

Consider the Ushiro Goshi, the rear hip throw. Uke's just attempted a forward hip throw, but you've caught him in the act. You've dropped, his rear end is against your bladder, and you have a tight hold around his waist. From there, it's very easy to dump him.
This should not be anything dramatic. It should be as easy as an O Goshi; his center is against and above mine, and an easy roll will dump him. If you've caught uke low, just like I described, you can lean back and turn, rolling his center off yours without effort. (He attacks with a right throw; you stuff him and roll to your left. He lands on his back. )
On the Forum some time ago, a German competitor explained to me how to do a Khabarelli, and I went to practice the next day and nailed it on the first try. That would remind you of a hane goshi - almost. Whether it's the front or the back of your hips against an uke, the motion is the same.

UKE: HIP SWEEP; TORI: BACK HIP THROW
Uke and Tori, grappling in the right handed posture, take the classic three kata steps. On step three, uke attempts a right harai goshi.
As he does, tori advances his left foot, and hugs uke tightly with both arms, having lowered his abdomen. With a 'surge of energy' tori lifts him high into the air and drops him to complete the technique.

Tori's moving his left foot up is a case of his getting both feet beneath him.
I'm surprised, frankly, at the insistence on heaving uke so high in the air. After all this about developing quick and smooth reactions, and having worked through quite a few seamless counters already, it seems crude by comparison. Kawaishi did the same thing in the Gonosen No Kata, and Mifune could be preparing for the upcoming Utsuri Goshi. I'm not convinced it's necessary. We dumped one another at full speed quite easily with simple rolls.
I should point out that Mifune's high lift and drop leaves uke on the ground at his feet. Flashy's roll has uke's center landing behind tori's left foot.

1. Kuzushi. In these close quarters, tori will outrun the scope of uke's kuzushi by bringing his center inward and down as uke makes his first pulling motion. Really, uke only wanted tori's shoulders and torso; with their upper bodies locked together, uke's plan was to find tori's center and leg and proceed accordingly.
Tori has kazooshed uke instead. His body has crossed the divide before uke found the position he wanted, and since uke is stuck somewhere in transit, he's not at his most stable.

2. Uke's tsukuri. Uke's in trouble because he no longer controls his center of gravity. Tori has it clamped in his arms, against and above his own. If uke's motion has been stuffed, his upper body may flail, but his feet are going to be light on the ground. His center is hopelessly anchored by tori's entire body.
If uke is going to be rolled instantly, which is to say his motion never stops as tori rolls him backward, it's still that anchoring, the fact that tori has seized him by the only body part that matters, that controls him.

3. Tori's tsukuri: I've said it already: tori has grabbed the only body part that matters on uke. Why, generally, all this stuff about throwing someone's center of gravity? Because if you control that, you have the 'handle' to uke's entire body. You can grab a guy's head, hand, or arm, but you don't necessarily control all of him. You can pick up a cat by the tail, but just behind the forelegs is going to work better.
Clamping his center to your whole body in this manner is truly a case of making him part of you.

4. Kake: Whether you lift him or roll him, it's your whole bodied movement that is going to move his whole body through space.
Here's a parting shot for Mr. Mifune: wouldn't the rolling motion fit the definition of a ball's reciprocal action better than a lift?

So, as it turns out, I knew all this stuff already. It's just coming around again. I'm reminded of my old Olympic Weightlifting coach, who used to say, 'I can tell you everything I know in five minutes. It'll take you a lifetime to understand it, though.'

The best way to crack Judo's many enigmas, I've discovered, is to spread your efforts over various subjects. It won't be long before you begin finding solutions for certain problems in the most unlikely places. It was on the ground the other night that some answers dawned on me concerning the whole bodied 'readiness' and true tai sabaki that I was mentioning last week.
I told the story that we were working on a counter to uchi matas, and in the reality testing, I was still being caught from time to time by a quick, 'uprooting' pop. How could I be more ready to react, I wondered, and how can I divine what an opponent is up to in a split second's time, especially when an attack can be anything at all? Some new level of physical and mental presence is going to be necessary if we're going to catch the true meaning of the premise Mifune frequently uses in the Nage Waza Ura No Kata: 'Tori sees through uke's intention.'

We were on the ground starting to look into my next blog project, a topic suggested by a reader. He described being utterly mauled by by someone younger, stronger, and outweighing him by 100 pounds. (This is 220 lbs. vs. 320.) After some months, he was making no progress in their matches, despite the fact that he knew a great many more techniques than this comparative beginner. Such huge advantages in size and strength will always prevail, he fears.
That's going to be the focus of our next major project. I've been intrigued by a few comments that Mifune has made in 'Canon,' that kuzushi and tsukuri exist on the mat - as, therefore, would their opposite, tai sabaki or a form of it, I presume. We want to identify very specifically what all of this would entail in terms of position and movement.
We also have to study the enemy. We'll bring in the big man and have him go to work, mauling us as relentlessly as possible. The aim is to catalogue all the maneuvers that bring him success, whether he's crushing somebody, overpowering them, or on his back fighting us off as we try (in vain) to open him up and prosecute techniques of our own. I'm thinking as I write: we won't just roll over and die. We'll make it interesting for him now and then, the better to see how he moves and adapts in a variety of situations.
Long before we come up with any ideas for fighting back, we very average sized guys are going to come to appreciate the art of fighting like a big man on the mat. We're going to learn it, practice it, and succeed at it for its own sake. 12 year old Flashdaughter might have to break out her old gi and earn some extra allowance, or otherwise we'll recreate in slow motion all those lines of attack that resulted in crushing and domination.
Then we'll brainstorm how to handle them. Personally, I think we can find some answers. The other night, we were starting on what is and isn't balance on the ground. The second part of the process will be to build upon an idea I mentioned a few posts ago, Mifune's 'anticipatory judo' on the ground, namely the idea of derailing an attack and moving to safety, or even advantage, long before any trouble can take effect.

That's what the Nage Waza Ura No Kata is all about, after all. Surely you see the analogy a mile away: this reader's getting squashed on the mat is much the same problem as my getting popped on those uchi matas. I'm going to operate under the belief that Ura Waza, that term for 'anticipating an opponent's attack, thinking more quickly than he does,' is universal.

On the topic of knowing your enemy, consider the hane goshi, arguably a quicker attack than the fearsome uchi mata. It's the hockey hip-check, a quick hop and a pop that doesn't need a great deal of drawing the victim forward, since the hips deliver an uppercut directly to his center. This is kuzushi and tsukuri simultaneously. The attacker's center becomes THE center around which the victim's broken body and center of gravity revolve.
This presents some new challenges in the kata. In most of the techniques thus far, we've been outrunning the scope of uke's attempt at kuzushi. Here, uke blocks tori's path - and in a very, very short amount of time. This is a collision, for all practical purposes.
The timing in this technique's arrival is uncanny, as if Sensei Mifune knows exactly what we're going through. Still, he provides one of his most spare explanations yet for the counter. He's forcing us to address the question of seeing through uke's intention.

So let's strap on the rollerskates and see if the austere professor betrays any surprise.
Uke is not on skates, but tori will be, and we're going to cruise around the floor and knock through some easy randori. This is a very smooth floor, by the way, and we're wearing very fast skates, so if there is the least misstep, that leg is going to shoot away in a flash and bring about an ugly collapse.
As tori, you're going to be very worried about making a wrong step and wiping out. When uke starts tugging you around the floor, you're going to be swerving around and hanging on uke's gi in a panic. That won't do, as it's the very essence of a broken posture begging to be slung to the ground.
Suppose you get the hang of the skates after a bit. You're better at keeping your feet beneath you. Uke's not trying to murder you just yet; he's pushing and pulling and moving, so you can get used to keeping your balance. Suppose he gives a sustained push, driving you straight back quite a ways. You'd be tempted to go with it and relax; you'd let your feet take a bit of a lead behind you. Since your upper body isn't reeling backwards, you can lean forward and relax for the first time, relying on the grips on one another's gis to keep your torso in place.
Suddenly uke reverses directions. He's suckered you completely. He plants his foot and in an instant is heading back the other way, drawing you forward. You're not going to get very far. You were off balance, and the second that push becomes the least bit of a pull, you're down, face first, as your legs fly out from under you. (In a regular Judo match, your grip on his gi would save you from the face plant, but you're still surprised and still very likely on your way somewhere you hadn't intended.)
Dropping into a squat works as a response now and then, but you're not going to be anymore stable in the long run, as you're asking for one kind of reap or another. You can be as strong as a sumo wrestler, but on rollerskates you're in trouble any time uke gives you a quick one-two and catches you committing your weight one way or another.
The answer is that you're going to have to come up with some kind of neutral yet live position from which you can make reactions fast and slow, large and small, and in any direction.
'Matte,' you say to uke, because you need more time to get used to the skates. Cruising around the floor on your own, you find this neutral, live position: legs slightly flexed, with your entire body loose enough to handle any sudden changes, yet linked - incredibly - together in an effort to keep your head, shoulders, hips, and feet all in line.
When you and uke take hold once more, you're going to use your linked, live body to make very, very rapid translations between what you feel in uke's motion and where your skates are in the ground. Your hands on his gi not only sense uke's overall motion, they're tuned to pick up the twitching of muscles throughout his body. In order not to wipe out on a set of unforgiving wheels, you're going to be desperate to translate his tiniest movements to immediate, and just as tiny, shifts of your feet.
You start small. Even if uke only moves one arm, say, your whole body from your hand on his sleeve, along your backbone, through the hips, and to the floor, goes with it. As you start to move around the floor, you maintain your tai sabaki. Uke is no further or closer, and you're not on the verge of falling down - which is to say, you're not in a position uke can exploit to bring you down.
I'm not going to get carried away, as much I can imagine sailing through the air over an attempted tai otoshi and sticking the landing, before drilling uke with a magnificent counter, all on rollerskates. You get the point, I hope, that you do have to find a live position from which to operate and be very sensitively tuned to your opponent. It's not a frantic demeanor, but nor is it anything relaxed or casual. You're ready for the tiniest shift or a bomb to go off.

UKE: HIP SPRING; TORI: REAP COUNTER
Remember that uke is drawing tori forward in the kata's customary three steps. On the third, he attempts a right hane goshi. He has a high collar grip and seeks to break tori's body around his hip.
At that moment, tori executes a kari gaeshi, a large counter reap, with his left leg.

That tiny bit includes my elaboration. Now that we have the rollerskates off, this will be a piece of cake.

1. Kuzushi. We can still outrun uke's attempt at kuzushi, and create our own, despite the fact that this is a sudden collision in close quarters.
With the combination of that high collar grip and the corner of his hip crashing into tori, uke's aim is to have tori's neck and collar out ahead of his hips. Tori, broken, would therefore be lifted and rolled for the throw by uke's solid body.
Think solely of the two centers of gravity colliding. This would not be like a pair of billiard balls knocking together and bouncing back equally. Uke's billiard ball, moving more quickly, would knock tori's further away. It would then become the center around which tori's would revolve - in the throw.

To outrun uke's kuzushi, tori is going to come forward, but he's going to lead hard and fast with his center of gravity, and specifically his left hip. We've just learned how to do this because we're balanced, ready, and hypersensitive to uke's every exertion. Tori feels this coming before uke launches across the divide.
As tori jams his left hipbone forward, his billiard ball is moving faster than uke's. It beats his to the center of the collision; uke's billard ball bounces away comparably further - and now he's off balance.
Viewed from the side, tori is the one standing straight, and uke's broken. His bladder is protruding out to his left front, so his center is not over his feet.

2. Uke's tsukuri: With his back bowed and his hips out in front, uke's legs are completely defenseless to and already headed in the direction of an attack from underneath and behind, tori's sweep of his left leg.

3. Tori's tsukuri: When tori jams that left hip forward, his right leg will absorb the force of the collision. This frees his left leg for a simple sweep across his front. His foot can cup uke's heel, though it doesn't have to. Tori's calf can do he job, as could his thigh.

4. Kake. If tori jams his hip and stops uke in his tracks, the sweep might need a bit of oomph, a bit like hane goshi's spring, to get uke going. With some practice, however, tori becomes better able to blend his motion to uke's and make this a very fast drop and a nonstop motion for uke.

A split second's difference determines whether it's a hard stop or a smooth drop, but that's plenty of time to tell how your rollerskating lessons went.

This week's analysis from Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata, as always, seeks to make no bold claims. Discriminating readers have for some time clicked here to seek assurances that the very worst onslaughts strength and aggression can be overcome by a cool, detached manner, a knowledge of leverage, and a patient understanding of human folly.
Today is no different, though it might seem like we're in for a tall order: to defeat the uchi mata.
I was a day or two ahead of you wondering how Mifune would manage this in just four short, clinical steps or a couple of photographs accompanying a single paragraph. In fact, overcoming an uchi mata by way of a tai otoshi is one of two techniques presented on the same page in 'Canon'.

This is uchi mata we're talking about! It's the wildest, most varied throw in the arsenal, the action shot that clubs put on their T-shirt logos. 'Tis better to give than receive with this one; we've all been there, seeing that opponent's hip twitching, knowing it's coming - or we've uncorked them on other poor souls and might even have felt badly about it, though only a little. 'Sorry, . . . but better you than me, pal.'
The uchi mata has proven itself as one of civilization's great boons to personal awesomeness, right up there with Charles Atlas and the Second Amendment. Could Mifune's simple solution stand up to its sheer scope and ferocity? That's what I was aiming to find out.

I was just talking about this last week, the uchi matas that explode beneath you out of nowhere, coupled with the sensation of feeling like a rodeo bull rider: up in the air with your hands pinned beneath you and your feet off the ground, unsure of how or where you're going to land. It's the perfect choice for a combat sport, of course. Really, (seemingly) you're only throwing half of him with half of you, making for a pretty quick engagement; just grab, hook, and heave goes the logic, and you're in business.
I've been on the receiving end of some truly maniacal attempts at uchi mata, horrified at the wild eyed, desperation driving them if not the utter indifference to any notion of fulcrum or physics, or rhyme or reason concerning the consequence of the assault. I've also been dropped by some very beautiful throws, though sadly that's been comparatively rare. In practice, I can have uke spiraling in without him feeling it. If anything, he's surprised by how quickly the mat leaps up at him. A lot of people can do that, I suppose, but in matches an uchi mata is always a rougher process. This is the reality Mifune's kata must address.

My first sensei, trained in Brazil, was a master at the left handed uchi mata. I was spoiled early on. He could drop opponents so smoothly that the falls were never any great trauma. I saw him handle another Dan one time as if were a cowboy steadying a wild horse, holding the bridle and swinging himself into the saddle right at the perfect moment. The Dan who had been rolled so easily could only marvel, 'That was really nice, Andre.'
It was also at this time that I discovered uchi mata's dark side. Again in Florida, a number of folks were at a clinic when a visiting player from Poland volunteered to show a diving, full commitment version. This was not unimpressive: staying on his supporting leg and keeping his hips in the air, showing fantastic hamstring flexibility, he pantomimed the motion - without an uke - of diving to the ground and planting his right ear and shoulder into the mat before rolling over.
The instructors were horrified to the point of reflexively turning and waving all of us away like policemen at a crime scene. That's illegal, they hastened to point out. People have broken their necks doing that.
Was it uchi mata that had a dark side, or was it the people trying to win matches?

When my Dad was teaching the family how to shoot, we had an interesting orientation to the 12-gauge shotgun. He loaded a shell and proceeded to turn and blow a branch off a nearby tree. We three kids nearly jumped out of our respective skins. Compared to the .22 we had been plinking around with in years prior, the 12-gauge sounded like a cannon. 'That's what this can do,' he informed us. 'We're going to follow very specific directions.'
This was pretty heady stuff. We were shooting clay pigeons, and even the launcher could cut you off at the shins if you stood in the wrong place. I've always felt the same sense of caution about uchi mata. I can still remember the denuded branch on the tree.

You'll have to get over these qualms if you're going to mix it up in a competitive club. After Florida, I was out in the Pacific discovering just what kind of intensity was necessary to be a fighter of any real stature. Uchi mata was studied from a purely utilitarian standpoint: Here are the basics, and if it doesn't work, just pull harder. There was no theory up for discussion. Most of us truly didn't know what we were doing, so quite often we were ending up stuck in many of our attempts. We'd grab, hook, and heave, but it would end there; it wasn't for lack of murderous intent or desperate effort in the face of a lost cause. A fourth verb was added - HOP - in order to finish the struggle.
You've seen this. A guy begins an uchi mata but can't find the leverage to finish it, so while laid out with uke clamped to his hip he begins hopping, to get a better 'bite' with his hip, to force uke to wipe out in one direction or another, or do anything to finish slinging him down.
It was all a little ill defined. The assistant sensei was an accomplished player from Egypt, so he devised a hopping drill so that we could practice in this critical phase. Toris would take hold of their ukes, extend a leg, bend over, and commence hopping in inward turning circles, twisting uke, knocking him off his last bit of purchase on the mat. When you both crashed to the ground and uke appeared to get the worst of it, the drill was deemed a success.
English was his second language, and one day he was searching for the right word to describe this component. 'It's fundamental,' he eventually decided. From then on, any time someone threw an uchi mata and got stuck part way through, he'd bellow, 'FUNDAMENTAL!!!' at the top of his lungs as a cue for that player to start hopping and turning. Even nowadays when I hear that word in some real-life context, I smile. I have to resist the temptation to shout it in a thick Egyptian accent.

That same player had trained in the Soviet Union for some time, and he showed us strong sided uchi matas (and seoi nages, for that matter). Imagine that you're in a right sided grip, for example, but your opponent has pulled away both his left arm and left lapel. He's holding you, as he stands sideways, at some distance with a stiff right arm. Normally, if you're in a right sided stance and squared up, you'd come in for your uchi mata leading with that right hip. It would be your right leg doing the reaping. In this Russian version, however, you put your left arm over his right, grabbing his lapel, and drive your elbow down, and then you bash in and attack with your left hip and left leg reaping. Your right hand grasps wildly for anything it can get, a sleeve, lapel, hair, an eye socket. Between that and the strong sided seoi nage, I can't imagine how anybody doing Russian Judo can have an intact set of collarbones.

This is all to say, scientifically of course, that uchi matas by and large are rough going. They're pure manhandling in which speed and fury can hide a multitude of sins. I knew one player who would dive to the ground and end each throw in a handstand. I played an Olympian who resembled the basketball star Kobe Bryant; he had Bryant 's speed, and the uchi mata he had perfected for his long body was a cart wheeling motion that was so huge and fast you could see it from the corner of your eye no matter where you were on the mat.

The Aged and Wise Sensei can hit an ankle-to-ankle uchi mata. There's more than meets the eye with that one; it involves getting uke to freeze in reaction to something else, whereupon his whole body is stiff enough to be thrown. I have also seen the long lost Urinating Dog in one of the A&W One's ancient films. Imagine this: a standard entry, but you don't turn your hips all the way over. When you're at the 90 degree mark of your turn, and you have uke forward and about to twist beneath you, you drive your right knee straight up, much like a groin shot.
Instead, you hit him at the midway point of his left thigh. His spiral rotation commences, and as he drops in classic fashion you continue your own turn, bringing your hips over and ending up facing 180 degrees from where you started, like in any standard throw. If someone took a picture in the early part of the throw, it would almost look like a sumi otoshi or kuki nage with a knee shot. If someone took a picture late in the throw, it would look like tori's throwing a hane goshi, but from too far away. (It's more blended than this, but those are the rude mechanicals. If you try it, aim for his knee. Put your knee right up against the inside of his as you begin, so you end up hitting him mid-thigh. Don't aim for the mid-thigh comparatively later. The consequences, as you might imagine, are ugly.)

I can remember the very best uchi mata of my career, which absolutely flattened a guy like none other I've witnessed. It was not in Judo context, and I didn't even have my hands on the guy. It was at a massive Fourth of July military games at the Navy Base in Guam 15 years ago. Everybody in every command on the island was there; it was an Olympics of sorts with all kinds of games and races all day long, culminating in a huge obstacle course relay race in the middle of the football field. A thousand people, the teams and spectators, gathered around the perimeter.
My team was in the very first heat. The first obstacle was a rope course, and the catch was that the first competitor had to do it blindfolded. However, he could have someone run with him and shout instructions along the way. I was chosen to run alongside (poor) Sean, who put on the blindfold.
The crowd was wired. Our team was in the hunt for a trophy, so when the gun sounded we took off hard. Immediately the crowd started reacting as the Air Force team, who had been winning everything, was across the open field in no time and getting on the rope course.
With a 'Come on!' I bolted for the entry to this contraption, which was essentially a giant rig of manila ropes, cargo nets, and telephone poles.
'Wait a minute! Wait a minute!' Sean cried from behind me. He was holding his hands out as he ran. 'Where are you?'
I looked back just in time to see it happen. Somehow, he had missed an enormous metal stake in the ground, but his legs were on either side of the two inch line that ran up to one of the huge wooden poles. In just a few steps he spiraled full speed into the most savage uchi mata I have ever seen.
The crowd thundered as if a gladiator in the the Roman Coliseum had just been decapitated. I turned and ran back. 'Sh1t! Sh1t!' I was saying. 'I'm sorry, man.'
Sean was a pretty solid guy, but he looked like he'd been hit by a bus. He had landed perfectly flat on the ground in a puff of dust and wasn't moving. For me, it was a rare insight. Right as I turned and saw it happen, my first thought was, 'So that's how that throw is supposed to go.'
[To his credit, Sean got up and finished his leg of the race. We were out of contention, however. He and his wife have not had any more children.]

This is the many splendored violence to which Mifune's counter must answer.
UKE: INNER THIGH REAPING THROW; TORI: BODY DROP
This will remind you of the Nage No Kata, in terms of the circular manner in which uke draws tori toward the throw. Uke pulls him in an arc to his right for three steps. His intent is to spin suddenly in the opposite direction as tori comes around him, the idea being to get in with the depth he needs for the uchi mata.
Tori 'corresponds,' according to Mifune, moving in these leftward (to him) arcs as uke pulls. On the third step, as uke's leg and hip seek to reach or cross tori's centerline, tori 'lightly' moves his left leg and hip out of the way. He's turning 90 degrees very briefly. One his left leg crosses in front of uke, he continues uke's forward motion to finish him with a tai otoshi.

Uke is taking a high collar grip as he pulls tori into these arcs. I've seen a sensei describe this maneuver as 'The Telephone Call.' You bring that high collar hand to you as if you're answering the phone. '"You say, 'Hello, and . . . goodbye.'"

We made sure we had the logic of the counter mapped out before we tried the reality testing.
1. Kuzushi. No matter if a guy is bringing you up or down or round and round for his uchi mata, he's going to be bringing you forward. As you know, tori has to go, but further than uke planned in order to wreck his balance.
It helps to think of the train tracks metaphor on this one. When uke comes in, he's trying to catch you (in the kata) just as you land in a neutral stance, or with one foot on each track as you face him. In order to evade his reap, you have to get your left off its track and on to the right one, in line with your right foot.
That means your weight was momentarily on your right foot - as your left made the switch. Very quickly, your weight goes to that left, as it sits on the right rail, so your right foot can advance. This is tori's maintaining his tai sabaki. He's being drawn forward, but then he's seizing the opportunity to pass uke and bring uke's center out beyond his feet.
When that right foot is done advancing, it takes the weight once more. Your left foot takes the express route, crossing the space between the rails at an angle, to a spot in front of uke. Tori's leg is across uke's body - and the foot is back on the left rail.
I've probably made that description too elaborate. With some practice, those steps become a very quick 1-2-3.

2. Uke's tsukuri: Uke might not feel it, especially when he's rough and rasslin' and bent at the waist, but he's a goner for two reasons. His real center of gravity is no longer over his feet, as he's been drawn forward. Also, because he's put so much strength and tension into his arms and shoulders, his 'effective' center, his balance and weight and force are way ahead of his feet.

3. Tori's tsukuri: If tori managed to advance his right foot on the rail properly, and he's kept his body and the connection to uke in one piece, he's going to feel uke pass the point of no return. As tori is making his evasion and advance, his right hand can slide off uke's lapel and down uke's arm to grab the sleeve at bicep or elbow level.
I'll get into this a bit more in a second, but the great surprise is that tori is not going to find himself broken or having to lunge low to the ground to stay upright as much as you might imagine. He escapes early enough to avoid uke's twisting him a pretzel.

4. Kake. Tori will throw uke straight down, per earlier discussions, to take advantage of uke's unsupported weight. We discovered that if uke is bull rasslin' downward, the tai otoshi runs him in for a nose dive and a slightly ugly wipe out. If uke is popping tori upward and tori catches him high, it is a very, very hard and fast fall for uke. The throw might not be immediately evident because uke is behind tori, but if tori aims for laying uke right across his toes, the result will be good, loud, and fun.

We made a point of getting very wild and ugly, to cover the crimes I've witnessed over the years. We pulled up, we pulled down, we twisted, jumped, headlocked, and attacked like we were ripping guys out of car doors.
The long and short of it is, for the reason I mentioned earlier, Mifune has us covered. The escape, as designed, is early enough to withstand all kinds of trouble. If uke gets that leg around yours, or his hips make contact, then all bets are off. You're in for a struggle.
Some reactions were better than others, of course. Mike got me a few times when he popped upwards with his kuzushi, in the manner of that 'uprooting' uchi mata player I described last week.
The bull rasslin' and the headlocks weren't that hard to handle. You might imagine that a strong uke is going to bend you double no matter what, but that's only when he has his leg or hip in there as a fulcrum. If you've made him miss the reap, he can't bend too much. He can't pull you down, since your feet are beneath you - but really, uke intuits very quickly that there's nothing to gain from any more bending and pulling. The tai otoshi 'stances,' if you will, as well as the dashes forward for the kuzushi, were nowhere near as low as I had imagined.

One mystery endures. I'm sure there's a ready answer out there, but it's a gap in my knowledge. In this 'randori' drill, Mike was catching me with a few of the upward uchi matas. I was flat footed to use an expression, but more accurately, I was too relaxed. My knees weren't locked, but my bones were 'stacked' and my quad muscles not particularly engaged.
My solution to getting burned was to think of the last blog entry and the idea of Mifune's 'electrical' connection to his opponent. I didn't just hold Mike's gi; I put my hands on him, the better to feel how he was moving, and I kept a steady light pressure as we moved, which compelled him to comment that he felt like he was back in grade school dance class.
I also recalled a phrase from the Aged and Wise Sensei: Relax. Don't Collapse. I had to have the same sense of electrical connection to the ground, I realized as well. When I was just standing there, I was relaxed in the conventional sense of the word, but really I was collapsed. I was not engaged with my whole body.

There's a phrase in a great many of these write-ups in 'Canon' in which Mifune says 'Tori sees through uke's intention.' I'm trying to get to what that might mean. He's taking something for granted that we should all know.

Here's a term that might make the Old Timers and Traditionalists take notice: Dummy Hero. We're going back three whole decades on this one. Truth be told, I wonder if people still use this.

Of course, this is found in (American) football, not Judo, though it refers to a common enough experience that I wouldn't be surprised if Kano had coined his own term.
My 'big man' came back last night after a few months away with a new job and college schedule. I've written about him in the past: nice kid, actually with some decent analytical ability, but 250 or 260 pounds of pure braggadocio, especially when he hasn't had it beaten out of him in a while. The gang was working on a handful of throws, and then we went into the latest installment from Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata.
This is an experience that I'm sure all instructors have faced. Whether it's a kata technique or something else up for consideration, you're showing how if Circumstances X are present, then Technique Y is an effective solution. This is when some passive-aggressive [JudoForum edit: an oaf, a foolish fellow, boor], during his turn and knowing full well that tori is about to do 'Y', does everything in his power to block it.
He's deliberately changing the circumstances - so that they're no longer 'X,' against which tori can sharpen his skill at 'Y'.
That drives me absolutely mad.

I don't know what would compel someone to act that way. The thought could go: if this is such a great technique, then it should be able to overcome any kind of resistance. It could be the individual's way of asserting his ability, to show that he's a fighter to be reckoned with, wise to whatever this great trick is supposed to be, or the fact that - gosh - the sensei's really shown his cards on this one. Either way, it's completely inappropriate, to the point of indicating some kind of social pathology or that you've never grasped the theory to the art after all.

My high school football career, at one of those legendary New England Jesuit powerhouses, was limited to a season of junior varsity and serving as one of the poor souls on the taxi squad at whom the starting offense would hurl itself play after play during practice. Some assistant coach would be tasked to rally our spirits during these beatings, but the head coach would be exclusively interested in the offense. For JV games, the taxi squad from the varsity team would 'come down' and start on defense, so we'd be pushed further down the food chain. Rare were the times we saw action against other teams.
Every so often the offense would blow a play, whereupon the coach would have to walk along the entire line yelling at everyone who botched his particular part. Then he'd stand back and order, 'Run it,' though he'd possibly add the qualifier, 'Dummy.'
On a dummy play, we defenders would only make token efforts. Defensive lineman would fall forward hard enough against the guards and tackles to generate a decent sound of pads crashing. The end would step up to be blocked; when the back burst through the hole, he'd ease up after a few steps, and any would-be tacklers would jog over and tag him casually, just for the sake of creating a slightly plausible reaction. Clearly, dummy plays were for the offense to get the steps down.
Now, as you might imagine, 'Dummy Heroes' were the defenders who played these free plays full out. The defense knows exactly where the ball is headed or what route the receiver is running, so to leap up and make a dramatic interception, for example, would be pretty boneheaded.
In the eyes of the jocks, it was actually okay for us to be lousy at football or slow or undersized (like me) but the worst sneer a starter could impart was a muttered, 'Dummy Hero,' at the end of a play. Done once in a while a hero play was forgivable, but there were guys who earned that title for the long term. That relegated him to the level of shower scum in the eyes of the team, beneath the poor sots like me who came home with clean uniforms after every game. It was a cathartic tragedy to witness because we all knew the poor kid was trying to get the coach's attention.

Back in the dojo, Judo - if nothing else, and if we speak in the broadest possible terms - teaches situational awareness, which is why I find these breaches of conduct mystifying. Much as I was tempted to say, 'Look, when we take a break, and I go over to get the book and say it's time for kata, this is the adult conversation part of the evening,' I did not.
I did tell him to knock it off. 'This is all about context,' I explained. 'A specific action brings about a specific response. We've been working on a couple of concepts while you were away, ideas that should have some long term benefits. That's why we're doing it.'
At a concert, you wouldn't leap onto the stage, sit beside the pianist, and start bashing the keyboard with your fists, would you? He's probably trying to do something pretty specific, so your enthusiasm, while admirable, might not be any great help.
There might be a couple of other motivations behind being a dummy hero, the inability to delay gratification or the failure to grasp that fighting all the time becomes pretty much the same thing every time around unless you learn some new tricks.

During the muddle, from which we eventually eked out a lesson according to plan, it occurred to me that I should try to learn something from the experience. This has to have some kind of value, I thought, and a kata just can't go to pieces if someone's not playing nicely. If he's turning a kata into randori, I pondered, what are some of the lessons that might apply?

First, let me get this out of the way:
UKE: SUPPORTING FOOT LIFT-PULL THROW; TORI: CORNER DROP
They're in right natural posture. Uke draws tori forward in three steps; on the third, he attempts Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi. His left foot is propping tori's right leg, so his right foot, therefore, is planted directly beneath him for support.
Tori lowers his body. As uke attacks his right foot, he steps with his left toward uke's right rear. That takes uke's center out beyond that right foot, whereupon tori applies the Sumi Otoshi.

This is actually pretty easy, building upon the idea of getting uke's center away from his feet (and, consequently, the support from beneath). It's hard to do it as gracefully as Mifune does. Our falls for uke were actually pretty close to the ones in the kata video, which are not as big, long, and classic as some of the sumi otoshi falls I think I've seen in other Mifune films.

1. Kuzushi. Uke is drawing tori essentially straight ahead. On that third step, to wreck uke's balance, tori is overrunning uke's drawing motion, yet in a bit of a 'Post' pattern, to continue the high school football theme. He's been headed straight ahead, but on step three he veers to his left about 30 degrees, like a wide receiver who heads downfield a few yards and then breaks off at an angle directly toward the goal post.

2. As a result, uke's tsukuri is that he's badly bent to his back right corner. Since his right leg was creating the critical axis for his sasae tsuri komi ashi, it was planted very firmly and rigidly. It's very easy to tilt the entire column and get his center out from over his foot.

3. Tori's tsukuri is all in keeping what he has, his grip and his tai sabaki - not spilling that shot glass in his belt by leaning or undue effort.

4. Kake: Tori's going to go into a bit of a lunge, a fore and aft stance as he finishes the throw. This is a hard fall, a sort of sideways wipeout for uke. It's very easy for tori to take uke straight down, as we were discussing on the last throw. In this one, you have to be careful not to do that too much; you'll lose your balance dropping with uke.
Mifune extends uke outward a fair bit, allowing him time to feel the throw and 'get over' in his fall if he desires - so far as I can tell. In the kata, even with his relatively extended motion, the fall comes fast, mainly because the kuzushi and tsukuri are so overwhelming.

The lesson, whether you're going by the book or putting up with someone who's screwing up the operation, is that you're not going to overwhelm anybody unless he gives you the right circumstances.
The other night, the Big Man resolved, in Dummy Hero fashion, that Mifune's clever trick simply wasn't going to work against Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi. Therefore, when it came to step three as he played uke, he undertook a very powerful wrenching motion, bringing my gi, balled in his fists, to his chest and trying to sling me around his side. Nothing in it resembled any part of 'sasae.' It was merely a 'defensive' attack to prevent me from veering left on that post pattern.
It worked; I certainly wasn't cutting left. Imagine if I were fighting an enormous stone column, a giant hunk of Greek architecture, something large and heavy to the point that I could just barely rock it and walk it along on its edges. If that column starts falling off to the right at an angle, then I'm not going to be able to change its path over to my left.
(Mifune's point is that if the column is falling straight back, you can deflect it to the left - before it falls too far.)

I tried to make a few observations out of this mess before I became too much of a scold.
The first and most obvious is that the was massively off balance to that right side (his left) especially with such a wind up. I didn't have to roll him; he rolled himself, wiping out once I got past him, since he was holding on so tightly.
From this very same kata, the Ko Tsuri Goshi defense came to mind. (As uke cranks tori in for a tai otoshi, tori jumps forward, leading with his right foot, comes down, and backs in slightly for a left Ko Tsuri Goshi counter.) The Big Man's force, all at shoulder level, would have made this a freebie. I didn't do it; I probably should have, but I didn't want to escalate the one-upsmanship.
It was also very easy to blunt wrenching motion, powerful as it was. I could very easily put the brakes on by stiffening up my arms, or I could also cut left early and keep my center away from him, wrecking his leverage without using strength.
That's Dummy Hero stuff on my part, though, since I knew what he was up to. Those kinds of stalemates do describe a lot of what happens in randori, however.

This got me to thinking of one of our controlling themes in exploring this kata. Remember this quote?
-- 'Gonosen is the act of frustrating the attack against you and then taking advantage of the opponent's resulting loss of balance.
Ura Waza is anticipating the opponent's attack, in thinking more quickly than he does; this technique reflects most faithfully the true spirit of Judo.'
That's from Kawaishi's STANDING JUDO.

I'm thinking of the last time I really had my head handed to me in randori, specifically of two different guys and their two different techniques. One guy had a wickedly fast uchi mata, where he was more or less relaxed and suddenly - BOOM - my gi would be up at my ears and he'd have me up and over with a motion like he was uprooting a tree. The second guy had a gorgeous tai otoshi. He'd have me relaxed, or at least misdirected, and suddenly I'd feel myself in a classic arc and headed for a perfect landing.
I'd stand up and compliment him as we grabbed hold once again, and shortly before he'd do it once more.

The question is, can this kata really apply to randori and shiai situations like this - seriously, against attacks that come out of nowhere? Are there more lessons we should be getting out of the Nage waza Ura No Kata than we presently are?
Mifune is [supposedly] so smart and so fast that he'd be able to anticipate attacks with the intensity or subtlety that I just described. Well then, I guess he's not doing what we were doing wrong the other night, (or what takes place so often in randori, as everybody knows) stiff arming or sandbagging defensively.
Mifune probably would have drilled the Big Man with that Ko Tsuri Goshi.

Mifune's judo is anticipatory judo. Some time ago, we had his book out and were working on defenses against various mat techniques. For a kami shiho gatame, he recommended, cross your arms, hold uke off your chest, and bring your knees (cranking your abs) to beneath his shoulders. From there, you spin on your rounded back to 'face' him with your legs between you, to continue the fight.
That sounded great, we thought. I went flat on my back, and uke put the clamp on.
How in the world, I thought, am I going to bench press this guy off me and cross my arms? It was dark in there, and I couldn't even get my hands in between us. We sat up to reconsider.
It dawned on us that uke can't sink the friggin' hold. Tori, for his part, had bloody better well recognize what's coming when uke approaches from above and behind - so the arms cross and the knees come up to PREVENT the hold, not break it after the fact. You spin like mad, as a matter of fact. The BJJ guys know this.
We had to look at everything in the book in a new light. Kawaishi will show you how to crowbar your way out of an ugly situation. Mifune, anticipating, would rather not find himself in one. No wonder he slithers like a wet eel in the old groundwork films.

So how could Mifune anticipate attacks that are so fast and surprising? I can only start with what he's not doing.
He does not consider a match to be a process of minimizing risk, which is to say he'll not take steps to insure his success or forestall failure.
When my big man was winching in my gi and botching his alleged Sasae tsuri Komi Ashi's, he was playing to his strength. He knew enough to bring his hands in and make himself a solid rotating unit. That uchi mata man, now that I think of it, played up the relaxation in his arms to allow himself to bring his center in close. That's how he was getting me; his center was underneath mine so he could buck me up and over like a laundry sack.
Judoka, quite logically, are going to play to their strengths. They're going to get their grip, set up their leverage, and do their thing. Each step is part of a progression that insures, or increases the likelihood, of success.
Mifune probably recognizes it as it happens and can pretty much tell what's coming. He knows that the average mortal doesn't think in terms of unloading techniques apropos of nothing - that would be too risky, a sure way to get hurt or countered. He'll read folks as they set things up.

Obviously, when you're stiff arming an opponent or creating a sandbag effect by moving your center offline, you're minimizing risk, namely the risk of losing. This could be a seemingly sensible precaution against a surprise from a crafty opponent or sheer terror at how things can get fast and out of control sometimes and people wind up hurt.
That's a moment of 'retreat' in the battle, during which players regroup physically or mentally. You just held him off, so this is a moment of 'time out' in a way, even though the match is still on. You rest for a second, and then you'll get back in the fray.
That's where the other guy must have been nailing me with the tai otoshis. It was in one of those lulls in which my engagement with him and my engagement with my own whole-body shuts off momentarily. Right then he'd break me suddenly; imagine one of those Greek columns cracked in the middle and both pieces collapsing downward.
Mifune wouldn't relax; he wouldn't switch off or see any need to, mainly because he's not responding defensively or perceiving any particular motions as threats. I'm hypothesizing, but it would seem to be that he's capable of a constant mental and physical engagement with his opponent and his own unified centered body. It's not aggression, but it is 'forward leaning,' a live, electric, constant connection to his opponent.

The Aged and Wise Sensei often says, 'Make him part of you.' Maybe that has a broader meaning than just rolling his center with yours.
These lessons have to transfer. You can't go through life being a Kata Hero.

The other day, in the video section of the JudoForum website, somebody posted the YouTube video of Mifune performing the very kata I've been discussing, Nage Waza Ura No Kata. I gave it a click and was glad to see everything rolling along in very familiar fashion. We totally nailed the sumi gaeshi and the ko tsuri goshi. The swallow counter was very much a lesser thing than I described; I knew that was going to be the case, I wrote recently to a private correspondent. I have to make its vertical component large and feasible for my own sake before I can rattle uke with minimal shock waves.

http://JudoForum.com/index.php?showtopic=43212

Then came the O Uchi Gari and Hiza Guruma I was just talking about in my last post, which, as it turned out, we had done in the wrong direction. Holy Cow, I thought. How did we not catch that? I even wrote in the post that uke was trying to draw tori forward, whereupon I spent the entire discussion describing how to handle an uke who comes charging in.
That's exactly what happened at practice. We were trying to be sure that our Ko Uchi Garis were the real deal so that we weren't faking anything with our tai sabaki and counters.
I've got to look into this, I realized. The Kodokan is going to withdraw that lecture invitation. As I watched the rest of the video, I came to another startling revelation: Mifune wasn't following the bloody instructions, either. He's not even doing the kata that's in his own book. This next maneuver, which I'll get to in a second, has a completely different counter to an O Uchi Gari attack. Later on come a few other hijinks in response to harai goshis.
So if I'm going to start taking liberties, at least I'm in good company.

We got on the mat and took about four minutes to confirm that going in the other direction was no great adjustment. Uke draws tori forward with tsugi ashi steps. On the third one, he draws tori forward but then has to make a quick change of direction to get his right foot in and drive down on tori's gi the same way as ever.
Tori senses the change of direction and can make the very same one himself, or at the very least he can pause before transferring his weight from his rear (left) leg to the right, which is forward.
All of the same elements in uke's tsukuri apply. He's driving off his own rear (left) leg, and his center of gravity is out beyond it. From tori's standpoint, he merely has to translate uke's change of direction into his own bodily turn on the wheel, and it's a done deal.
It does happen on a lesser scale than when uke charges in, in that uke is not so laid out committing himself and tori's not absorbing the force with a tai sabaki step backward, but the fall is no less rapid or straight down.

That turned out to be not too much of an emergency. The lesson is that having the fundamentals down will be your greatest asset in moments of doubt. I'm going to stick with these fundamentals, then, for the next technique. I had said the other day that tori's throw, just about any one in the book, has to drive uke's center of gravity straight down.
There's one minor provision you have to make ahead of time - which is always happening in the context of all these kata techniques - so don't worry about it; just note it as it takes place: you have to get that center of gravity out from over uke's feet.
Let's go back to the very first move in the Koshiki No Kata, that glorious exercise in the violence and depravity that are the roots of Judo. Uke comes up in front of tori and attempts a hip throw, essentially an uki goshi. Tori breaks him and drops him.
Have your partner stand facing straight ahead. You walk up to his right side and stand very close, turned perpendicular to him, so that you're staring into his right ear. Place your right hand on his collar bones, your left in the small of his back. This is how tori breaks uke, by pressing with both hands. The collar bones go back, and the hips go forward. Uke, when he's dumped off to his rear, is powerless to resist with such a bowed back.

What specifically is making him so vulnerable? With your partner, push his collarbones way back, but keep his hips more or less where they are. Now, if you try to drop him, he can still step. It won't be pretty ; he'll stumble around and try to to lean on you. The problem is that he's still putting up a bit of a fight.
Instead, keep his collarbones more or less where they are and push his hips way out in front. Now he's in big trouble. When you want to dump him, just keep what you have with your arms, and drop to your right knee. He can't do a thing about it, and that's because you've put his center of gravity out in front of his feet.
Drop straight down, and you can murder the guy with that left knee in his back, if you'd like. DON'T do what they do in performing the kata nowadays, which is lug him off across the mat like he's some kind of decrepit old Hachidan strapped to a dolly. That's moving his center laterally, which defies common sense.

This center displacement is key to the next technique Nage waza Ura No Kata - as it's done in the book and not that scandalous 'Judo Unplugged' video in which Mifune is clearly defying the establishment.
3. (in the ashi waza section)
UKE: LARGE INNER REAP; TORI: COUNTER (to large inner reap)
Uke and tori are in the right natural posture, and uke is once again drawing tori forward. As with the last technique, he makes a quick change of direction on the third step, and comes in for an O Uchi Gari.
Tori, per Mifune's spare instructions, strengthens his left knee and counter-sweeps to the inside. Uke falls directly in front of tori.

Imagine the logic of O Uchi Gari in and of itself, which recklessly once more I'll present from the standpoint of an uke charging in. We all know this one: uke comes in with the side of his body leading. With his right hip he'll strike tori in his center. Uke's right leg wraps around tori's left, his calf muscle ideally gettting all the way behind tori's.
Uke looks to jar tori's center just a few inches backward - so it's off his feet. A fraction of a second afterward, the reaping action removes one of its columns of support. Then, all within a millisecond comes the downward force from tori, dropping that unsupported center.
The Aged and Wise Sensei used to call O Uchi Gari 'The Window,' saying the downward motion is like you're closing a window, if your hands are on his shoulders. Otherwise, you're pulling down the shade, if you're holding his gi.

In the kata, when uke is drawing tori forward, he's trying to use that motion to get in against tori and bring off all these components. The counter, which is called O Uchi Ggari Gaeshi, deconstructs this leverage yet uses the very same ideas against him.

1. Kuzushi: Whether is uke charging from the get-go or drawing tori forward, he's looking to operate in very close quarters, up against tori and with his supporting (left) foot directly below him. To create kuzushi upon uke, tori must extend that inward dash of uke's. His center won't be over that foot anymore.
That's the first part of uke's imminent destruction. Tori has either taken a step back (if uke's making a big charge) or he's not allowed uke to draw him too far forward. In either case, this tai sabaki puts his weight securely on his right foot. Uke can be as close as he likes, provided tori is balanced and uke's hips (and torso) have been drawn a bit too far in the direction he was headed.

2. Uke's tsukuri comes from the above as well as another vector of displacement. Tori's left leg, which uke will reap to some degree, will be 'up' a bit, the thigh being just under uke's rear end or right hamstring. [This really goes in the category of #3, tori's tsukuri, but] Tori, when he 'strengthens that left knee' is merely going to bring that leg sideways, across his own front.
Now, not only is uke's center too far off to his side, it's going to be knocked too far in front of his supporting left foot. He's doubly hosed by a truly elegant counter.

3. Tori's tsukuri, as I've said, is his balance on his right leg and the simple sideways sweep he's making with his bent left leg.
It's going to be very tempting to want to buck uke up, to knee him and lift him. (Let Flashy make these mistakes so you don't have to.) Don't do it. Don't take his center up. The simple act of sweeping his center forward, whether it's your thigh on his hamstring or your cupped foot against his left ankle, is going to blow his legs out from under him.

4. He drops straight down. Remember, that was in the kata's instructions. Mifune is not a wordy guy, so if he goes to the trouble of saying 'Uke lands on the ground right in front of you,' he's making a point, not stating the obvious.

In the video, Mifune's counter is a tomoe nage. Here's your homework, class: take it through the four steps in our checklist. Why does he prop uke's hip with his left foot?

Here's something I should state for the record, even though it's a pretty common premise around our place: In any throw, tori cannot move uke's center of gravity laterally.
If theorems must be condensed into single statements, then I'll stick with that. Yes, plenty of folks throw their partners or try to throw their opponents some distance, but that's a very inefficient way to operate. That tori certainly SHOULD not try to throw uke's center anywhere other than straight down is where we can begin considering the latest lesson from Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata.

Consider your most basic throws - an O Goshi, for example. You make contact with your center against uke's and roll your whole body to bring his center over yours, and the idea has always been that you want to make that as tight a rotation as you can. You want uke to travel as small an arc as possible so you're done with him all the more quickly. It's all in how you place yourself, of course, tucking your rear end beneath you, engaging him a bit beneath his center.
'I'm not throwing you,' I'd often say to beginners taking their first falls. 'I'm dropping you.'

In an O Soto Gari, you might be displacing the bad guy's center forward, making his bladder bulge - which arguably is a slight horizontal displacement - but your drop is straight downward. You're plunging your own center toward your big toe. His shoulder blades are headed to where his feet once were. It's his spinal column refusing to telescope (in addition to the reap) that makes his feet and hips go twanging out behind you. The important part is that your effort is completely vertical.

So let me tick through the list here a little bit to make sure the Theorem applies across the board. Tai otoshi . . . we were doing that last night: 'Corkscrew down,' is always what we're saying. 'Yeah, on that body drop, make sure your body drops . . . '
We just tightened our circles on the O Gurumas, I wrote about a week ago. Hmmm. Oh - what about tomoe nages? Tomoe nages sling the guy across the room. When you're about to do it, you always have to look behind you on the mat to make sure the landing zone is clear.
Tomoe nages don't necessarily sling guys across town. Trust me; I caught a million of these years ago training with the gang from Tokai University. This one lightweight - when he wasn't cannon-balling to my ankles with his drop seoi nages - would disappear to the ground and be turned 90 degrees, across my path, as he worked my gi and raised his foot. I'd make a nasty little turn in the air and land right beside him, not far from where my toes had just been.
Think about that for a moment. Even if you're doing a classical Tomoe Nage, there's a critical moment when you've hit the ground with your center directly beneath your opponent's. Your leg runs from your center to his, but the throw is over once he teeters beyond that fulcrum. Why does he go cartwheeling off into the distance afterward? That's because he's so off balance, leaning so far over, as you lever him over that his momentum carries him away.
In randori, the kid from Tokai didn't bank on having me off balance or in motion to any great degree, so he was sideways to get out of the way. I was coming straight down.

That's one of the correlates in this latest installment from Mifune's kata. Yes, uke can travel laterally. It happens all the time, but that's determined by uke's motion or lack of balance. Tori has no business trying to make that happen. He should only be corkscrewing or driving down.

The Eighth Technique, or Number Two in the Ashi Waza section
UKE: SMALL INNER REAP; TORI: KNEE WHEEL
The best way to understand Mifune's kata directions is to flip to earlier in the book for the basic instructions on Ko Uchi gari. Mifune's preference is to catch an opponent as he's committing weight to his right foot. He's aware that this could very easily become a sweep, so he's insistent that the reap is a very strong and defined pulling motion while the hands above just as sharply drive the opponent backwards.
In the kata, uke's scheme is to get tori stepping; he's withdrawing to get tori committing his steps forward. On step three, in classic fashion, he goes for the Ko Uchi Gari.
At the moment he senses the attack, tori's right hand slides down from uke's left lapel to the midpoint of his left sleeve. He applies the left knee wheel. Uke will fall directly in front.

I hope that sounded as nonchalant as Mifune always is. All of those points in tori's reaction are important. Uke's hand slides down to the sleeve? Really, you can think of that? Yes, you have more time than you think to be as cool as a cucumber.
The left hiza guruma is a piece of cake - and hence all that stuff about going straight down. It's pretty blind, but you don't need to worry about it. You'll find his leg. Turn and put him down.
This is a crash landing for uke, which is what Mifune means by that last statement. When uke's drawn out by your amplifying his initial movement, he's going to collapse big time.

Remember your Ko Uchi Garis, by the way. I'm more of a Kawaishi man as far as basic instructions go. If you're going to light one off, and you have your hands on his sleeve and lapel, you're going to create a downward force vector with your whole body that will translate through your hands. It's as if you're staggering drunkenly about the house and you reach for the drapes just as you're about to take a header.
You dash in with a quick left step, bringing your center close to his. The instant your right foot is cupped against his right heel, your body becomes one piece, your arms angle irons (so you can keep what you have) and the force transmitted from your fists to his gi is essentially straight down or at just enough of an angle to get his center of gravity out behind him, where it's no longer over his feet.
The combination of his center being knocked out from over his feet and having one of the supporting columns bashed out from under is enough to bring him down. Whether you're going with Mifune or Kawaishi, it does have to be a fast reap - a fast combination of two different forces, really - that puts his center down close to his remaining foot.
Another image I get when doing techniques like this is from an old military book of my grandfather's. He was an engineer in World War One(!), and I have a manual downstairs on blowing up bridges. You take out a few key spots, and the whole thing is coming down.

If we break Mifune's response to this attack into our four phases, we can see how a few well placed charges will have the same effect on uke.
1. Kuzushi: Tori must destroy uke's balance and structure. By now, we know that this comes from amplifying uke's initial movement, which is often his own attempt at kuzushi.
As uke comes dashing in, you can read this a mile away, since he's about to project all the force he can muster into his grip. Step back with your left foot. He's coming in; he might even try to bash you backwards in a hip check of sorts - in an ill advised attempt to move your center laterally. If he's coming in 15 inches or so, you fade 20, bringing him with you.
Here's another funny thing. Uke really has to cover a lot of ground. Tori has plenty of time to let that right hand slide down the lapel and to the left sleeve. It's as easy as running your hand along the steering wheel.
2. Uke's tuskuri, the undoing you have wrought, is that he's stretched out. He had to plant that left foot to drive from it as he reaped with his right. Since you drew him out, that left foot is now a mile away, and most importantly, his center of gravity is no longer over either of his feet. If you simply vanished, he'd fall down.

#3. Tori's tsukuri, his optimum position, is that his right leg, even if uke got a piece of it with his reap, is free to swing up and make contact with the outside of uke's left knee. In fact, it would be hard to miss it.
Tori also stepped back on his left foot as uke charged in, so that's bearing the weight, and that one was never attacked.
Tori has his grip, his leg can reach uke's knee comfortably, and he's balanced on that back leg.

4. All of the above make him ready for the big finish - and the point of my lengthy preamble. Tori turn to his right and slams uke straight down.
I'm exorcising a demon here. I hate the way hiza gurumas are often shown, as giant lifts and props that send guys into huge rainbow trajectories. That's moving a center laterally. It cannot be done unless uke was volunteering to launch himself.
If we go back to the idea of blowing up the Bridge on the River Kwai, tori should turn to the side, and like he's pressing the T-shaped plunger on one of those old detonator circuits, smack uke straight down.

This is a fast technique once you sort it out. The faster uke races in, the harder and more violently he's going to hit the ground and skid across the mat. Don't take my word for it, by the way. Check it out in the Mifune book. Uke is landing across Mifune's toes. He couldn't have taken one of those big, fake rainbow falls.

Oh, this guy Mifune was good. I don't know if people realize that.

I cracked open CANON OF JUDO for the next technique in his Nage Waza Ura No Kata, and my hear sank to see the swallow counter, a sweep for a sweep. That had given me a ton of trouble a few months back when we were working on the Gonosen No Kata. In that case, uke would go for a De Ashi Barai, whereupon tori would perform a quick whoop-de-do and sweep that very same sweeping foot lickety split.
It took us quite a while to get the hang of it, developing ultra sensitive powers of tai sabaki and divination of uke's intentions. We had to come dashing in with tiny steps, reading and anticipating the motions in his hips, but truth be told we might have been operating a little more on the theoretical level than we wanted to admit.

Last night, I realized, Mr. Mifune was calling my bluff. I can imagine him motioning for me to join him on the mat for a reality check - and to scold me for my misuse of the term 'swallow counter,' in all likelihood. I used it way back when I was discussing the GNK's De Ashi for De Ashi.
The correct term for the swallow counter is Tsubame Gaeshi, which is the way in which to handle an Okuri Ashi Harai. I don't believe it occurs anywhere else in the book. I haven't the slightest whether it occurs anywhere else in Judo, or can refer to some other sweep for a sweep. I'm completely guilty of pulling it out of thin air when I was writing up that entry months ago.
This counter, I must say, certainly swallows uke up, chews him up, and spits him out far better than the last one, so as far as I'm concerned, it can have the title.

When the Tenth Dan calls me out on the mat, he would be too much the gentleman to give me the gravity lesson I deserve. Instead, he would calmly contrast the difficulties we had the last time around with the methodic approach we're using in his kata.
Last time, our biggest problem was that were waiting way too long before we tried the counter-sweep. Uke would attack with his sweep, and it was simply beyond comprehension how we could get our foot away from his and around to the other side of it in a manner that would be anywhere near effective.
Now, Mifune would remind us, we have a four part checklist for executing every one of our counter attacks.
In Number One, we're wreaking kuzushi upon uke. We've done it all along by extending the motion in every one of HIS attempts at kuzushi. Wouldn't it make sense, the Tenth Dan asks, if we identify and attack his kuzushi this time around? It might surprise you learn it's not the sweep.
As far as Parts Two, Three, and Four are concerned, extending his motion is going to put him in a position ripe for our sweep: with his center of gravity high and his feet together. We'll be set and stable and in place to deliver a definitive whole-bodied force without jeopardizing our balance or battling the momentum of where uke wants to go.

Let's look at the Okuri Ashi Harai, Mifune would suggest. He reaches for my lapel. I am getting a gravity lesson, after all.
The set up for the Okuri Ashi Harai is the classic set of three lateral steps. Mifune and Old Flashy glide along in tandem for the first two steps, but on the third he does something different - exaggerating for the sake of illustration, of course. As Flashy glides across Step number three keeping his body at a uniform height, Mifune keeps pace, but with his right foot he steps a few inches 'deep,' which is to say he bends his right leg [if he's headed toward his right; he'd be sweeping with his left foot.]
This makes his entire body drop two or three inches as he faces mine. While he is down in that lower position he locks his hands and arms in position as he holds my lapel and sleeve. He's keeping what he has.
Then, as that third step continues, he drives upward with that right leg, bringing my gi and my center of gravity with it up an inch or two. When my feet come together, my center is comparatively high in the air, and my weight is off the ground - to some degree - even if my feet are still in contact with the mat. The Tenth Dan takes me out with his left foot.
(To clarify: those three steps Mifune takes to his right are quick successions of 'right foot - left foot' shuffles to his right. He goes, right-left, . . right-left; it's on that third step with the right that he steps down, flexing his right leg more, and it's on the next beat that his right leg presses him upward and he actually delivers the sweep with the bottom of his left foot.)
The kuzushi, Mifune points out, is in that upward drive, the making your opponent light on his feet. With time and practice, of course, that upward drive can be as subtle an effort as 'setting the hook in a fish's mouth.'
That's the kuzushi we have to go after, Mifune says as he turns back to me. 'Now you try to sweep me with Okuri Ashi Harai.'

The Sixth technique in the kata is actually Technique One in the Ashi Waza section.
1. UKE: FOOT SWEEP; TORI: SWALLOW COUNTER
Uke initiates the three steps to his right, bringing tori along, trying to replicate the process described above.
At the moment uke tries to sweep, tori counters, using his right foot against uke's left - the one with which uke just tried to sweep.

The instructions are vague in the book, but if you stick with my scenario, you can imagine Mifune quickly sensing my drop on my right leg and the coming upward blast. His solution is to extend that motion of mine beyond what I've intended. To repeat, the kuzushi upon uke is upward.

1. The trick in tori's kuzushi upon uke is that he drops as well. To use Mifune's phrase in the book, he has 'seen through uke's intention,' so he does exactly the same thing as uke. He drops, locks his hands and arms in position, and drives upward.
Even if he's catching on a split second late, tori can be extending uke's upward blast, so long as he's still on that front foot and despite the fact that he might be 'setting the hook in the fish's mouth' with his wrists more than he's driving off that leg.
Tori's attack upon uke's attempted kuzushi changes the timing very slightly but importantly. Tori's delaying the timing by which his feet come together as well as his subsequent rise while amplifying uke's upward motion.

2. Uke's tsukuri is not only that he's been boosted bodily. The leg with which he plans to sweep tori comes in, bringing his legs close together and creating a narrow base. This puts him in exactly the same position he meant for tori.

3. The point is that tori has beaten him to that last lead step. The resulting tsukuri for tori is that he's on his left foot. Bodily, he has control of uke and has him rising in concert with his own movement. Tori's also delayed his following foot, which will sweep uke's (the one that uke thinks he's about to sweep with.)
[This is a very different notion than tori's having his foot caught momentarily by uke, pulling it out, and managing a quick reversal.]

4. The sweep is a foregone conclusion, since the 'reversal' started so early in the process and tori's control of uke is so total. Tori can bring off a very feasible and effective motion, keeping his balance and using the speed and direction that uke established.

Were I to continue the story of my demonstration on the mat with Sensei Mifune, you could imagine my earnest attempts at stepping deep and trying to drive him upward, only to find myself floating in air. He would assist me in every way possible, making my every effort succeed beyond my wildest dreams, to the point that I lose control.

Thank Goodness that during this busy holiday week Technique Number 5 in Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata is a relatively simple undertaking, I had just mused, when it got me to thinking further about simplicity and effectiveness of martial arts techniques, what in the world I'm doing with this kata in class, and why I go to the trouble of writing all about it in this blog.

I'll take this on in reverse order. Remember, my aim is to share some ideas in how to take your Judo into your own hands. I'm the product of a sensei who's been doing that for nearly 60 years. I've been at it for seven myself, since I moved away from where he lives. I'm into Judo the Art, what makes it effective self defense and a solid basis for all kinds of athletic endeavor.
I should point out that while I'm writing solely about kata, that's only a small part of what we're up to in class. We do some conventional Judo as well as some more rough and ready Ju Jutsu. In fact, I just made a bit of a realization recently: on the Forum people will say or quote lofty sentiments along the lines of 'Ju Jutsu is for self defense, while Judo is for self perfection.' I think I know where that concept might come from. Judo, as a study of human movement, is indeed a higher art than the affiliated techniques of Ju Jutsu. When you come back to a given set of self defense skills after time spent in kata, your improvement is dramatic. It's analogous to recruiting a jazz musician to join a rock band - or to get a ballet dancer to do some hip hop. The jazz guitarist will hear a progression once and have it down. If he troubles himself with an earnest effort, he'll play the hell out of it.
When I write about kata, it's to make two points. One is that we ordinary folks can surmount these challenges in spite of the discouraging comments from all the experts. The other is to point out that in order for these techniques to be as broadly informative as they're supposed to be, they have to be effective in their own right.
Kata has been laughably gelded ever since it became an exercise in conformity. I've written this before: you'll learn more about the Koshiki No Kata in six weeks of Krav Maga than you will in a lifetime of conventional Judo.
The only way to score a kata technique is to test whether it can provide a smashing, brutal response to a credible attack. (The Ju No Kata is a possible exception, but if those wide, circular leverages can't overcome linear forces, I fail to see its point.)

The other day we were thumbing through 'Canon' and decided to take a stab at Mifune's O Guruma, his big ticket technique. That's the trap with this one, its seemingly large scale. He was always flinging guys twice his size like dishrags, so I had always equated it with superhuman effort or David slaying Goliath with the giant arc of his sling. I knew tori's leg caught uke at the top of the thighs, broke his center backward, and then lifted and turned him forward. It was the upper body end of things that was creating the dissonance for me.
We could do it, even with serviceable speed, but it wasn't singular. It wasn't instant. In hindsight, I realize that I was thinking along the lines of a baseball pitcher's delivery, that uke comes cartwheeling over on a vertical axis. The problem - and I didn't realize this in so many words at the time - is that a vertical cartwheel didn't gibe with the way I had to keep him close while my upper body skewed off to the side at an angle.
Then we hit the kata, which turned out to be informative and effective, so much so we've decided to score it generously.

5. UKE: BELT DROP; TORI: LARGE WHEEL
In the heat of the battle, uke has wound up standing half behind tori. His left leg is behind tori's right, his left hipbone against the right side of tori's rear end. His left arm reaches across tori's abdomen and grasps the left side of his belt. Uke's left hand grasps the belt at tori's right side.
In Mifune's words, 'Tori twists swiftly to the left,' to evade the Obi Otoshi and apply the O Guruma.

Twists? Hmmm.
On that Obi Otoshi, uke is dangerous if he can bring his hips forward. That would pop tori's center out from under him and lift his feet off the ground, after which uke could just dump him backward for the drop.
Since tori has kept uke's right sleeve and left lapel, which he's had all along, he's ready to cut loose with his throw. When he twists, he's not just turning to the side (away from uke), he's inclining his upper body, as if he's taking a hockey slapshot - or in the way Mifune is seen in all those videos twisting his chest toward the ground.
His leg comes up into the pocket formed by uke's bent body; the broken center effect is already established, and the throw is done. Uke is not flung like a dishrag; he's wrung like a washcloth. Uke is drawn off to the side with tori's upper body. Once uke's torso is beyond tori's leg, it's driven straight down, landing to the left, slightly, of where he was first standing.

This is why I'm pursuing the esoteric art of kata in everyday Judo class, for the way it informs everything we're doing. This is the ballet dancer slumming it with the hip hop gang: "Oh, yeah. I see what you're trying to do.' Here's the same move, only faster, better, and four feet off the ground.

This also strikes a blow for kata's being an effective and brutal response to a credible attack. It's a premise in self defense that complex motor skills go right out the window when the action starts, so the emphasis is on simple, singular components to defensive skills. In all of the NWUNK's techniques so far, the elements have been pretty simple. You're jumping beyond uke's throw, or you're leaning back a few inches. When tori's throw comes, it follows all that has happened before. You're continuing a certain motion or cutting loose with the easiest alternative.

It's evident as we lay out Technique Five in our list of check points:
1. Tori destroys uke's balance by continuing his motion. Uke's crouch at tori's right rear includes a bending at the waist as he reaches for the far side of tori's belt. Tori enhances this bend by helping uke's shoulders dive downward.

2. Uke's tsukuri is that he's doubled over beyond the ideal point of leverage and strength. He'll only have a moment to realize that he's in unfamiliar territory.

3. Tori's tsukuri is his proximity to uke's center. Uke put his center right up against tori's; the battle would be decided by who broke whose center first. Uke's broken and tori's leg is ready to swing up into his front pockets. That will block his center momentarily for the wringing effect, and then in . . .

. . . the finish, . . .4. that leg will finish levering uke over as tori's torso drives uke's toward the mat, off to the left, not directly ahead. You'll see the wringing motion when you think of tori's body lengthening into a single line running from his torso (and grasp of uke) and down that extended right leg. Uke is wrapped around that axis briefly, until his torso comes around to the six o'clock position and continues to the mat.
Kata must be scored according to its usefulness to us, not the other way around.

As I write, Santa Claus is in Ambon, Indonesia and headed next to Koror, Palau, according to the US Air Force's NORAD website. Before breakfast this Christmas Eve morning, five year old Flashdaughter and I watched him roar through New Zealand before turning north once more. He hit my old stomping grounds in Guam, I was happy to see, and which Flashdaughter took as encouraging. She's going to keep climbing up into my lap for updates, and I can't be too long here.
I should have time enough to touch on the fourth technique in Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata, which includes a very handy, lesser known technique that might make you feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

4. UKE: BODY DROP; TORI: SMALL HIP THROW
As with all the other techniques, uke commences his attack on the third step. His aim this time is a right tai otoshi. He does get his body turned and commences the drop into his stance.
Tori shifts to his right, and in Mifune's words, 'using his upper body, with his hips as a fulcrum.' He 'lightly' steps over uke's right foot, corresponding to the force of uke's pull. His right foot will hit the ground first; the moment his left foot touches, Mifune, instructs, tori executes the Ko Tsuri Goshi.

That is such a great throw, useful in its own right and as a FABULOUS means of teaching other throws, or namely the notion of keeping your feet beneath you when the techniques get fancier. Ko Tsuri Goshi is also the centerpiece of the lesson, so we made sure we knew how to construct it soundly as well as apply it to other throws.
We started with uki goshis, knocking back and forth through full throws, catching one another's center on the rear corner of our hips and making quick and efficient full body rolls - which will only be two or three inch arcs, really. The aim was to have a full throw done with less than a second's contact. The hips go into the right spot, and no strength should be present in the arms.

Now, imagine this - or, hang on a second. Santa check: Irkutsk, Russia, enroute to Choybalsan, Mongolia.
At any rate, imagine this: your partner does not want to be thrown with uki goshi. He can drop as low as he wants and crank as hard as he can with his hips to stuff your throw. Let him; you're frozen in place, having teed up that uki goshi attempt. With your arm still around his back, turn your body out, so you're facing the same direction he is. (Your back is against his front.) At the same time, drop your center directly downward and have your legs go into a deep fore and aft stance.
If you're doing a right-sided throw, your right arm is around his back, your left foot is in 'front,' and your right leg has run through his, to where your right foot is pretty far behind him.
Your center is still over the same spot it was before.The truly key part of this is your left foot. It's not so much in front as it is directly beneath your center. Your body's weight, therefore, is 80 percent on that left foot and 20 on the rear.
Remember, your partner has dropped into a massively strong defensive stance. Still, he can't be any lower or further back than that right leg of yours, which is running between his and down to the ground. If you hips are in the right spot, which is to say below his, you just have to give a little buck with your legs to high-center him and toss him very, very easily, no matter how heavy he might be.

That's a great Christmas present by way of Messers. Kawaishi and Mifune, if you don't know this one. It's a very useful, powerful leverage. If you ever have to press a fallen beam off a victim somewhere, hit a fore and aft ko tsuri goshi stance, and you're in business.
However, what I've described is a bit rude and crude. I'm not a hip bucking guy in general, philosophically, and the aim in Judo really isn't to uproot guys in such a way. Therefore, the next step in the work-up is to practice hitting ko tsuri goshis that are as smooth and instant as those uke goshis you were just doing - without any real buck. You're going to step and turn in front of your partner and 'back in,' in a sense, for the throw. It will almost remind you of those videos of Koga's seoi nages, where he backs in between uke's legs, though there should be far less drama and displacement on tori's part.
Hit these left and right. In the kata, you'll be hitting one on the left side.

Having that 'front' foot directly underneath your center of gravity, and thinking of that 80-20 split will be a great way to shore up any tai otoshis that need work. As you practice some tai otoshis in the work-up, take a look on the mat to see where you are throwing each other. It's going to be roughly as far out as the big toe of his lead foot.

Now, for the technique itself and our four checkpoints:
1. Tori must kazoosh uke. As uke turns in, drawing tori forward and hitting his stance for the tai otoshi, tori must maintain his tai sabaki, get a good, close hold on uke, and use that forward force to draw uke out a little further than he planned.
On maintaining tai sabaki: it is very easy for tori to be bent over by the force of uke's turn and the downward vector of his throwing force. This is why Mifune says in the book to do things with his upper body and use his center as a fulcrum. He's exactly right. Tori must stay in one piece. You want to stay light and go with the flow, but you'll fool yourself and wind up bent over if you're not careful.
Tori realizes that he has to get out in front of uke, but he can't forget to bring uke with him. As uke enters, and his shoulders near tori's, tori has to take a grip right then and KEEP WHAT HE HAS. It's too easy to leap out in front - thankful that you remembered not to be bent over - but you don't have him with you. You can't off-balance him, and you're not close enough to drill the ko tsuri goshi.
Therefore, take a grasp and keep it as your right leg leads the charge out and ahead of uke's leg. If you know he's throwing you to more or less his to his big toe, or a line even with it, you have to get your upright body and center of gravity forward of that line. Since you have his shoulders, that's going to bring his body into a forward lean, to the point that his center is beyond that toe as well.

2. Uke's tsukuri: Regardless of how your partner throws his tai otoshis, with a fore and aft stance or one that's more side to side, once his center of gravity is beyond that big toe (of his left foot, in the kata) he's in trouble. If suddenly you vanished, he'd collapse. In fact, any throw we do is merely to deflect or control his free fall, nothing more.
In the event uke is very much a fore and aft tai otoshi-er, his left foot will be very far in front and a bit hard to get beyond - after which you'd have to back way in for the KTG. In this case, tori can veer 45 degrees out the right in his leap. This will draw uke's center away from his feet, to his right front.

3. Tori's tsukuri: Tori's optimum position is that he's landed lightly on his front foot after a leap that has not been any truly great distance. As a result, he can drop pretty deeply straight down on that right leg (with 80 percent of his weight.) He has a firm grasp of uke, which he just has to maintain, and back in for the throw.
Mifune advises that tori must switch his right hand from uke's left lapel to his left middle sleeve. We didn't do that, since we were focusing on the bigger movements. We didn't miss it necessarily, since uke is pulling on tori's right sleeve so earnestly, and the lapel and back-of-shoulders grip tori ends up with seemed to work perfectly well.

4. The killing stroke: It's merely a repeat of the steps in our work up. You're dropping straight down with a solid hold and backing in. The funny things is, if you blow this, you're going to make it an uchi mata. In either case, uke whips around in a tight circle parallel to the deck. Relax and let that rear foot hit the ground. It will take some trial and error finding the right spot for your jump, which is a function of staying light and reading his pull.
Keep it light. Have fun. Discover how smooth the Ko Tsuri Goshi can be, while remembering it can be a heck of a hooligan bar in an emergency.

Santa Claus is leaving Perth, Australia, enroute to The Settlement, Christmas Island, of all places. He's really rolling. I have to get downstairs and roar through the storage room with a roll of wrapping paper, if you catch my meaning.
Happy Holidays, everyone! Here's hoping for a fruitful 2010!

That was an efficient way to operate the other night, learn a new throw or two as well as study some strategy and tactics all in the span of a few minutes. It's exactly how things will have to be done over the next few weeks as duty schedules, holidays, and travel plans limit the number of times and for how long we'll be able to break out the mats.
If Technique Three is any indication, Mifune's Nage Waza Ura No Kata is a very effective way to make progress despite these limitations.

3. UKE: SHOULDER WHEEL; TORI: CORNER THROW
On the third step (in the kata pattern already established) uke attempts a kata guruma on a major scale, which is to say he intends to pick him up to full shoulder height and drop him from there.
As uke's head and neck are against tori's hips, tori reacts in two ways. He hooks his left foot under tori's right thigh, (ostensibly) so uke can't lift him, and more importantly he leans backward slightly. He's keeping his center against uke's shoulder.
Uke won't be able to lift him, or if he does it will only be for a few inches before he comes back down, unable to continue.
Tori continues that downward motion. His center of gravity keeps dropping, his right foot goes between uke's legs and will end up beneath uke's left, and uke will crumple head first to the ground. His legs will go up and over the two of them, and the throw is complete as he rolls out beyond tori's head and shoulders.

Prior to this, I don't think I had shown my young apprentice any kata gurumas at full height, and we had only done a handful of sumi gaeshis during the Gonosen No Kata some weeks back. The kata itself teaches both throws beautifully, so I never hesitated. In fact, Mike knows his way around hikikomi gaeshis; a sumi gaeshi is a similar 'zipline' motion done from 45 degrees to one side, so he got that pretty quickly. Really, though, Mifune teaches the throw here even better than starting the 'zipline' from scratch.

The trick to a successful kata guruma, I pointed out, is that when you 'dig in' with your right arm and right leg under your opponent's hips, his center of gravity has to be in contact with your neck right away. The knot of his belt, which is a good approximation for where his center is, has to be above the shoulder and right on the trapezius muscle at the base of your neck. That point of contact, in turn, has to be right over your feet so that you can lift him.
As you do stand to full height and then see-saw him off your other shoulder, the sensation should be that his center of gravity rolls across the back of your neck, on one side and off the other, like a tennis ball. If you think of that, as well as keeping the tennis ball over your feet, an otherwise big, spectacular feat of strength can be narrowed to a manageable focus.

When it comes to the sumi gaeshi, Mifune's CANON OF JUDO, or at least my 2004 printing, contains a minor technical error, which I'm sure is the fault of the translator, but it's enough to make or break the entire operation. The instructions for tori, when uke digs in for the kata guruma, are to disrupt uke's action by leaning 'forward.'
Think of that in the context of uke's wanting to roll the tennis ball behind his neck. Uke digs in; if tori leaned forward, he'd drape himself across uke's shoulders and make the throw as easy as possible. (Would you believe that I actually did lean forward? Surely Mifune knows something we don't, I thought. Suddenly I was going over head first without a parachute.)
Tori should lean BACKWARD. This is our Step One in the kata's strategy of defense. This is tori creating kuzushi. It's an interesting combination. That left foot that tori hooks under uke's thigh doesn't really anchor tori's upward motion, the way you might imagine. The true aim of the hooking leg is that it serves as a fulcrum so tori's lean can do maximum damage.
Tori does not break the contact between his center and uke's shoulder or neck. As tori hooks in with that left foot and leans back (he can even press his center against uke's shoulder a bit) it only takes an inch or two to get his center and uke's shoulder out from over uke's feet. Tori's body, connected to uke's, creates a massive lever arm. Uke collapses or is at least unable to make the lift. Tori's going to feel himself come straight down.

To break this down into our checkpoints:
1. Tori's kuzushi upon uke is the hooking in and leaning back.
2. Tori's taken uke an inch or two further forward than uke intended. Uke started well; he's done nothing wrong, really, digging in for the kata guruma the way he should have. He's found himself unable to lift and unable to contain tori's downward force. This is his tsukuri.
3. Tori's tsukuri is that he's not leaned back in any manner that has him out of control. He's still straight up and down. He's not going to catch himself with his right leg, tempting though that might be. He's going to drop, and what makes this a sure thing is that he has uke's upper body completely locked. Uke's neck and shoulder are still bolted to his center, and they're going to follow tori to spot on the ground just forward of uke's feet.

Before, when I was talking about 'ziplines,' I was describing hikikomi or sumi gaeshis done from standing, where you hold your opponent's gi, keeping what you have with your arms - which means maintaining the distance between you - as you drop to a spot between his toes. You're riding the zipline in the sense that uke's gi is your sole means of support. You ride in on that slant; he bends over since your weight out in front like that breaks his frame massively, and he's arse in the air, head in the sand for a moment before his legs go over.

4. The same thing is happening here as you finish the throw. You've got uke's neck and shoulder locked into your midsection. As you drop, you are indisputably keeping what you have. You're maintaining this very solid connection.
You have more time than you think you do. Shoot that right leg forward through his; you're at an angle, so it will wind up under his left leg. He's going to roll off you like a rice bag - though that's a different throw! (technically)

This is very safe for uke. He does not face plant or pile drive. Since his neck is against your body, he's going to come down with his shoulder in your gut - but not with any impact, since he was arse-high with his feet on the ground for most of your drop.
This is fun. This is fast. Start slowly so you both know where you're going, but then it can be barroom brawl wild.

A sentence (or two) was missing from my last post, and we're going to have to find it because it's about to be an important concept in the analysis of Mifune's second technique in the Nage Waza Ura No Kata. Broadly, we were trying to figure out how Mifune does it, how he manages to blunt his opponents' attacks and then go on to gain the most fantastic positions and execute the most beautiful throws in response. It's an elegance his opponents can't even hope to match.
I was saying that Mifune actually has a very clear and concrete approach, which we examined in Technique 1. We also applied the lessons from the kata to other 'drawing forward' throws - pretty successfully, if not with Mifune-esque grace.

However, here was where I should have drawn a stronger parallel. In analyzing how to handle an uki goshi, I said that in the course of one beat, or one step, tori must destroy uke's balance and structure. He arrives in an optimum position to finish the throw (a tai otoshi) while uke arrives in a dreadful position on his knee - completely broken and unable to contain tori's continued motion.
I should have spelled that out more thoroughly when it came to the other throws, the seoi nages and hane goshis and so on: in that one step, that one beat, tori's forward motion must break uke completely. Tori must match the pattern of the kata exactly. ( I alluded to this a little casually, saying tori must manage his tai sabaki, which is not wrong, only vague.)
In randori, Mifune must know he's breaking the guy on the first step of the drawing motion of the attack. If he's not, he won't try the counter. Imagine a successful counter instead: uke attempts a uchi mata. Tori evades it, playing upon uke's force pulling him forward, and arrives on his right foot with uke bent forward from his initial effort. Tori's left hand will still be behind uke's back. Uke's own effort has put him in this broken position while tori is perfectly set to finish his counter throw. Tori's continued motion is stepping forward and to the outside a bit with his left foot, and uke goes over in the resulting tai otoshi.
We blundered into that, and it's a technique from later in the kata.

Technique Two is a very different set of mechanics, but if we're going to apply its lessons to other throws, then we must match the kata's pattern of checkpoints.

2. UKE: (SHOULDER THROW); TORI: (SIDE WHEEL)
In his third step, having established the manner of his attempt at kuzushi, uke turns in for an ippon seoi nage, the crook of his right elbow in tori's right armpit. Uke is largely successful; his body is across tori's, and the process of carrying tori on his back and shoulder is underway.
Tori must keep his body 'alive' and whole. His primary point of contact with uke is at his (tori's) center of gravity. He essentially rides uke's turning body, but having bent his right leg in anticipation, he threads it between uke's legs as he comes around uke's hips toward the front. Tori 'keeps what he has' in terms of his grip on uke's gi or his body and rolls uke with a sacrifice throw. Tori's center of gravity will land on the ground exactly between where uke's feet WERE.

This was a piece of cake for us, since it's a technique our beginners learn at about two weeks into their judo careers. Really, we begin with yoko wakare as a counter at first, but it's very important that beginners realize that throws must be done in a balanced and centered manner. Once they've shown some degree of confidence and athleticism, then the enforcement begins. All throws must be counter-proof.
Everyone gets nailed once in a while during warm ups or technique work if someone senses them bucking with their hips, pulling with their abs, or wrenching with their arms. If the jokes are flying or people are goading each other somehow, then everyone's trying to roll everyone, even during a peaceful and otherwise productive drill of throwing the line.
We would call yoko guruma 'the firepole' since tori's motion resembles a firefighter spiraling around the pole as he slides down to the first floor of the station.

1. Tori must first destroy uke's balance. When uke comes in for that seoi nage, the throw ideally happens right as tori's center of gravity goes over uke's. Uke wants to be stable; the throw would bring tori's center up, and once it's over uke's, it's in free fall. The throw would be over. The process would be finished as their centers are still close together.
However, tori doesn't allow uke to have the purchase he wants on his (tori's) center of gravity. If uke does this right, he has his own center against and slightly below tori's as the primary point of contact. If he moves tori by way of his center, he has control of tori and he has the throw.
Tori's not going to let him do that. Like a surfer slightly ahead of a wave, tori's going to take the throw. He'll go over, but he's not going to let uke make center to center contact. Tori's going to place his center against uke somewhere up and away from there, up near uke's right kidney. (Don't overdo this.)
As tori goes over, he's started with some kind of grip on uke's jacket. His arms and hands should freeze right where they are. They don't pull; they don't go to spaghetti. Tori just keeps what he has - namely the distance between them.
Since tori is surfing ahead of the wave a bit, his center of gravity is going to come around and wind up in front of, and very close to, uke's. Advance the video just a few frames: if tori continues to turn out - away from uke, as he drops to where his center is just below the level of uke's - and only a little bit is necessary, his forward momentum is going to draw uke off his frame.
Stop the video. Tori is hanging in mid air in front of uke's hips and thighs. Uke has been kazooshed.

2. Keep the video stopped. Uke's state of tsukuri - his undoing - is that his shoulders are being drawn forward and down. He's bent off the frame of his own skeleton, and he's wearing a tori who's hanging off of him like an albatross.

3. Keep the freeze frame there. Tori's tsukuri is that his center is below and very close to uke's. Uke's center is about to go over his in close proximity - just like in any other hip throw or seoi nage, and the way uke just wanted to do it- despite the fact that tori's center happens to be in mid-air. It only takes an instant when the centers are in close proximity.

4. The finish: Once uke's center has gone over tori's, uke's on his way as well. That's why I said tori's center lands between where uke's feet WERE. Sacrifice throws do not happen when tori is on the ground. They're done way before that. Also, what helps pull this off, to coin a phrase, is the fact that tori has 'kept what he has' in terms of grip and arm angles and distance from uke. Tori lands on his left edge, perfectly safely.

The trick to training this technique is to practice it by way of yoko wakare a number of times. Once you get the idea of surfing on, yet ahead of, uke's force, threading the leg straight backwards through uke's is pretty easy. You have more time than you think you do.

So how do you apply this principle to other throws? What's Mifune's lesson? One important lesson is in the threading of the leg: you do get closer to the center of the action and can roll more throws with a yoko guruma than with a simple yoko wakare.
I've had an uchi mata rolled - at speed - by You Know Who. I know how to roll an uki goshi, from the Mifune book, I think: hold onto the front of his belt and break him with a punch to the gut, of sorts.

How about countering an O Soto Gari? Let's be clear from the get go: you have to hit every spot on the checklist the way you just did in the kata. You have to break uke's center by riding his force. As you take him off his frame, your center will arrive slightly below but close and in front of his. That's where the counter throw takes place. Keep what you have with your arms, and watch him sail on over in a big arc.
This works beautifully if your uke is a classic 'pull his arm sideways and back - put his weight in his right rear corner' kind of O Soto Gari guy. That kuzushi is pointless because it doesn't break tori's bodily integrity. Tori can lean; tori can fall over dead, but he's still in control of his own body as he amplifies uke's movement.
His center is going to be at uke's, and the deed will be done possibly even before uke gets his reap against tori's leg. In fact, uke will think he's doing a bang up job because he's really going over - wow, kind of like how you're supposed to in an O Soto Gari. He's in for a surprise, because he can't stop. He's going to go right on over and roll. Don't worry when his leg does reap. It's just going to add force to his plunge.
Tori's kept what he had with his grip, and he lands on his left edge. It's a classic sacrifice technique.
Mifune's lesson is to keep your centers close together. The one who wins is the guy who's in control his own, and ultimately, both.

That's an oft praised quality, presence of mind. It means keeping one's wits about them despite the kind of danger, stress, or confusion that could erase them entirely. More to our point, it's not just being able to think; it's summoning the specific items you need to process at a given moment.
That's probably what all kata teaches, but it is certainly the basis of Kyuzo Mifune's rigorous Nage Waza Ura No Kata. We've all admired Mifune in the films of his randori, and the way in which he glides along, impervious to his opponent's attacks. How does he do that, we wonder. Is it just easy or natural to him? It doesn't look like he's thinking about it or trying very hard. We certainly can't see any conscious mechanics at play.
I'm going to make the case that Mr. Mifune has some very specific objectives in mind. They might be second nature to him in those films, but they're real, objective, and identifiable. His kata is an exercise at putting them in play.

First, let's lay out the ideas that we will bear in mind as we get to work. These are from recent posts:
-- 'here's a potshot that occurs to me as I write: kuzushi pertains to movement; tsukuri pertains to structure.'

-- 'So far we've identified a few signposts:
1. the act of destroying uke's structure
2. uke's resulting state of destruction
3. tori's optimum position
4. the finish: the throw itself, the sword's follow through, if you will.'

-- 'Gonosen is the act of frustrating the attack against you and then taking advantage of the opponent's resulting loss of balance.
Ura Waza is anticipating the opponent's attack, in thinking more quickly than he does; this technique reflects most faithfully the true spirit of Judo.'

Mifune's kata is teaching the art of 'Ura Waza.' Not only does the name give that away, it's clear to see that tori is harnessing uke's motion, force, or position and making better use of it than uke does. It's not so much frustrating the attack; uke never really gets it off. He arrives in his intended position discombobulated and prone to tori's counter attack.
Tori is working his way through those four steps above each time around.

1. UKE (Floating Drop); TORI (Body Drop)
This is paraphrased right out of CANON OF JUDO. Luckily I'm not working with any secret, illicit downloads this time around.
Uke and Tori begin in right natural posture. Uke begins the movement by withdrawing his left foot; he's looking at first to lift tori briefly and collapse him to tori's right front corner. (The exercise is done in classic three step kata fashion.) Each time, tori steps with his right foot and then his left, maintaining a solid and balanced body. On the third step, uke swiftly attempts to apply an uki otoshi; he drops to his left knee, placing it in line with his right foot. The intention is to draw tori outward and downward to effect a throw.
Mifune says, 'Tori has seen through uke's intention.' As uke draws outward and downward, tori also covers that distance and throws him with tai otoshi. Yes, uke goes off his left knee, spins in the air close to the ground, and lands with a snap along his right side.

Before Thanksgiving, I wrote that first quote above, that hey, maybe kuzushi has to do with motion, and tsukuri pertains to structure. It turns out I was on to something, but the thought unfortunately flitted out of my head during the course of that post.
I think we can see it in this technique. Kuzushi is an active process; it does pertain to movement, but the focus has to be on tori's movement. It's tori's bodily movement that is doing the destroying of uke's balance - and this is the case whether uke is moving or not. By moving, and in this case covering with his center a distance slightly greater than uke does with his, tori wrecks uke's balance.

That's the first thing tori must have present in his mind: 'Uke's going to go like this - so then I'm going with him. If he's moving 10 inches, I'm going 12, or 14.'
That amplifies uke's motion slightly, and therefore, uke arrives on that knee out of whack. Here's the dividing the line: the motion is the kuzushi, point 1, and the split second of arrival is the tsukuri upon uke. That's the second point on the checklist, and we did break this down step by step, getting everything right, one concept at a time.

Uke, on that knee, has to be broken on that beat. His backbone is bent, his shoulder is out past his knee, and very soon, as tori takes his next step, his center of gravity will beyond it as well.
As far as tori's tsukuri is concerned, he must arrive on his right foot, upright and in balance, fairly close to uke, and with his center (as viewed from the side) almost even with uke's in terms of the direction uke retreated. Remember, tori has kept his posture intact. The underlying assumption all along has been that he's denying uke any kuzushi . . . . or, tsukuri. (Oh, Hell: either one. Uke shall neither create nor destroy. He shouldn't even have been screwing with this guy.) This is checklist item #3, tori's position, the result of moving his center of gravity just a bit further from its starting point than uke did his.
If tori has covered steps One through Three correctly, then step Four is merely a step with his left foot and a slight tai otoshi motion with the upper body. I should mention that tori's right hand comes off uke's left lapel and takes hold of uke's left sleeve - at some point, starting early on, though.

Like I said, you're going to have to go through this step by step: "If I land here like this, then uke has to be broken just as I do.' If he's not, you're wrong. These are checkpoints that must be observed.
It reminded us of music. On every beat, or every step, something happened. Tori must match uke's timing but not his distance.

So what's Mifune doing, teaching us how to handle an uki otoshi? No, he's showing us a principle that works for a number of throws that uke might want to begin with a forward drawing motion. We did this with Seoi Nages, Hane Goshis, and even uchi matas, (which you have to be careful to swish past with your hips and legs). If tori manages his tai sabaki correctly, getting up and next to uke, all kinds of tai otoshis, O Goshis, and some pretty sick kubi nages present themselves.
My guess is that Mifune picked uki otoshi for this exercise because uke's far away, and with that drop, tori is in danger of being broken. It presents all the elements tori must have in mind.

We've worked through techniques 1 and 2, and started number 3. I'll have more next week. That sumi gaeshi is fast and scary fun like a rollercoaster - though I think there's a translation error in the book. The techniques are more of the same, spotting the four phases above. Get used to using checkpoints. Get used to narrating what's happening.
Maybe that's what Mifune is up to in those films.

Before we resumed with Mr. Mifune after the trip, I knew I had to meet with some of the other fellows and get their thoughts on kuzushi versus tsukuri. In my last post, I was making an obvious point concerning Mifune's kata, the Nage Waza Ura No Kata, in order to bring up a linguistic issue that was troubling me.

The point was that tori must first negate the effect of uke's attack. He must not let uke 'break' him; he is denying uke . . . . . . . something. Kuzushi? Tsukuri?

I hit the bookshelf and found myself surprised by a few things, including someone interesting who doesn't get caught up in Japanese terminology, but most importantly I've picked up some important concepts that just might help us sort out what Mr. Mifune is up to.

First and foremost, KODOKAN JUDO has to be treated with some caution. Their definitions are very simple, that kuzushi is the breaking of an opponent's balance, and tsukuri is the moving into position for a throw.
I don't know if this was their intention, but this simplistic rendering can make these concepts sound sequential. We've all seen this, the sensei who shows the beginner, 'First comes kuzushi.' He pulls at a volunteer uke, who leans like a big tree. 'Then comes kuzushi.' He fits in under the shape uke's body has created. 'Finally, kake, the throw itself.'
This is what leads to all the wrongheaded uchikomis I've seen, and which I did so long ago, undoubtedly the most unproductive activity I have ever undertaken: pull, fit in - pull, fit in - pull, fit in, something that never paid off in a single moment of randori that I can remember.

BEST JUDO, by Inokuma and Sato, actually defines the terms in much the same way, but they make an important point, that kuzushi and tsukuri must occur at the same time. You break the guy and you're in position to finish him at the same moment?
Now we're getting somewhere. If the word kuzushi has to do with breaking or destroying, and tsukuri has to do with building or constructing, maybe this linguistic issue is one of context. Imagine an O Soto Gari: if I dash in and catch uke out of alignment, (his back kinked, his bladder sticking forward) I have put him in a state of kuzushi. He is broken, and I am there to plant him in an instant.
As much as I have destroyed things from his standpoint, I have also created something: this state of brokenness as well as my readiness to capitalize on it. The constructing, the creating this situation would seem to be tsukuri.

In CANON OF JUDO, Mifune describes kuzushi broadly at first, that it is, 'the art of disrupting an opponent's balance so he is forced into a vulnerable position,' before going on to say that one must break uke's balance 'so that he cannot support his center of gravity.'
That's a good definition of breaking someone, that uke's structure is so shot that he cannot support himself, and that his center of gravity is very likely not over his feet, so at the very least he'd have to stumble to regain his balance.
By the way, Mifune also includes this passing thought, that kuzushi is the basis for throwing AND GRAPPLING. That's something very interesting to pursue some time, that kuzushi and tsukuri could be guideposts wherever you find yourself in a tangle. That's the thing about Mifune and 'Canon,' I've noticed: a lot of the ideas are very subtle. You have to do a lot of homework elsewhere in order to come back and grasp ideas that he nonchalantly tosses off.

In a not very well known but remarkably perceptive book, also entitled KODOKAN JUDO, Hikoichi Aida sheds some important contextual and conceptual light. 'Kuzusu' is the verb 'to destroy.' A 'kuzureta' posture is one that is tilted and unstable, meaning an opponent cannot execute speedy and precise action.
Aida goes on to say that TWO tsukuris exist, your opponent's and your own.
You destroy your opponent's posture, and in so doing you have brought about his ruination; you have created his state of tsukuri. The thing is, Aida says, you have to make sure you've properly created your own so you're there to finish him off. It is possible, he says, to have handled an opponent adroitly while your own tsukuru is poor. The result is no throw.
We've all been there: you get the guy stumbling, but you're not close enough to make the kill.

All of these books make the sensible, important points about movement and tai saibaki, that imparting kuzushi or achieving tsukuri, whichever the case may be, is not a case of pushing and pulling at an opponent. It's the result of whole bodied movement, amplifying the opponent's exertions and moving rapidly into position. Aida, like Harrison in the last post, and like many of the others, says there is no pause between tsukuri and kake.

So now there's a logical syllogism to string together, from BEST JUDO to Aida: kuzushi, tsukuri, and kake all happen essentially at once. Getting away from any contextual confusion, that's would mean breaking a guy and planting him is all a singular stroke. Now I'm back on familiar ground, vocabulary (and uchikomis) be damned. I'm back to the Aged and Wise Sensei's 'instant and unanswerable force on uke's center of gravity.'

It was interesting to note that Sensei Daigo, in KODOKAN THROWING TECHNIQUES, rarely uses the terms. His analyses are from the standpoint of dynamics, or causality. Tori pushes uke, he'd explain, and at the moment uke pushes back . . . tori [does the following]. Daigo uses phrases like, 'at the moment' or 'seizes the opportunity.' I saw phrases like, 'pulling motion,' which would mean that a full, full translation was his aim. I flipped around the book in an attempt to be both random and thorough and never saw the words kuzushi or tsukuri.
The same is true with Eric Dominy's JUDO THROWS AND COUNTERS, which deserves a mention. Dominy is a very under appreciated writer. With a reprint, that book could teach whole bodied throwing to a generation. His approach is numbered footsteps, arrows, and line drawings, and, most importantly, thorough conceptual explanations.

That's what we're going to have to have if we're going to puzzle out some of Mr. Mifune's secrets.
So far we've identified a few signposts:
1. the act of destroying uke's structure
2. uke's resulting state of destruction
3. tori's optimum position
4. the finish: the throw itself, the sword's follow through, if you will.

We've already done the first two techniques in the kata, and I must say that as pedantic as it might seem, this is a handy checklist to have on hand. How did you like the idea of kuzushi and tsukuri on the ground, as Mifune mentioned? Have you gone to the trouble of thinking in those terms? That kind of discipline might afford us more direct results than just rasslin' around hoping for the best.
Wow, what does it mean to have kuzushi on the ground - or when is it that uke can 'support his center' or 'execute speedy and precise action?'
Aida can tell you: it's when he's on his edge, like when he's just landed in a breakfall. (God, this stuff is cool.)

Mr. Mifune, in the photographs, does not appear to be the type to suffer fools gladly. We're going to have to be very rigorous as we analyze his technique. We're going to have to do our homework elsewhere. Here's one last clue for now, from something else on the bookshelf, Mikonosuke Kawaishi's STANDING JUDO:

(half paraphrasing, half plagiarizing, as I've done all along)
There are two conceptions of counterattacking, the counter and what the French, in fencing, refer to as 'the remise.'
Gonosen is the act of frustrating the attack against you and then taking advantage of the opponent's resulting loss of balance.
Ura Waza is anticipating the opponent's attack, in thinking more quickly than he does; this technique reflects most faithfully the true spirit of Judo.

Be they Japanese or English, let's try to put words to Mifune's magic.

Mifune's Nage-Waza-Ura No Kata is our next endeavor. As with all the other kata work we do, we'll focus on one technique a night, and the content and theory each time around will set the purpose of an each class.
That's the intent, at least. As is sometimes the case, a given technique will take a few nights to figure out, and the joy in the game is how the kata can inform everything else we're up to - or how we can blunder into grasping a difficult bit of kata from some of our more 'routine' practice.
By way of example, I've pretty much quadrupled the speed of my morote seoi nage from something I picked up in the Koshiki No Kata, of all places.

Roughly speaking, I suppose Mifune's NWUNK could be compared to the Gonosen No Kata, in that they're defensive measures against standard Gokyo attacks. I wouldn't be so foolish at this early stage to make any further comparisons, and in fact I hope, and just about expect, to see some differences.
I go back and forth on Mifune. I've called him a genius and admired the films of how effortlessly he moves against opponents. Those randori segments, by the way, are the very best place to grasp the idea of the shot glass behind the belt. You can see Mifune doing the very minimum to deny opponents contact with his whisky or tipping it the least bit.
Then again, they are tiptoeing around at a pretty dreamy pace. I have to think that in view of the way the game, the athletes, and strength and conditioning have evolved, an elite player would tear him off his mounts in the blink of an eye. Would Mifune even comprehend the speed we see nowadays?

Really, I hope Mifune knew all about speed and power and that Judo was not so different when those films were shot. Maybe he was up to something all along, something unseen that was blunting those athletes' ability to unleash. That's something to bear in mind as we work through his kata.
Why do I hope for this? It would mean there's hope for the rest of us mortals, that art and science will be equalizing factors in battles against superior physical specimens.

It would seem that one of the foundations in NWUNK is denying opponents any possible tsukuri.
Hang on; I have to go two different directions with that sentence. One: you can't let the guy break you. That's obvious in any kata, Gonosen No Kata, Go No Kata that we just finished, and even the Nage No Kata.
I'm using the word tsukuri to admit to some misuse of Japanese terminology. When I'm speaking English, I believe I'm being more or less clear about 'dropping and distributing' or 'breaking someone's unified body,' but I've been guilty of lumping too many concepts under the heading of 'kuzushi.'

Here's a piece by E.J. Harrison that didn't sink in as well as it should have:
"Literally the Japanese word Tsukuri means "make", "construction", "workmanship", while Kake means "beginning" or "start", but in their Judo connection they have a special technical significance.

Thus tsukuri is the power of distorting your opponent's posture or balance described above. It is an indispensable preliminary to the decisive application of the particular technique you have in mind for your opponent's overthrow. Then the instant you are satisfied that you have broken his posture or balance in the required direction, go all out for the relevant throw.

The movement synchronizing with the application of the required technique is known as Kake or, as one might say, the attack itself, i.e. the actual throw. When demonstrated by an expert transition from Tsukuri to Kake may be so swift and subtle as dilute detection by inexperienced onlooker. Faulty Tsukuri can very easily spoil your Kake, even though the latter has intrinsically been correctly applied. And admittedly an exceptionally powerful Judoka may succeed in throwing his opponent despite incorrect Tsukuri and Kake because of the use of brute strength but he is nonetheless violating the basic principles of the art and unless he corrects this fault in good time, he can hardly expect to develop into a really skillful exponent Judo. Japanese instructors of the Kodokan are never impressed by such exhibitions of mere "beef", and even if the contestant guilty thereof scores a victory, they usually dismiss it contemptuously as "muri" or "unreasonable."
{from JudoInfo; and ultimately a quote from MANUAL OF JUDO}

He might be lumping things under 'tsukuri', but I'll go with what he says, particularly since I agree quite a bit with the final, largest paragraph. Here's the funny thing: I'm about to dive into a new kata, and I've got to sort out the difference between some pretty elementary terms we all take for granted. I've been looking; the answers are contradictory, which I chalk up to linguistics mainly. Still, this could be important. If Mifune is up to something subtle, we have to be able to parse the various components. Generally, if I feel something, I can describe it, so I'm going to stick with English. I'll find the explications for the Japanese ideals which hopefully someone has spelled out.

For the record, here's a potshot that occurs to me as I write: kuzushi pertains to movement; tsukuri pertains to structure. Do YOU really know the difference?

Two other parting shots: The Aged and Wise Sensei NEVER used the k-word in class. His philosophy was much like Harrison's above. Since he's all about taking out an opponent's center from the very get-go, any attempts at affecting his balance telegraph your intentions and can be used against you.
I never use the word in my class, either. It's just when I write. See what happens when you try to be politically correct?

I'm packing up the brood and heading off to the Gandamack Lodge for a week. Happy Thanksgiving! We'll see afterward if old Mifune knows the difference.

[After a week of playing tour guide for the visiting in-laws . . .]
We end our study of the Go No Kata where we began, back at the refrigerator door and thinking about the Aged and Wise Sensei in Alaska. The refrigerator door, if you'll recall, was where I finally began to comprehend what the A&W One had been saying all along about whole bodied strength. It was at the fridge that I coined the idea of 'drop and distribute,' which is to say spreading a given force or load throughout the muscles of the body in order to maintain balance and maximize capacity.

This came after quite a few lessons, or comedy routines really, in which I could not grasp what my sensei was doing. I'd press against his chest - or rather, I'd lean and drive, and he'd stay in place as rooted and impassive as a tree. He'd tell me to do the same thing, and when I'd topple right over, he'd say, 'You're using muscle.'
'I can't use muscle? What am I supposed to use?'
'Nothing. Just relax.'
'Relax? I'll be as light as a feather, an empty jacket. I'll float wherever you send me.'
'I mean relax, not collapse.' Relax, Not Collapse was another one of our 'Who's On First' routines on which we'd go round and round.

'Look. Push against my chest,' the A&W S. would say, and I as I write, I can recall him setting his legs beneath him subtly. 'Push as hard as you want.'
As I pressed, he'd actually start singing and dancing, waving his hands here and there to show how relaxed he was, or he'd turn one way or another, sending me plunging forward as I slipped off. I'd push very hard, and he'd hang tight but start with the atemi, these easy little taps with the tips of his fingers that would clang through my skull as if they'd been from a ball peen hammer. 'I'm perfectly relaxed,' he'd say.
(For three years in Kodiak, I was on the receiving end of all kinds of throws and blows that were preceded with the words, 'I'm perfectly relaxed.' Nowadays if I hear that phrase, I brace myself, expecting the floor to come rushing up at me.)

These conversations would drive me completely mad. The other guys used to let me play all these scenes, probably because they already had years before.
I'd raise my hands again, gearing up to wring his neck or run him across the room. 'You know, if I back up and charge, you'd have to move.'
'Yep,' he shrugged.
He had completely yielded the point. I was rhetorically off balance, gaping at him in astonishment.
'Well then you're saying there's a limit. At some point you're going to have to move.'
'Yes.'
'So you're saying this [rootedness] isn't foolproof.'
'Nothing is foolproof.'
'All right, all right; hang on. None of these Riddle of The Sands esoteric martial arts conversations.' I'd reach for his lapel and draw a blank, my train of thought completely off the rails.
'You think too much,' he'd declare, which was interesting, since the other authority figures in my life usually made the opposite point. 'Quit thinking about it. Just do it!'
'How the Hell am I supposed to do it if I don't know what I'm doing?' Then we'd go round and round again, or stare at each other in exasperation until we started laughing.

As it turns out, I was one step away from grasping the essence of this. Anybody would have to move if they didn't drop and distribute fast enough or strongly enough, or if uke had the strength of a bulldozer. If tori wants to hold the line, he can retrench on that step. By yielding, he's giving himself the time and the position to set up a stronger base. He can even drive forward from there. These are the lessons in Technique 10.

If tori doesn't want to hold his ground, all he has to do is move an inch or two off the line of force and turn to deflect uke's attack. That we all recognize as basic tai sabaki. It's proper bodily carriage, or maintaining your balance and ability to move. I've written in the past about tai sabaki being analogous to gliding around the mat with a shot glass of whisky tucked inside your belt, the aim being not to spill a drop even as uke tries to clobber you.

The entire lesson of the Go No Kata is that the skill of tai sabaki can include all the strength in the world. The shot glass in your belt stays full no matter the sound and fury brought by uke, and throughout all your resistance, speed and technique.

In 'Technique 10 . . . Ending in Kata Guruma,' uke and tori begin by facing one another. They step forward with their right feet and raise their right hands to press against the left side of one another's chest.
Tori absorbs uke's attack in proper fashion, but then suddenly uke cheats! He adds his left hand to his pushing, bringing it up tori's right shoulder.
Tori brings his own left hand up to the underside of uke's arm, the way he has before - to aid in dropping his center - but the damage has been done. Uke has the strength advantage.
Tori yields. He absorbs uke's force directly backwards. In this case, it brings that advanced right foot to even with his left. Similarly, uke's advance brings his left foot up even with his right.
Tori has retrenched even though his feet are even. He's dropping his center - and not spilling that shot glass - and holding his ground well enough to halt any further advance for uke.
In fact, tori has set up such a sufficient base that now he can go on the offensive. His left hand moves from uke's tricep to his shoulder. He drives his entire body forward, keeping it upright, and advancing with his right foot once more. Uke's left foot retreats correspondingly.
Uke is still resisting, fighting to go forward once more, yet tori's new position is too strong to overcome. It also allows tori to release and deflect uke's force, and step in to hoist him onto his shoulders for a kata guruma.
(This is largely a squat or a lunge of sorts; the whisky in the glass might swirl a little, but tori does not bend over so far that it would spill.)

That release, which we saw in Technique Eight, is tricky business, and as with every technique, each phase will require its own process of trial and error. As you go through the Go No Kata, there are two drills to fall back on when particular moments in the kata are not working.

The first is simply practicing the 'drop and distribute' in the fore and aft stance. Have an uke put his hands against your chest AND NOT PUSH VERY HARD. It's easy to get caught up in all the strength and all the details of this kata and lose track of this very basic skill. By having uke push only lightly, you can practice succeeding; you can enjoy succeeding without the pressure of getting it right in 'demanding' circumstances.
Once you know what you're doing, then your uke can add force. We had to go back to the drawing board to clear our heads a number of times this way.

On that rapid release and seemingly simultaneous retreat and advance, the turn in place in Techniques Eight and 10: The left foot goes back a split second before the right foot comes forward - which is to say the whole left side of your body, of course, moves an instant before the right. I still think tori is staying essentially in place, or maybe he's getting off the center line of force by an inch, but I was botching this royally the other night by charging in with my right side too soon.

Botch it royally, have fun, and find a way to make everyone succeed. This is a hard kata with a thousand lessons in it, but if you can come away with some basic skills, you've gotten what your first crack at it should deliver.

In case you missed this point in Technique Eight, the Go No Kata wants to remind you that the best way to handle a powerful opponent is to be as close to him as possible. This is the theme of Technique Nine, which is not so technically intricate as it is magnificently placed in the grand scheme of things.

It's also the first pulling technique we've done in a while. Aware that folks would likely be a bit rusty on pulling strength, the Creators begin with an easy drill as a means of reminder.

'Technique Nine . . . ending with Ushiro Goshi' begins as uke and tori step forward with their right feet and take hold with their right hands in a hand shake grip. They drop, and the tug of war begins.
They ease off, switch to the left side, and repeat.
Returning to the right side, they now hook one another in the crooks of their right arms. This, you will see, brings a great deal more strength into play.
After the heaving on the right side, they switch to the left and repeat. However, tori now elects to take uke out of the battle. As uke is heaving, the left crook of his arm against tori's left, tori steps in under uke's arm with an inward, backward turn and winds up directly behind him. In the proper kata, tori merely loads uke and lifts him off the ground to suggest the potential of the ushiro goshi.

That first set of right and left handshake grips is the very same 'drop and distribute' drill from early in the kata. I detect a certain wink and a nod from the Masters on this one; they probably saw too many students who, like me, took hold and proceeded to slant their centers toward their front foot, the way they've done with all the pushing lately.
I went right over. 'Whoops - slant toward the back foot!' I realized. It was actually pretty funny - and a very useful preface to the main event. I had no business hooking elbows and getting ugly until I knew what I was doing.

The principle is the same when you do start hooking elbows: you have to relax and take the strain out of any one muscle group. The whole body absorbs this, and you have to keep the faith when uke starts imparting significant force.
Why is uke going to be so much stronger this time around? He's not limited by his wrist or grip strength, as in the handshake drill. When he hooks with the crook of his arm, his fist is in front of his stomach. His pectoral muscles, shoulder, and biceps are all engaged in keeping his arm in place. He can drive, lean, and turn all the more effectively when he's tied together in a tight mass.
I should mention, by the way, in these various tugs-of-war, uke can - and should - lean and commit and be as recklessly strong as he desires.

Where is the lesson that to handle extreme strength tori must be close to uke? You'll see it in the relative positions of uke and tori's feet. Uke and tori begin the entire exercise facing one another and a meter or so apart. In the handshake drill, they each take a step forward, and as they heave their front feet are each on the same line, a center line (viewed from the side) halfway between them.
When the elbow crooking takes place, their feet overlap (again, as viewed from the side.) Tori's foot can be as far as 12 or 18 inches inside of uke's, especially if uke really rears back with the effort.
If tori doesn't come in close, he'll be pulled over. He'll be caught reaching in order to hook uke's arm, and the fight is over before it begins. So, get in there, right to the source of uke's power and get your base established. Relaxing and distributing the force does work. In fact, it's the only thing that does work, especially if your uke is significantly heavier than you. You cannot pull back with your chest and arm or try to press your legs hard into the floor.
Like I've seen the A&W Sensei do any number of times, I'd have to pause to draw a deep breath and let it all go, the air and all the tension from top to bottom. Then I could drop into position and do nothing, feel nothing, and hold my ground.

On the left side, at the end, since tori's left foot is inside and beyond uke's, he must bring it back and around to put it outside as he begins his turn. (This can be done; it's all part of the agile strength afforded by good distribution of force - which really is just another way to define tai sabaki.)
With his arm still crooked inside uke's, tori puts that left foot fairly far aft of uke - using uke's pulling force to bring himself along. Tori turns on that left foot. His right foot is coming behind him, between him and uke, so that for a brief moment tori's back is to uke's left side. By the time tori completes the turn, he's directly behind uke.
He's been low, in that horse stance we talked about way back when, and scooping up uke at the level of uke's belt is there for the taking. In fact, the ushiro goshi is very easy, and very scary for uke, since with all that pulling force, uke is unbalanced backward. Tori just has to grab him and turn; he hardly has any lifting, and for uke, the room spins.
He doesn't know where he's going. This one is good for some screams, which is entirely appropriate for Halloween.

How awesome, the feeling of reaching across time and connecting with the Masters. Throughout our studies of the Go No Kata, and even the Koshiki No Kata beforehand, we've done a reasonable job puzzling out the lessons within each technique. Most of the time it's a painstaking process of detective work, and we wind up finishing the techniques in competent if not inspiring fashion.
However, and I hope you've had this experience, every once in a while, if you stick with this long enough, you absolutely nail something. The feeling is pure awe: 'That's what they meant!'
If you were back in that jujutsu dojo 125 years ago, or one of the Masters had materialized in your dojo, he'd watch you hit this and simply say, 'Yes.'

Technique Eight in the Go No Kata ends in an O Soto Otoshi. Rather, in its formal demonstration, tori simply loads uke - or breaks him, actually - but does not execute. Based on last night's class, I can see why. When tori goes for the O Soto Otoshi, uke simply vanishes. Tori doesn't feel a thing. Uke hits the ground, rattling the windows like a refinery explosion.

In the interests of full disclosure, we did not nail this right off the bat. We had plenty of our usual klutzing around, along with our usual method of scientific inquiry: wild argument, confused silence, and the typical lines like, 'All right, slow motion . . . . Let me try something,' or 'Don't reap it like that! You'll take my knee out.'

Technique begins as uke, facing tori, places his hands on tori's chest, leans forward, and attempts to drive tori straight backward. Tori drops in a manner we've seen before; his feet are side by side, and as he runs his center of gravity downward and forward, his back becomes bowed slightly.
Tori also raises his hands to cup uke's elbows or go just beyond, resting his palms and fingers along uke's triceps. He uses this leverage to help him drop down and forward.
Tori then winds his hands inward and then upward, creating a wedge of sorts that knocks uke's hands away - up and to the sides. Tori's palms are turned toward him throughout. He finishes standing upright and balanced.

Tori places his hands on uke's chest to allow him his turn. Uke does the same maneuver, but ever the opportunist, he no sooner turns his palms out than he practically lunges for tori, pressing once again on his chest and committing himself in the hope he's caught tori off guard.
[In uke's first push, he's arguably doing it right, with a bowed back and his center slanting in the proper way. In the second push, he almost starts well, but soon his power is in his upper body, and he's leaning recklessly.]

Tori's ready for him, however. He drops and absorbs the attack the same way, but then he releases. (To the naked eye, that is. Hold that thought.) His left foot comes back, making uke's right come forward, and tori steps in for the O Soto Otoshi. Up top, as he does, his arms rise, though it's not quite the same wedging motion as before.
Tori's left hand makes its same wedging motion. The palm, under uke's arm, comes in, up, and then out, and it winds over uke's right arm and takes hold in the conventional manner. (For the O Soto Otoshi, it will bring uke's arm against tori's stomach.)
Tori's right hand stays beneath uke's left elbow and drives it upward and directly over uke's right leg to create a massive kuzushi effect. Tori brings his right leg around uke's, and in accordance with the Geneva Convention does not actually execute the O Soto Otoshi.

Much more is going on than meets the eye. Remember, our theme for the Go No Kata is that it demonstrates the infinitely close quarters in which strength and speed can exist with the merest separation. Technique Eight represents a significant advance. Uke is meant to use a huge amount of strength, which tori must handle. When tori unleashes his finish, everything happens closer than ever.

The secret to cracking this one is that tori must stay as close as he can to uke. In the initial pushes, tori's feet must be no further away than the length of uke's arms, plus a two or three inches at most. This was the source of our struggling when we were trying to nail the finish plausibly. Uke might want to lean far; he might want to keep his rear end and feet far back, but tori can't let him. Tori has to come forward if need be, so his feet can be within 36 inches of uke's.
This led to another important discovery - which we made completely backwards. No doubt you've realized that these basic strength drills tori and uke exchange at the beginning of each etude are meant to establish a principle to be used in the technique - the resolution - itself. It was our pondering the resolution which made us go back to the drawing board on the opening drill.

We've actually seen this before, tori's feet side by side, the forward slant of his center happening without a foot in front. This is when TORI's back becomes bowed a bit. It was in Technique Four, which I wrote about in the piece, 'Isometrics Out Wide.' In it, I said something to the effect of, A simple recovery step is available, if necessary [to catch any tricky releases on uke's part.]

I stand corrected. Even though tori is bowed slightly, if uke suddenly releases, tori must remain stationary. He cannot step.
You have to test this and train it. You'll find that is has more of a vertical component than before, even as you're slanting your center out over nothing - the space your front foot would be if you were in a fore and aft stance.
This means the wedge in this technique, the knocking uke's hands up and out, becomes a whole bodied, balanced affair like the double wrist-hold escape in Technique Six.

Tori does not exactly 'release' uke when he commences the O Soto Otoshi finish. As far as uke's right side is concerned, it's a release, since that leg and shoulder come forward. For tori, however, as much as his left side comes back, his right side goes forward.
It's interesting: as counterintuitive as it was at first, tori's right side drives right into the teeth of uke's strength. The strength, as it turns out, won't be there. What tori is doing is turning 30 or 45 degrees on a vertical axis. Like we mentioned before, tori stays in place as if a metal rod is running up from the floor and right up through his backbone. The result is neither a release nor an attack against resistance.
Tori holds his ground; he shifts his feet fore and aft in an instant, turning out toward uke's rear corner. When he brings that left arm of uke's up and over, the O Soto Otoshi is almost done already. Uke reels forward and his legs go out from underneath him. Tori has to hurry to get his leg around uke's.

Keeping with the theme of refinery explosions (see my last entry) this is very much a case of tremendous strength, or potential energy, suddenly released. Tori's turn is a blast shield, a deflection of uke's force. Technique Eight brings us our closest yet to the flames.

One more segue, on the topic of force deflected: all of this kata I'm writing about represents only part of a given class. Last night we were also smashing around the mat in newaza randori. I'm giving away about 80 pounds to my big man, who often wants to bench press or throw his knees up as barriers when I'm coming in. I used to flee that kind of resistance and try to circle around, but in recent classes I've been giving him something to push before coming in alongside those lines of force. I'm even getting around his knees by attacking his legs just above them.
Last night I gave a twitch of my torso and came crashing down into a gyaku kesa gatame that knocked the wind out of him. 'God, who would have thought?' I mused. 'The stuff works.'

Sorry for the delay. All had gone well Thursday night. We hit Technique Seven in the Go No Kata and understood it pretty well; it's an interesting one, with a feint on tori's part or at least an important demonstration of a hip technique that doesn't work, contrasted with one that does.

I was all set to write it up, when hours later, at 12:15 am, my house was rocked by an enormous explosion. Yeah, yeah: I know you've heard that excuse a thousand times before by people slacking on their judo blogs. In fact, I didn't even believe it myself. The entire house shook and the windows rattled, whereupon I rolled over and thought, 'We're in for a Hell of a thunderstorm.'
My wife was the one who leaped out of bed and into a fighting stance. Out the back window, a huge fireball was mushrooming hundreds of feet into the air. Immediately I knew it was the tank farm up near Fort Buchanan.

That's a good five or six miles away, so we were (and are) perfectly safe, but I must say it's a strange feeling watching wide scale destruction unfold before your eyes. You don't move; you don't think. You watch without any emotion and weigh very carefully how things are moving.
My wife kept asking if we'd have to evacuate.
'It can't reach us,' I said. The tank farm is surrounded by woods, hills, and swamp. In the hills nearby are great rock faces and caves for climbing, trails on which I'd take the kids, and a wooden tower from which we could see the Goya vegetable factory, the tank farm, and in the other direction, our neighborhood.

The news has only registered so much around the world, but take a look at CNN's latest:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas...sion/index.html

The theme of the evening therefore, as I'm sure the firefighters would agree, is stay upwind, stay cool, and don't rush into anything that's not going to work.

In Technique Seven . . . . involving tobi goshi and uki goshi, uke and tori face one another.
Both of them step forward with their right legs and raise their right arms to push against the left side of their partner's chest. They drop and distribute - but then suddenly uke brings up his LEFT hand against tori's RIGHT chest, adding to his pushing power.

Tori must therefore slant downward more effectively. He raises his own left hand, places it beneath uke's right elbow and uses it as a brace to help direct his center toward his front foot.

They ease off. They switch to the left side, left feet forward and left hands up against the right pectorals. It's tori this time who brings his right up to add the additional pushing force - but uke doesn't handle it so well. He's not straight up and down and redirecting force in the optimum manner. Rather, uke is bent forward and driving back into tori.

That's when tori shoots in for his first uki goshi attempt, which doesn't work.
Uke steps around it, on his right foot, and steps in front of tori for his own attempt at a hip throw. He keeps his hand on tori's neck, (tori has shot in beneath his left arm) making this a left koshi guruma attempt. It doesn't go.
This is when tori steps around once more and succeeds with an uki goshi. In the proper kata, he only loads the throw.

So tori misses a throw. What is the lesson here, how to recover when your first attempt goes up in flames, or might it be a bit of maneuver warfare?
I think it's the latter. Uke is slanting forward hard; his hips are a mile away when tori goes in for that initial hip throw. No tori in his right mind should expect to penetrate far enough to get a hip throw - so tori doesn't.
He doesn't try very hard. He comes in well enough to fool uke, but uke can escape, and he doesn't have many options besides stepping around tori. He can't roll him because tori's not taking him over, and he can't take tori back because tori's caught him driving forward.

Tori's leading uke into this step (which is uke coming around tori's right side and leading with his left hip, for a left sided throw. By contrast, when tori comes around, he's on uke left side, leading with his right hip and finishing with a right sided throw.)
The Koshi guruma is uke's only option, but since tori hadn't been foolish enough to commit his hips and balance in going after uke's, tori's ready for him. His center is lower than uke's and his position is such that he can step away and withdraw his center with ease.

Uke has committed to his koshi guruma and created his own kuzushi. As he stands rooted to the spot, tori is able to come around in front once more and finish him with a right sided uki goshi.

The lesson here, interestingly, is in what doesn't work: that hip throw when uke's hips are far, far back. Would you believe we were silly enough to try it? 'No wonder tori doesn't make the throw," I decided at last. "He CAN'T make the throw.'

Don't go rushing into anything. See which way the wind is blowing. You might have to stand by and let uke burn himself out.

This is a photo taken out front of Chez Flashman. See the barbecue in the backyard? The last time we worked on the Go No Kata, we had a real blast!

Just as I finished typing last week, I knew I had figured out the last puzzling pieces of Technique Six in the Go No Kata. It most the most careless paragraph in the entire entry; I had knock out something like a conclusion, post the entry, and get to something else.

This is what I whipped off:
"This is going to take some research into techniques and terminology. Finally, if tori's so smart, is he up to something with uke, or does he know at least not to go for anything stupid from a ridiculous position? Is tori distributing force while on one leg? Forcing the other one down? If tori knows best, he's not saying."

Those were the answers, I realized as I was hitting 'Save' and 'Shut Down.' As it turns out, the explanation for how to resolve Technique Six is pretty straightforward, and all the information we needed had already been established in the kata. I was making that point about the Gonosen No Kata a while back. As bizarre and new as something might seem, the Masters have given you everything you need to know. It'll just take some time and patience to sort things out. In the meantime, I'm reminding myself, try not to sound like all hope is lost.

Look up above (or down below) in the last entry for the details on Technique Six, but here's a reminder: Tori and then uke take turns breaking one another's double handed, overhand wrist grabs. They then grasp one another in right stances and pull, dropping and distributing, and then push, doing the same.
It's during this pushing phase that things got a little muddy. Tori and uke both drop, and with their left hands take hold of one another's right legs.
This appears to be an early incarnation of Kuchiki Taoshi, a technique among the list of those recognized comparatively recently by the Kodokan.
In my source material, it's a little hard to see who grabs whose leg first - but let's assume it's uke, since we can always rely on him to start trouble.
That means we have to flesh out the logic of what tori does in response, immediately as well as the way he resolves the rest of this clash. Tori knows best, we were saying the other day, and it would seem he's showing some pretty amazing judgment - which was way over my head last week.

Uke goes for the Kuchiki Taoshi. If he has tori's right leg, his most immediate option is to dash in while driving tori's upper body back, and upending him backwards. If he sweeps tori's left leg out from under him in the manner of an O Uchi Gari, the result is a spectacular airborne throw that will utterly pancake tori.
Uke's final, crudest option would be to turn to his left and wrench tori out over his unsupported right side. This is a turning, dropping maneuver seen in wrestling sometimes.

Tori, faced with a huge disadvantage must mount the VERY best defense possible, so he grabs uke's leg likewise.
Gone are the three options for uke that I just mentioned, and gone is any leverage with which he can improvise.

Now, it would seem to be a standoff, if that could be the term for the two of them hopping around, but the truth is that tori is up to something. He's forcing his leg down, just as I realized at the last second the other day.

If we go back to the first dropping and distributing exercise we did when we began the Go No Kata, you'll see that tori can handle that grasp on his leg.
When an uke pushes against your chest, and your legs are fore and aft, you realize very quickly that all the force is going to go to that back leg. This is especially the case if you try to resist that force horizontally, the way it's coming to you. When we use the phrase 'drop and distribute,' we mean that you cannot take on that force directly, so you look to drop downward and forward and address uke's horizontal force with a completely different vector of your own.
You slant your center of gravity toward where your front foot is - or should be. The weight on your feet equalizes, and your whole body can absorb the force of uke's push. We use the word distribute to mean that the force or the load that uke is imparting is spread to all the muscles throughout your body.

The Go No Kata has been showing us variations of that skill all along. In this case, tori is making the VERY best choice possible, getting himself out of this one-legged predicament by dropping his weight and slanting his center toward where his right foot will be. Uke will not have the strength to resist this slant and the way tori can drive his leg downward (afterward!).

So tori has busted out of the leg hold. He still could be holding onto uke's leg. How come he doesn't finish his own Kuchiki Taoshi?
We thought about this and tried a few different scenarios. If uke tries to hold tori's leg, he ends up very badly broken, and we thought some kind of prop or drop would work.
The problem is that they're too close together. Uke's going to clamp on. Whatever he does to uke, tori's going to go with him to the ground, probably painfully for both. One of the most obvious things for uke, since he'd have one leg hanging on tori already is to Pull Guard - a bloody nuisance the Masters recognized more than a century ago.

Therefore, and backing up a little, tori once again chooses the most sensible option. He lets uke's leg go. In the proper kata, he lets the leg down as he's forcing his own down.
Uke senses tori leaning in and the open space in front of him, so he goes for the seoi nage. We tried this in different ways; he can go for any kind of forward throw, but he has to bring his hips around to tori, who's just waiting - with his now free left hand - for uke's center of gravity. He pushes that out from under uke and shuffles back a step or two, and viola, the Ushiro Jime.
Again, that represents his very best choice. Tori's just driven down to a solid stance, and uke's seoi nage is a slightly desperate undertaking after all, so it's not really going to be anything terribly formidable he must evade or counter more dramatically. You drive that center out from underneath him, Koshiki style, and it's a done deal.

It sounds easy when all is said and done, and tori's such a sensible fellow. I'm being careful not to write anything too profound this time around as I wrap up. I haven't the slightest idea which technique is next, but I'm going to approach it with as open a mind as possible.

Over the course of the week, I've had a private exchange with a reader concerning techniques Two and Five in the Go No Kata. My last piece, on Technique Five, does pass a peer review, I was happy to see. Making that run straight at uke's center of gravity, moving alongside his extended arm, is the key.

On Technique Two, this reader raised an interesting question: at a certain juncture, tori should be able to take uke out with a reap of the leg. Do you think there is an attack there, or could there be one?
(See the entry, 'Dance Moves, Revolutions, and Guillotines.') Uke and tori, with their right legs forward, are heaving at one another's right arms. Tori, in the midst of it, places a hand on uke's right knee - which is very close by - but then makes an elaborate turning motion to end up behind uke and finish him with an ushiro goshi.

It's that moment, right when tori has trapped uke's leg so he can get beyond it, that seemed prime for an O Soto Gari or O Soto Otoshi. Uke's bent right leg is there for the taking - or the hooking, the reaping.
I didn't know the answer right off the bat. That is, I didn't know the answer specifically to 'Why not a reap?' That an answer did (or does exist) I knew - simply because tori doesn't do it. The Old Masters, when they set down this kata, tried it, no doubt, but decided the turn was a better idea.

A day or two later, my correspondent provided an update: a reap works, but not all the time. If uke had his weight in one spot, you can take him out. If his weight is on the other foot, you can't.
That was the answer. The reap was not a consistently unanswerable end to the struggle.

It's precisely this type of inquiry that makes for the most effective learning in Judo, in this case the limitations of reaps and the possibilities in tai sabkai.
I remain fascinated by the notion that once upon a time the Old Masters had to gather in a room and hash this out themselves. Beyond all the ranks and grandeur, and away from all the pomposity that usually accompanies kata, these guys had to roll up their blue sleeves, make some mistakes, and figure out what works and why.
'Tori has options at this point. Which is the best and why?' Then they'd go about the reality testing.

I'm sure they tried the reap and got the same answer we did this week. Other ideas were eliminated. The turn was the answer. That was the most efficient way for tori to finish the fight. Period.
'It's a kata,' they reasoned. 'We don't have time for a lot of commentary. Let them figure out why by themselves.'

We operate under the premise that tori knows best. Well then, what's he thinking in Technique Six?

Technique Six contains in its label, 'Hadaka Jime Koshi Kudaki,' which is going to require a little convincing or further study for me to accept.
Uke and tori face one another. Uke reaches both hands across and takes hold of tori's wrists, his thumbs on top and fingers below. Tori raises his arms and hands (essentially) and breaks the grips.
Tori then grabs uke's wrists; he disengages similarly.
They then clasp one another, right feet forward, left hands clasping the gi on the back of one another's right arms, and their right arms each hooking beneath the other's left shoulder.
They drop, distributing, pulling against one another.
They reverse and push, chest against chest, still within the clasp. Simultaneously, they each reach down with their left hands and grab the other's right leg. This is as if they both get the idea to go for a single leg takedown, yet they remain upright, pushing against one another.
Uke turns to his left to attempt an ippon seoi nage. Tori, however, senses it coming. Tori's right arm remains in front of uke's throat as uke turns. With his left hand, tori pushes uke's center of gravity out from under him, and uke is broken, arching backwards and submitting to tori's choke.

We know a few things and must ponder a few others: The freeing of your wrists from a powerful double handed grab is pretty basic stuff, but the point to be made here is that it must happen with your strength distributed throughout your body the way it has been all kata long. Sure, you can pry your hands and arms up; the way out is to attack uke's thumbs, of course, but if you just heave with your arms, they're just going to twang away the instant they're loose, and you'll be off balance. That's poor form.
Also, if your uke is very strong, your arms won't provide enough power. You have to know how to use your whole body.

I don't know if that's truly a hadaka jime as much as it is an ushiro jime at the end. (Could ushiro jime be grouped as a version of hadaka?) I'm going by Kawaishi's 'My Method' here: Ushiro jime is VERY nasty. Uke is bent backward like a rainbow. Across his throat and drawing in horizontally against soft tissue is tori's forearm. Uke's head is upright at the very least. It's being driven forward by tori's head and shoulder, which are down low, at the level of his forearm.
Uke's neck is being folded at a right angle. This is a fight finisher, to say the least, generally not well known and not to be shown to just anyone.

The pulling and pushing seem to be pretty standard stuff, yet I'm not sure where I see any Koshi kudaki, or 'hip crushing' taking place. They take hold of each other's legs, which means they're both in the air, and these guys are hopping on their rear legs. I don't see what compels uke to drop it and go for the seoi nage.

This led to a debate at my place last night.
'Tori knows best,' I said. 'He's doing something to make uke ditch and go for the throw.'
'No, he's not. Uke's desperate.'
'Uke's not desperate. You're desperate. We can't rely on uke to do dopey things, the same way we can't rely on him to shift his weight a certain way in Number Two and take a reap.'
'You know how it is in a match,' my big man said. 'When something doesn't work, you try something else. Uke just changes his mind.'
'If all was equal, why didn't tori change his mind and do something definitive? He's supposed to know best. He already WAS doing something definitive to force uke to make a mistake.'

That's how it ended. I think tori must have been forcing uke backward, to where that rear leg was losing its leverage. Uke feels tori coming on, which is why he goes for the turn and throw.
The big man has a point in the sense that our authoritative video does not show any particular crushes or advantages on tori's part. Uke just seems to go for it.

This is going to take some research into techniques and terminology. Finally, if tori's so smart, is he up to something with uke, or does he know at least not to go for anything stupid from a ridiculous position? Is tori distributing force while on one leg? Forcing the other one down? If tori knows best, he's not saying.

We continued our adventures with the Go No Kata, beginning the fifth technique and running immediately into confusion. We were unclear about what was happening in the moments of resistance as well as its resolution. At the end, uke gives up pretty easily, so we weren't sure if any practical application was being addressed.
We went into trial and error mode to see what would present itself. 'Easy,' we would say to one another. 'Pull with half strength. I have to think about something.'

We did come up with an idea or two on what it could be about - which turned out to be quite surprising. Right under our very noses, this could be the most everyday kind of stuff the Go No Kata has addressed thus far: the bent over, jacket wrasslin' opponent.

At first glance we couldn't tell what was happening. 'Technique Five . . . ending in Uki Goshi' begins as uke and tori, facing one another, step forward with their left feet and clasp their left hands in a handshake grip. Both tori and uke then extend their right arms and run the edge of their palms to the back of each other's necks - as if they've just given one another karate chops. The blade edges of their hands will not be completely on the backs of one another's necks, nor completely on the side; they'll make contact on the stern quarter, if you will.

The left feet are forward, left hands clasped, and the right arms running just about completely straight to one another's necks. From there, uke begins to pull. They drop. Tori distributes the load among his muscles as we've discussed, so his feet are not too wide and his body stays relaxed.
They stop and switch sides. The same tug of war begins - and ends.
They return to the original left footed and left handed stance. They drop, and in the midst of all the stress and strain, like he always does, tori disengages suddenly and comes in for a throw. It's a left uki goshi, though he has to get his left hand away from uke's left, get his right hand on that left that uke was just using, and get his arm around uke's back.

In the proper kata, tori merely loads uke into position for the throw.

This is bizarre. Working backwards, a few things were troublesome. In my authoritative video, uke just gives up. He takes that right arm that he had on the back of tori's neck and just pulls it out of tori's way when he comes in.
We weren't completely sure how to make the switch with our hands, though we figured that out.
Also, we didn't know what purpose the arm and the blade on the neck were serving, so we had to consider the possibilities.

Working forwards, we knew we had to drop and distribute the usual way, so the first supposition was that arm on the back of the neck was just cranking uke downward, weakening his horizontal pulling force. Relax the arm, make it part of you, drop your center: that all worked, so it could be a lesson in isometric capacity in yet another place.

It made sense in a way. Tori releases it, uke bounces up, and tori's in for the throw, much like in any other back-of-the-neck kind of strategy. The only problem is that uke was pulling down, too. He doesn't want to go up.

Then I cocked the heel of my hand downward an inch or two. As uke pulled, the force against my left hand drove the blade of my right into his sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle. (on the side of his neck) The harder he pulled, the more he hurt himself.
This is what gave us the idea that this could be about holding off a jacket rassler, the twisting insane strength on one hand and the stiff arm(s) elsewhere.

When it came time for the throw, we grew a bit more convinced that we were on the right trail. When you settle into that left sided 'heat' once more, quite a few barriers exist between you and an uki goshi (unless uke's just going to let you in.)
If uke's pulling your left hand hard, he's not going to let go at the moment you charge in. In fact, that's the one thing that won't be upset by tori's surprise attack. Tori has to bring his right hand down from uke's neck and whack and grab uke's left hand in order to get his own left out - and then get that around uke's back.

More significantly, you're faced with this giant arm that runs to your neck between you and uke's torso. Even if he's not giving you the blade at arm's length, he can flatten you with a sukui nage by sweeping that arm backward as you try to push in and cross in front of him.
Pushing in or turning does not work. You cannot force his arm away. Even if his balance is betrayed because he's the one pulling and behaving badly, he's still in an athletic stance and plenty strong.

The trick is, strangely enough, not to cross in front (right away) seeking to hit the position for uki goshi.
Instead, make a run at his center with yours.
You have a clear shot. You're looking down his arm like it's a pipe or a rifle, and you know (by now) that you can't hit that arm or overpower it, so idea is to shoot in BEHIND it. You make a run straight at his center, which will be his right hip pretty much, with yours. You make the quick switch with your hands, and you've got to stay low, low, low, but you'll be on him, in position for the uki goshi and beyond any possible leverage in his extended right arm.
That will be sticking out ahead at a strange angle, and the fall's a little scary for him, but it's safe. You can see why uke gladly removes his arm in a peaceful demonstration.

Another problem is that uke is too low to be hit with an uke goshi. When tori suddenly shifts from digging in his heels to an attack, uke is still pulling down. It's not enough for for tori to come in super low; yes he does have to do that by the way, as he does in a number of these techniques, but he can't get THAT low.

He has to pop uke, but only a little bit. Tori's points of contact are his clasping left hand and the right on uke's neck. When he makes his first move in, he has to jar uke to knock him off balance.
Uke, who's been pulling, will rise instinctively, which makes the throw possible.
However, tori can't push him too much. He'll run him right over, possibly, and the two of you will go over in a pile, which would be inelegant. If uke knows what he's doing, he'll roll tori - which would be dangerous. If tori pushed only kind of hard and came across significantly, the throw would be to the far side, something between O Soto Gari and Tai Otoshi. That would be inefficient - and still within the range where uke could read tori's force and roll him.

The jar must be comparatively slight. It should be fast and have its flashbang effect, and tori should not come far across uke's front. It's uke's rising that aids in bringing them together. Tori runs straight at his center, and uke essentially serves it up.

It's not as easy as I've made it sound. All of this happens on a very, very small scale, and for an outside observer this would be like watching someone target shooting. You wouldn't get the idea of what's going on until you looked through the scope at the shaking target.

I suppose we can clean this up and make it recognizable. It's also possible that I'm shooting at the wrong target completely. This is the most I've had to read into a technique, so stand by. We'll check the sighting on the scope.

Despite a slight setback this week, I think I can find something to discuss. Last time around in our practicing Technique Four in the Go No Kata, I hit upon the idea of a powerful turning motion making short work of uke as he's applying a pushing force. The more I learn about Judo, the more I realize that EverythingRelatesToEverything, so I'm going to bring up a turning drill from the Aged and Wise Sensei to help illustrate what's going on in Technique Four.

I had to call off class last night as some combination of flus are attacking Puerto Rico. My Seventh Grade daughter just about burst into flames with a high fever over the weekend, and she knew right away that she had caught it from a friend who'd been sent home from school with the shivers a few days before. In no time, the middle school in this private K - 12 joint was decimated, to the point that the administration declared a quarantine. The Seventh and Eight Graders are not welcome back until the middle of next week.
We had to hit the clinic for a certificate stating that this was not Swine Flu (which it wasn't) but as I sat in the waiting room among rows of unfortunates snorting and hacking behind their blue masks, I tried to kid myself that I'd be fine.
Then I started feeling it creeping on, that hangover kind of headache and a slight chill. I had to hit the sack instead of the mat.
Be careful: it would seem that a few variant flus are spreading like wildfire - and very possibly coming to a dojo near you. I can remember this from Guam years ago: it's one thing to have a runny nose or a bit of muck in cold weather, but in the tropics, these grippes are nasty and thick things that don't want to let go.

At any rate, when you are of sound mind and body, the Go No Kata wants you to consider the possibilities for strength and speed within very tight confines. In Technique Four, uke and tori are pressing their palms together as it they're battling with one push-up against another. Their hands go wide, which is part of the lesson, that a player's strength can fill any kind of shape as long as it's properly allocated. Their hands go up and down, and suddenly tori turns tightly to throw uke with a left seoi nage.

The compelling point I was trying to express last week is that there's a razor's edge between huge amounts of force and wide open areas of freedom and emptiness. If you hold your ground and toss uke the right way, half of your body is harnessing all of his strength, and the other half is turning in a vacuum. The speed that uke gains as he goes over is astonishing - but you have to have your balance. You have to be centered and whole.

The Aged and Wise Sensei often says that one generally learns more Judo off the mat than on. His secondary 'dojo' is his dining room table, where he and his wife like to serve coffee to visitors. His wife will stay long enough to catch up on news pertaining to real life, but then she'll disappear about the time people are on their feet swinging at one another, which happens invariably. The A&W One is holding court. She's seen it a million times anyway and got her own black belt decades ago.

In one of these visits, I got to understand the importance of having a clear axis of rotation. If uke were to reach out and give you a shove in the right side of your chest, the idea is to yield, of course. However, that doesn't mean that you simply back down. You have to imagine that as you stand in place, a metal rod runs downward from the ceiling, right into the top of your head, down your spinal column, and out the wazoo. It's dead centered, vertically.
Therefore, if uke pushes your right chest, that right side fades back, but at the same time your left shoulder and chest come forward. You've given no ground. As much as your right side might have retreated, your left side has advanced. This is very much what happens in the GNK's Technique Four. You're turning in place.

It gets interesting, however, when uke puts his hand smack dab in the center of your chest and pushes. You still have to retreat and advance on an axis, but it can't be the spinal column. He's going to displace that laterally, so you can't turn it.
You have to create another axis in your mind, an inch to the side of uke's pushing force. (For the sake of argument, we'll still have that right side go back.) Imagine now that the metal bar from the ceiling comes down alongside your left ear and enters your chest between your clavicle and trap muscle, runs downward parallel to your backbone but two or three inches away, and then comes out near the top inside of your left thigh.
If uke pushes the center of your chest, that goes, yet everything outside the axis still comes forward and around. You're still in position to work some wickedness.

This works on the ground in any number of circumstances as well. The simplest example would be uke's having you in a kesa gatame. Suppose he's on your right side. Lying flat on your back, you'd feel his weight on your ribs, slightly below and outside the nipple. The idea would then be to shift your axis of rotation in order to roll him. You give a great act, like you're fighting and straining, but really you're bridging a bit to shift your left hip and left set of ribs beneath you, beneath that key point of his pressure. Then you're ready to roll him, since you've changed the leverage entirely.

What happens when uke presses both sides of your chest with both of his hands? Back at the dining room table, Corky's trick was slow and subtle to illustrate the point. He'd bring his hands up and lay them gently against uke's triceps. He'd resist a bit by doing a Go No Kata-like drop, but then ever so slightly, he'd shift his weight. If you watched him from the rear, you'd see that he would cock his weight over one hip, and only by an inch or two his spinal column would be off-set from uke's.
Then he'd start to turn on that new axis, his backbone and the leg his weight is over. Uke, driving straight ahead or leaning, would get the sensation of glancing off Corky's chest as he fell forward. Visually, it's very deceptive, however. Tori has to make a tiny shift. He can't let uke see what he's doing - in any of these cases- until it's too late.

Looking ahead in the GNK, I can see a maneuver in which tori lays his hands under uke's triceps as he pushes. We'll see if this is the same idea.

The wife's birthday is approaching. My time is not my own. I have to dash off and get Something for the woman who has Everything - and who lets me get away with Nothing.

The Fourth Technique in the Go No Kata, ' . . . ending in Hidari Seoi Nage,' is a continued development on the theme of isometrics I mentioned last week. The analogy was holding your sweetheart while crossing the threshold; your arms maintain strength enough to 'keep what they have' as your whole body moves through space.
In Technique Four, tori must hold the line against uke with his arms spread wide. It's a horrible leverage if you try to use the strength of your chest and shoulders, but if you distribute the load well enough, this is a pretty easy lesson.

Uke and tori begin face to face, standing about a meter and a half apart. They put their palms up and reach out at shoulder height, as if they're about to do a fairly wide push up (against a wall, perhaps.) They match up their palms - still with their arms level and at shoulder height - and form a mirror image.
Again, this is a slightly wide position. Their hands are outside the width of their shoulders.
From here, the first pushing or pressing 'heat' begins. Really, it's not about the pushing up top, as you might imagine, but the dropping of their centers and spreading the load throughout their bodies.
(Does uke do this 'right'? Hold that thought.)
To focus on tori: as he resists uke and drops his center, his body will be a bit bowed, and he won't have that front foot beneath him, should he suddenly need stability. That's not an issue, however; if he's dropping the right way, a recovery step is very easy.
After this initial phase, they release slightly and then step into right-sided reciprocal positions. Uke and tori's right legs come forward. At the same time, uke's left hand goes down as his right stays in place.
This draws tori's right hand down near his right knee. The result is that his right arm (and uke's left) both now fairly outstretched, are at the 45 degree mark, halfway between the horizontal and vertical planes. The other hands stay pretty much where they were, at shoulder height, yet beyond the width of the shoulder.

They ease off and switch to a left position: left feet forward, tori's left hand (and uke's right) down at 45, near tori's knee, and the other hands back where they began, up and outside the shoulders.
After a moment or two of resistance, tori turns to his left and loads uke into position for a hidari seoi nage.
At least that's the way it ends among the tea and crumpets set. This is a magnificently tight turn on tori's part. If he's distributing the load, absorbing uke's force and all that, he's not releasing his right arm or chest by any means. He's turning on a dime; his spinal column is the axis.
The effect, as far as uke is concerned, is a massive release. Uke had been pushing all along, so his left side plunges forward. Tori, whose left hand had been down low, runs that left arm like an uppercut into uke's armpit, and uke goes over like the crack of a whip.

The interesting thing is that uke's strength in his right hand, which you'd think would stop tori's left from getting across, simply vanishes. That's a major lesson in this kata. All the strength in the world vanishes when uke loses his balance. Tori's turn must be absolutely instant, and he must remain essentially in the same 'cylinder' of space the entire time. There's no swaying or displacement at all.
When I have more time, I'll write up the A&W Sensei's 'shifting axis' drill. Tight turns allow you to keep your strength, which, in turn, (sorry) makes the turns all the more fast and tight.

So if tori has to do things beautifully, then I don't think (I don't believe at this point) that uke should be doing everything so well. Our standards for tori are that in each of these positions, he must be centered and stable enough to handle any sudden shifts of force. That is the aim of the entire kata. However, if uke were just as good - then this wouldn't work. Tori would release and turn, uke would catch himself properly, and nothing would happen.
The funny thing about the Go No Kata is that if uke's not careful, he's going to find himself doing things right. He's going to be an absolutely centered rock, so every so often in practice tori will have to remind him, 'Be sure you're really blasting me at this point.'

Bottom Line: Where in Technique Three we learned about isometric strength within the frame of one's body, the lesson in Four is that it can be applied outside the frame as well. Imagine that you're trying to push a big, clumsy, top-heavy bookcase against the wall. You have to crouch down and get the bottom of it with one hand, and with the other you have to ensure that the whole thing doesn't fall over and land on on top of you.
If you allocate the force the right way and drive with your whole body, you're in business.

Since we're knocking out only one technique at a time, our study of the Go No Kata is only part of what we're up to in each class. Still everything else that happens, be it nage-komi practice, randori, or matwork, will be greatly influenced and enhanced by our kata work.

We sorted out the mistake we were making in Technique Two, when tori's arm was twanging upward upon being released by uke. Uke, if you will recall, was bearing downward and through tori as they held one another in essentially an arm wrestling grip. The skill we were trying to refine was tori's absorbing and resisting that force in balanced fashion - so balanced that when the force is let go or shifted suddenly, tori would not spring off in the direction he should be pushing.

Tori shoudn't be pushing at all, at least in the sense that he's trying to impart acceleration to uke's mass. He's merely meeting uke's force, reflecting it or matching it so that he holds his ground. When tori has his arm up, hand at eye level, his arm must become an angle iron. It must 'freeze' or become solid in whatever position it strikes, which will be somewhere near 90 degrees. No matter how hard uke pushes, that angle must not change. The catch is, you can't push 'back' with that arm. That's the mistake we were making the other night (to a degree). If uke suddenly lets go, your arm keeps pushing, and that angle is broken. Your arm's extending. You're off-balance. You're gone.

Now, in case this 'strength without strength' concept sounds a little far out and ki-laden, I'll give you another term: those muscles in your arm perform an isometric role. They're just holding position. Quickly - run downstairs, find a loved one, and sweep them up in your arms. Rush outside and carry them back in over the threshold.
When you're holding that 'load' in your arms, (and do not use that term with your loved one, especially a lady) you're just holding them in place - isometrically - with your arms while the rest of your body is walking, dancing, (or plunging down the stairs). You're not curling this person toward you or letting your arms sag (with any luck). You're just keeping them in place while the rest of your body handles a bigger job.
That's the great secret of the Go No Kata's Third Technique.

That was our discovery last night, which was just a case of common sense and experience winning out, despite the odds. As with the first technique, you have to have your feet in the right place, which is more narrow and normal seeming than you might expect. As in the first and second techniques, you have to drop or 'give' a bit as uke delivers his attack.
Your arm is up at head height, uke's trying to drive you down, and you're going to absorb it for about four inches, distributing the load throughout your body as you put the brakes on. We noticed last night that if uke suddenly goes slack, tori only pops back up about half of what he gave away. He so relaxed and balanced that he doesn't unwind completely like a spring.

I should be clear: uke's suddenly going slack does not appear to be part of the kata. That's our way of verifying our balance. In the kata, tori eases off as he feels uke do the same.
Also, that mild popping back up, which I suppose wouldn't happen AT ALL if we were doing this with perfect relaxation, was in our legs. Our respective arms were fine this time around.

Remember, the partners go right-left-right, and on the final 'press' tori enters, turns, and finishes with a sukui nage. It appears that tori enters with for an ippon seoi nage. He switches hands holding uke's right arm; he turns across the front of uke and runs his arm under uke's armpit before he turns out and around farther to get behind uke's right flank. The transition appears to me slightly muddled. I honestly don't know if the seoi nage a fake, uke throws a counter, or tori blanked for a second on the throw he was supposed to be doing.
We elected to do it two ways, as a seoi nage into a sukui nage, and a sukui nage outright. My guess in the case of the former is that there's a point to be made about mobility and adaptability. In the case of the sukui nage right off the bat, that's a throw that comes with instant impact.

'Instant traction', not impact, was the phrase I used when talking about techniques in and stemming from the Koshiki No Kata. Here, the throws that come out of opposing forces are lightning fast, and there's no extended traction or connection. When you come into the sukui nage outright, the force is like a hip check in hockey. You can just bash him right up off the ice, his feet out in front of him, over the boards, and into the laps of his teammates. In technique One, the right sided seoi nage has only a split second of contact as uke rides over your hips and across your back. In Technique Two, that Ushiro Goshi comes from so far down that you could turn and flatten uke in half the time it takes you to raise him to demonstration height.
These throws are as fast as strikes.

When I was saying that elsewhere our studies are being enhanced by our kata work, I was thinking about how fast our throws have become and how much a young pup like Mike has improved on advanced techniques like uchi mata or tai otoshi since we've been using the notion of a quick migration toward tori's center of gravity. Imagine, in an uchi mata, you've established your tsukuri, and in a split second you're going to execute the throw itself. Right then, every point of contact between you and uke makes a very fast and very small half second rush toward your center of gravity. This includes your two hands, which have parts of his gi, your back and the back of your shoulders, and your belt and hips.
It's almost like a flex of the wrists or like you have drumsticks in your hands when those contacts go. When you bring your shoulders or the top of your back to your center, it's a momentary crunch of the abs. You can't really draw the small of your back or your rear end to your center with any particular muscles, but you can spiral them around inwardly - which gives you your whole body turn.

We've nailed some throws that are practically as fast as atemi or as fast as the ones in Go No Kata in practice in recent weeks. I'm reminded of Mifune's writing that throwing was much like 'setting the hook in a fish's mouth."

Strictly speaking, this isn't from the Go No Kata. It's from the Aged and Wise Sensei's Sitting Buddha drill. I had figured that like the Go No Kata, it was a way of concentrating force, which is why I brought it up. What it has to do with the kata itself, I haven't the slightest - except for the fact that the throws feel the same. This might just be a coincidence. Really, I hope I'm blundering into another cool connection.

No doubt you look to Sir Harry's blog for tales of triumph, mastery, and insight, but in the name of responsible journalism I must confess that we need some more time with the third technique in the Go No Kata.
I will take this opportunity, however, once again to marvel at the genius in Judo's great katas, the increasing sophistication from technique to technique, the building upon skills established early on. According to the JudoInfo article, the Go No Kata was taught at the Kodokan until a number of techniques were deemed unsatisfactory.
I would be very interested to hear their technical explanation.

'Technique Three, . . . ending in Sukui Nage' appears to be simple enough, similar to the first two yet with a new application.
Uke and tori, facing one another, step forward with their right feet and clasp their right hands, fingers over each other's thumbs - as if they were about to arm wrestle. Their fists are at head height, their right toes on the same line halfway between them, or halfway between where they started.
They then do commence an arm wrestle of sorts. It's a full body wrestle, as they seemingly lean and drive into one another. The strength vector in uke's arm is partially an inward turn of his shoulder, just like an arm wrestling match, though it's as if his whole body is making a throwing motion downward. The other part of the vector is a more straightforward throwing motion, or triceps extension, as if uke is trying to throw a spear or plunge a knife downward.
Uke attacks and tori withstands - I presume (More on that in a moment) for a few seconds. They ease off and repeat the process on the left side.
They then come back to the right, and to end it as uke keeps attacking full bore, tori crosses in front of him, turns much like he did in the previous technique, and lifts him off the ground with a Sukui nage hold.

We were pretty good, but the only thing I knew - absolutely - is that we weren't doing it absolutely the right way. Oh, we could have fooled you - and this was a point I meant to make the other day when I was talking about film, theater, and judo: just as an actor shouldn't play what he thinks the character 'should' be doing at a given moment, kata practitioners shouldn't be trying to replicate some sort of outward appearance they have seen elsewhere. The actor would be falling into the the trap of falsehood, or worse, cliche and even stereotype, as would the kata folks, except they wind up on YouTube and their fake Judo ridiculed by the entire JudoForum.

My Aged and Wise Sensei, in his various demonstrations of centering or withstanding force, would always say, 'You've got to ignore him.' If uke's pushing on your chest, for example, you hunker down and distribute the force and so on, but you can't pay any attention to his hands in particular. If you do, your attention will go to resisting it in the most immediate fashion, which is with the closest muscles, and all of a sudden you're 'using strength,' as he would say. You're trying to move his hands the way he's trying to move you.
Instead, you ignore him. It's all about considering your body as a structure with consistent integrity throughout. You're well aware that a force is working against you, but you have to consider it an all-over kind of thing, like rain falling on and around you.

The problem with Numero Tres is that when uke would release his attack, tori's hand would go twanging upward. We were pushing back with our arms and shoulders - and getting caught in the act. The A&W One would bust us hard.
We were ignoring uke like champs on the first two techniques, but now the gang from the 19th Century has made it a bit more challenging. We have to get the hang of it.

By the way, this is where I presume that uke is attacking and tori withstanding. I can't imagine the two of them trying to inflict force outwards at the same time. It is quite possible to deliver force and movement with the strength of your whole body; uke is actually doing perfectly good Judo in that sense as he tries to push or pull tori off his base. It's just that the art of ignoring uke is of a higher order than merely fighting back.
I need to clarify what's going on in my source material.
I also have to look into the Sukui Nage at the end. We can do it very fast. However, there might be a seoi nage fake or a counter by uke that tori must manage.

Stay tuned. We've deemed last night's progress 'unsatisfactory.'

"By the time you enter the game professionally, you have a history; you have had success somewhere being just who you are."
- Doug Glanville. former Philadephia Phillie, writing in today's NEW YORK TIMES about the challenges facing lead-off hitters in Major League Baseball

It was quite the rewarding weekend for yours truly, as I filmed my first scene in an honest to goodness feature film. I was a principal, which is to say I had a speaking part in an action flick that's been on location in Puerto Rico for some time. If anyone has the least interest in laying eyes on a judo and kata heretic, I'll let you know the details when the film hits theaters in the Spring of 2010. I have to make sure I survive the final cut.
Blink and you'll miss me, of course, but this was a fun and meaningful and important experience. I had forgotten how much I missed acting. I have an Equity Card and had been involved with theatre, even running one of my own, for a number of years. However, family and various circumstances - including moving to a Spanish speaking island - have kept me out of it for a while. It was exciting and gratifying to be back once more, even if only for a day.

Acting is a great deal like Judo in the sense that both are self actualizing experiences. You discover who you are, and you can realize your potential in the most well rounded sense: you enable yourself to become the kind of person you're destined to be.
You might not think so. In a play, you might ask, aren't you pretending to be someone else? No, and I'll get to that in a second. Similarly, success in Judo must not be measured in narrow terms, namely prowess in competition. The art and sport have enough depth and breadth for everyone to find their niche and develop their talents, be it in instructing, kata, photography, history, refereeing, and so on.
It's the practice of acting, the craft, if you will, that reminds me the most of Judo. When I was running that theater company, my approach as both director and actor was to get the gang in for rehearsals and 'workshop' the play. That was to kick the scenes around and see what worked: what appealed to the actors' creativity and daring as well as how best to express the story the author is telling. It's a case of freedom within confines: you have to know the intent of the play and the intent of a scene, but the rehearsal process is all about discovering the real, 'human' story between the lines. This is where you discover who you are and what's happening between not the 'characters' but the real, live people facing one another on stage. When it works and you get these moments of pure truth, it's like those flawless throws that occasionally transcend all the technique and repetition in Judo practice.

I'll give you another example. I was in a show with a love scene in which I had to win over a woman who had problems with honesty. She spent the entire play fooling her friends and even herself, and my character was coming to sweep her off her feet by getting her to let it all go and be herself. The dialogue was figuratively an intricate dance or a chess game, so we blocked like that, circling around one another in the bedroom. As rehearsals began, we knew what the scene was about, but we didn't know how to do it, so we just decided to run the scene dozens of times and see what happens. Each version was slightly different, so we figured we were exploring the possibilities. Come opening night, when the scene went in one particular direction, we'd know we'd have been more or less there before.
An interesting thing happened: we completely lost self consciousness. That's usually the curse of an actor, that little voice inside your head that's constantly monitoring your performance and saying, 'Should I have said it like this?' or, 'Make sure you look like that.' In this show, I became completely glued to the actress, watching her, trying to tease out certain reactions, which I would change from time to time, and I didn't have the slightest idea how I was performing it. That's the play about which I found myself stopped by people on the sidewalk most. At the end of each rehearsal, that actress and I would be panting and gasping over one another in earnest, and the other actors had to pull us apart.

That loss of self consciousness is the greatest gift possible for an actor - and a Judo player [Don't worry; I'm coming back to Judo!] It's a level of faith in yourself that enables you to focus your attention outward. You've done your homework and nailed down the skills you need, and then you pretty much forget them, or really leave them to your subconscious. What is a producer paying for when he gets a star (and I'm talking a proven, true star) in a film? It's that self knowledge and confidence from tackling all kinds of experiences and challenges. Some of the actors that intrigue me most are the character actors of old, guys like Jack Hawkins or Anthony Quayle, who by and large are playing characters of such stature that they don't give a d@mn how people think of what they're saying or how they say it. Still, when I see someone like Meryl Streep or Jack Nicolson give an absolutely transformative performance, I wonder how, where, and with whom did they workshop that?

The parallels to Judo are as plain as day. As far as 'workshopping' goes, you've no doubt gathered that this is our approach to the Go No Kata. I don't know the Go No Kata. Every afternoon before practice, I look up the next technique, copy down what's supposed to happen, and we take a stab at it. This is not a hierarchical operation by any means. I do not instruct. I'll remind folks of the basics when it's necessary, but otherwise the rules are, Freedom Within Confines.
Playing in front of an audience or a camera is analogous to randori. You're prepared, yes, but at the same time, you have to be open to reacting to stimuli. Mifune writes in his opening pages, 'Practice self abnegation.' He's telling you, Don't worry about your body and your technique and coming up with what you're going to do. Just concentrate on your opponent, and use what he gives you. You have enough experience in the bank. This past Saturday morning, I started as a nervous wreck. I shanked my first take. I can remember telling myself, Breathe from your center, you idiot! I had practiced the line and knew the meter and the meaning. Shakespeare teaches that: dialogue is muscle memory, the same as judo technique. In a few takes I was completely in my element: relaxed, creative, and whipping off the line in various ways as a means of testing the other actors' reactions. It's heady stuff, nervousness to power in a few short minutes.

Isn't that what we want as Judo players? What's the truly greatest thrill at a competition, winning a match, the throw itself, or the sense of amazement and fulfillment afterward, when you think about how clear headed you were and how natural the throw felt? Deep down you can't believe you rose to the occasion in such a way. You're a better person, you realize, richer for the experience and more capable an operator than you knew. You also managed out on the mat to silence that little voice that tries to narrate and critique everything.
This rush is why people get on stage or the judo mat. You're not playing a character or fighting in any preconceived manner. You're finding out who you are. Be sure you prepare the right way. That's the purpose of my blogging, to offer some ideas to consider. Workshop the techniques. Stretch your mind. Practice succeeding. Program the subconscious.

Then get out there, give 'em Hell, and don't worry about what you do. It'll be a plausible depiction of human reality.

Technique Two was so easy that for a while I was sure we were missing something. We workshopped it a bit and figured out a thing or two, but mainly it seems to be a variation on the themes of stability and agility.

In 'Technique Two . . . ending in Ushiro Goshi' (since I haven't the slightest on what to call these) uke and tori begin facing one another. They each step forward with a right foot and take a handshake grip with their right hands.
From there, a tug of war ensues. Uke and tori will each drop deeply to gain the maximum strength and stability from their legs; uke, I suppose, can lean and heave if he'd like to pull tori forward, but tori holds his ground. Their right feet will remain even, separated by 24 inches or more, during the pull.

After a few seconds, uke and tori let up. They then switch to left stances, with the left feet forward (and even) and the left hands clasped in a handshake. They repeat the process.
After letting up once more, they return to a right stance and clutch each other's right forearms. They do grab each other's gi sleeve. They drop into the same tug of war; then after a few seconds, while uke KEEPS pulling and tori KEEPS resisting, tori maneuvers to get behind uke.
Tori first puts his right hand on the back of uke's right knee, which is directly below where the tugging and clutching has been taking place. He steps with his right foot to a spot diagonally behind and to the side of uke's right, and he turns his entire body to the left. That means he's putting his back to uke, or, rather uke's back, or really stern quarter. Tori's right foot remains in place. His left foot will stay behind the right, and as he turns, it will slide across the plane of uke's feet.
Tori will end up behind uke. He wraps his arms around uke's floating ribs and lifts uke. From there, an ushiro goshi would be quite easy.

To clarify: on that move with the feet - Jump up right now and face your computer. Push the chair back and make some space. Drop down into a deep jigo hontai stance, but keep it neutral.
Imagine that your two feet are planted in the two 'lower' or nearest corners of a square. Now, with your right foot step up and across to the opposite corner. Your right foot is now in the upper left corner and directly in front of your left (down in the lower left corner). By the way, you're still in a fairly deep stance. As you make that step, give an uppercut with your right fist so that your forearm is in front of your face.
To keep turning to the left, you're going to make essentially a waltzing box step. Bring your left foot toward your right. It'll come close, but don't let it touch. Instead, run it out to the upper right hand corner of your original box.

You got that? I can show you in two seconds, but writing about it is a little convoluted.
Bounce up and down in that jigo hontai. It's a pretty groovin' dance move. When you finish stomping around, you should be facing directly away from your computer (turned 180 degrees) with your feet planted on the 'upper' corners of the box.
[* Yes, yes - in the kata, uke and tori are already offset 45 degrees from the original axis, but this is still a 180 degree move.]

Also, when tori drops that right hand to uke's knee and makes this move, the left hand simply lets go of uke's sleeve. The right hand does make that uppercut motion, to clear uke's arm up and out of tori's way.

We nailed it on our first try. "That's it?" the guys asked.
"I think so."

We decided to fool around a bit to make sure we weren't missing any hidden lessons.
When you take a grip and start an honest to goodness tug of war, you're going to drop WAY down. This is deeper than a horse stance. You're not even riding a Shetland Pony. You're dropping into a deep, wide squat as if you're about to get on a miniature or toy pony.
It's still a pretty comfortable position. This is the 'distributing force throughout' part of the lesson, and you'll notice there's no great strain on your legs and you can keep your back upright. You can breathe pretty easily and keep a bend in your arms and wrist. A handshake grip is a very interesting choice for this exercise, since you do have to turn your wrists slightly in order to keep a purchase on one another's palms.
There's no real difficulty staying comfortable and solid. You can even lift one foot and then the other and be perfectly safe.

We posed the question, What happens if uke suddenly lets go?
If tori is leaning back, he's a dead man, of course. We also discovered that if he drops straight down, he can withstand the pull, and in fact it's hard to move him at all, but if uke ditches, tori could still stumble backwards.
The thing to do is for tori to allow himself to give a little. He drops, but he lets uke draw him forward a very few inches. This gets tori's center a little closer to his front foot. If uke then suddenly lets go, tori doesn't move.

After one of the go-'rounds, Mike muttered, half to himself, "I see why tori has to turn, so he doesn't walk into a guillotine."
That stopped me in my tracks. Leave it to those BJJ guys to sully a beautiful moment with thoughts of violence and mayhem.
He was right. There's nothing like diving right between a guy's bicep and his rib cage to get your head torn off. The turn is a way for the strength of your whole body to defeat his arm, should he have any evil designs. Also, that vector of force taking uke's arm out and away sideways destroys all the pulling he's been doing, and it leaves him flatfooted while you slip into place for the ushiro goshi.
For that, you're coming in so low with that stomping jigotai dance move that you can scoop him up and throw him out the window. In proper kata, I'd imagine that the high lift is to emphasize how low and effective your leverage should be.

Also in the proper kata is a clap on uke's part, of submission possibly, when tori has him up in the air. It's occurred to me that that's one of those everything-migrating-toward-the-center jobbies. We couldn't get it to go last night, but we'll work on it.

The thing that drives folks nuts about Sir Harry, I sometimes fear, is the way I keep talking about the same thing over and over, center of gravity based, whole bodied mechanics. Yeah, I know. It gets old. Luckily I don't have to do this in class too much, as the guys are pretty well indoctrinated. The problem with the blog is that I always have to establish context for all the particulars, on the rare chance that some casual net surfing judoka were to click on this - and in the extremely unlikely event that someone in some corner of the Earth is actually following along and trying these techniques on their own.

So far, folks seem to agree that 'swinging the tennis racket' is a lovely way to throw. At least, no one has gone to the trouble of disagreeing. What they might be thinking, however, is that it's a bit naive. All this smooth, upright movement goes right out the window when the randori or the shiai gets hot and heavy. When gis are getting gripped and winched in, folks are bending over, and arms are turning to steel, there's no gliding around and getting your center in the perfect spot - no matter how many Mifune videos you've seen. The game changes.
For the record, I'd have to agree, having been catapulted or cartwheeled by various international level competitors in my time, as well as bull rassled into the ground or seeing my best plans ruined even in comparatively tame randoris. Too often, even a moderate amount of speed and strength, coupled with that grip on your gi, is too much to withstand. The tai sabaki you've studied deserts you completely. The game changes. What you're doing in a match is not what you practice.

I think the Go No Kata answers this concern. The Masters must have known that getting yanked or knocked off one's feet was a great way to render a person's judo useless, so the Go No kata was to show folks a way to move when things got ugly. It's a new dimension to tai sabaki. It is low, it is strong, but it is surprisingly fast.

The 'Horse Stance' in my title refers to the jigotai, or as those of us who know not to be caught dead in a pair of black shoes before 6 p.m., or are admired for the dashing shade of blue in our gis, would say, Jigo Hontai. It's a defensive stance, done when a player drops his hips while his feet are fairly wide, making his legs take on a shape as if he were on horseback. Everybody knows it, almost instinctively: if an opponent is trying to get you up and over, drop down so he can't get underneath you.
The problem with jigotai, some might feel, is that it's slow and ultimately a vulnerability. That opponent trying to get you up and over can turn and take you out with an O uchi gari. Hunkering down in jigotai - especially staying in place - has rightly become associated with stiffness and defensiveness.

The Go No Kata wants you to know that not only can the jigotai be very strong, it can be very fast and very much an offensive weapon.
[Technically, I think I'm on to something. Linguistically, I'm sure this is a disaster. By definition, one can not go around attacking with a defensive stance. I'm looking for another term for darting around while down in that horse stance.]

In 'Technique One . . . ending in Seoi Nage,' the partners, facing one another, step forward with their right feet. They each run their right arms under the other's left armpit and place their hands on one another's backs, at or below shoulder blade level. With their left hands, they grab their partner's right tricep.
Imagine this for a second. Your right foot and right arm are forward. You turn you attention to your left side and realize that his right arm is running beneath your left, so you grip his tricep (above the elbow.)
You do not grip the gi. The result is a pretty close 'grappling' stance with your arms effectively parallel to the ground.
Uke pushes, driving with his legs. Uke and tori are chest to chest for the most part, really right pec muscle to right pec muscle. Uke pushes, and tori holds his ground. The skill is in his dropping his weight and managing his entire body; therefore his feet should not move.
Uke suddenly reverses his force, now pulling tori. Tori still holds his ground; his body will shift a bit, though his feet must not.
Uke reverts to pushing once more. Tori stays put. After a few seconds, while uke KEEPS pushing, and while tori KEEPS resisting him, tori takes his right hand from uke's back, his right foot crosses leftward, his body turns, his right arm runs under uke's right armpit, and tori has an ippon seoi nage.
In the proper demonstration, tori only loads the seoi nage and brings uke's feet off the ground.

We couldn't resist (to coin a phrase) going all the way. With all that force, the resulting throw cratered the mat loudly.

Herewith, the assorted observations: (See the last post for a detailed description on dropping into a stance that can resist force.)

-You have to have uke lay on his initial force slowly. This is probably because we're inexperienced at this, but it was hard to get into the proper stance from a sudden get-go. If uke pushes before tori knows what he's doing, tori will be able to brace with his back leg and handle the push, but he'll go flying on the pull.
Keep it cool and let tori focus on dropping his center toward the foot in front of him (his right).

-Does uke do this 'right' as well? Is he dropping his center and distributing force the same way?
He will, probably by accident. He doesn't have to.

-In the last post, I talked about two different concepts that - I think at this point - will remain separate. One was the idea of a simultaneous migration of tiny muscular movements toward one's center of gravity. This works like crazy on throws. After the kata work last night, we hammered each other into the mat, the idea being that every point of contact, each hand and even the small of your back if you have his center on you, makes a tiny initial move toward your center.
Yes, you're swinging the tennis racket; your whole body is moving as a unit, but this little trick really clarifies the path each part is to take. It unites the whole. Coupled with another recent concept, that the throw is really a process of increasing one's stability, (the center drops towards your base) this made some of our moments of contact a fraction of a second long. Young Mike slammed the best uchi matas of his career doing this.
The other concept I wrote about was the distribution of a load throughout the muscles, for example when tori is holding his ground and matching uke's force. The idea of any migrations to or from the center did not occur to us in practice. The distributing load to as many muscles as possible remains a process of relaxation.

-That the Horse Stance could gallop was the most fascinating discovery of the evening. It's one thing to resist uke's force with everything in place in a jigo hontai, but it was amazing to us that tori could abandon that position and have a certain number of muscles up to something else while still handling uke's attack. If you distribute uke's force well enough, no single muscle group is anywhere near failure, so a shift of position or an increased burden here or there doesn't make much difference in tori's overall strength.
Still the force is significant enough to keep tori low and keep things quick and efficient. That's where we realized that tori is cruising around at a low altitude, in that horse stance. He's staying strong to hold uke off, and he's staying low to get into the throw as quickly as possible. This is a new (old?) brand of tai sabaki. It was truly a strange feeling to be so low yet moving so freely.

Does this mean we should be bulldozing through our randori matches like Angry Dwarves?
No, that would only be a step above stiff arms and freezing in a jigotai. The kata is meant to demonstrate the abilities to stay put or move in the presence of force. They're two separate things, each magnified for the sake of understanding. We're too new to this, but I think the skill to be derived from the Go No Kata will be keying off of force in split second fashion.

Last night was mainly mayhem in the form of groundwork, some good macho violent fun without too much thinking about it. As we were warming up, I let the fellows in on our next big undertaking, the Go No Kata. I wanted to get them thinking conceptually instead of procedurally, vital in this line of country, so we messed around with a couple of introductory drills.

We started with one I haven't mentioned but is a classic the Aged and Wise Sensei uses to teach the difference between centering and using overt strength.
Uke and tori face one another in seiza, separated by 12 or 18 inches.
Uke rises to his knees, and in slow motion delivers a punch right at the tip of tori's nose. Tori, remaining in seiza, brings up his left hand; he makes a circular motion only inches from his face and manages to ward off uke's slow punch by steering it to his left.

KARATE KID fans will recognize this essentially as the famous 'Wax Off!" technique, albeit very slowly done. Tori, having turned his left palm outward, can grasp uke's wrist.
About a half second after that left hand makes its initial block, tori's right hand comes up and is placed alongside uke's neck, just below his left ear. Everything's happening pretty simultaneously and smoothly. Remember, tori's still sitting down in seiza; uke has come to his knees, which is why tori can just extend an arm and reach his neck.

Having steered that punch aside and reached uke's neck, tori continues the motion, tipping uke over. Uke tetters on his right knee and then falls beside tori's left side.
The aim, as you might have gathered, is for tori to do this in completely centered, whole bodied fashion. As uke topples over, tori must remain in place as sturdily as a smiling Buddha.

You can't use 'overt' strength, which is to say moving your arms relative to your shoulders or your arms and shoulders relative to your trunk. You must, Young Grasshopper, use everything proportionately, as parts of a whole. You're swinging the tennis racket.

So you knock through this a few times. Your rise up and punch your partner in the nose; he blocks, and you fall down dead. After you've gone back and forth a few times, it's time to test the theory as well as figure out What in the World the sensei is talking about when it comes to centered, whole bodied power.

This time, uke comes up (everything is still slow) and tries to punch you in the nose but finds his fist steered aside. This time however, he can grab you - by the neck, the arms, the gi, or some combination of the above. He's still going to crash down beside you, but he's going to grab and heave to bring you with him.

If you blow this, you're going to come right out of the smiling Buddha position and flop over on top of him.
Wow, you realize quickly. I guess I had my arms in it all along.

So what do you do? How do you center yourself? How do you go about actually doing or understanding a concept that's so idealized or hypothetical? So when Yoda draws a pained breath, lifts his gnarled, trembling hand, and raises Luke Skywalker's crashed fighter out of the swamp, what is he actually DOING?

That beats the Hell out of me on Yoda, but as far as the Judo goes, you realize that you have to draw everything in towards your center of gravity. Yes, that wrist you've grasped still goes out a little further. Yes, uke's neck has to be drawn out past his knee, but really, if you stop and think about your body frozen in place when you first make contact, your arms, your shoulders, your ribs, even uke's wrist and neck - to an extent - has to come in to your center.

We do this all the time when it comes to chokes or arm bars. We say, "Don't pull with your biceps, or with your shoulders or abs, or don't attack the joint itself. Just use everything all at once to bring the contact point toward your center of gravity." As it turns out, your biceps and shoulders and chest and abs and everything do contribute - you do 'flex' them - but only a little bit in each case.
It's a little like a baseball batter working his fingers as they're around the bat, choking up, and dropping into a deeper stance.

Back at the punching-in-the-nose drill, imagine you're right where you've steered the punch away and placed your hand on uke's neck. It's only going to take you a few inches to throw this guy, so if you put in too much movement, he's going to roll you. Your hands, on his wrist and neck, are going to slant toward a spot only an inch or two to the left of your center. Your arms, your shoulders, lats, abs, pec muscles - anybody else who's getting in on the act - makes a pretty slight contraction toward your center.

[Right now, in front of the computer, sit up straight and hold your hands up in front of your face like you're about to catch a ball. Now, the drill is to bring your thumbs down a few inches toward your center of gravity. It's a line through open space that slants down and is easy to see. When you do this, your biceps are going to bring your hands toward your shoulders an inch. Your chest and lats are going to bring your elbows toward your trunk. Your abdominals crunch your ribs downward. All of this is just one inch apiece. It all happens at the same time, and no muscle group is dominant.
They all contribute, though they each don't do much. Not only do your thumbs travel a decent distance, that combined set of muscles would be able to generate some significant force. The skill that comes over time is to be able to do this automatically.]

Back in seiza, you should be able to dump uke without him rolling you.
'That's Lesson One,' I said to the gang. 'The force goes toward your center. Whether it has any bearing at all on the Go No Kata, we shall see.'

Then we did a version of the tug of war drill, though this time it was pushing instead of pulling. Uke put his hands on my chest, and I tried to brace myself against the force. 'The first technique is actually going to look like this,' I told them. 'They've got their hands on each other's arms and shoulders, and first uke pushes and then he pulls.'

When I was just starting to show this new drill, uke pressed my chest with two hands, and I placed one foot behind the other, fairly far back in order to brace myself. I was explaining with my usual brilliance that the name of the game was 'distributing the force throughout the muscles of my body,' but it wasn't working.
[Oh, Man! The A&W Sensei would have treated me to a free gravity lesson then and there.]
I was trying to distribute like mad, but Kenneth's entire push was all going to my rear foot. In fact, I could lift my front foot off the ground, and it wouldn't make any difference.
Then he let go suddenly. He quit pushing, and I went reeling forward.

This is how things typically work around here. The white belt with four months' experience takes over instruction on the lost Go No Kata. 'You have to put your front foot where it can catch you - because if I'm going to change and pull suddenly, I can throw you.'
He pushed, the weight went to my back leg, and I placed the free front leg more or less where it fell, maybe in front a bit. Kenneth shifted to a fast pull. I stumbled forward, but not so much as before.
'Don't put your back leg so far away,' Kenneth said. 'Keep it underneath you, so you can use both legs the same.'
That was bloody genius on his part - and I should have known. If my back foot wasn't going to brace like before, I had to sink down in order to stay stable. This is when I discovered I was sinking on both legs evenly. Each foot was bearing pretty much the same weight. I was ignoring uke and his force in a way, concentrating on my own position, placing my feet and adjusting as necessary, and lowering my center toward the floor.
Kenneth suddenly let go. I didn't move. On the next round, he went rapidly from push to pull. I didn't move.

'Holy Cow. Well done,' I said to Sensei White Belt. 'You know what? You have to direct all of his force to your center,' (and probably all of yours, as in the drill above, I realize as I write).

When we had gotten the hang of the nose punches and dropping uke the right way, we jumped to our feet and tried some ippon seoi nages. We wanted to see if the process of the throw could be done as the same combined 'migration' toward the center.
Imagine what we discovered.

Like its almost-as-obscure cousin, the Koshiki No Kata, the old Go No Kata might teach us some new tricks.

Over the past few weeks, while wrapping up our Gonosen No Kata studies, I've been preparing for our next adventure, trying to make it a little less reckless as it might seem at first glance. The Go No Kata is a grouping of Forms of Hardness, or Strength. It is a kata little used in Judo, not recognized by the Kodokan, and containing principles little understood by the Judo world at large, if my observation is any indication.

Based on my studies with my Aged and Wise Sensei years ago, in Alaska, I think I have a pretty fair shot at deciphering some of the lessons within it. This introductory piece today in the blog is to set a purpose for what I'm about to do, to declare a hypothesis, if you will, before I start discussing the particulars. Also, the fellows and I are going to spend a few days doing some orientation exercises, which I'll describe below, before we get into the nitty gritty.

So here goes: I believe the purpose of the Go No Kata is to develop a form of strength that is at once considerable as well as agile and adaptable. The techniques teach an athlete how to distribute heavy loads throughout the muscles of the body. In so doing, the judoka is able to relax comparatively and maintain his balance and ability to move.

For some necessary background information, this is a link to an article by Neil Ohlenkamp, the 'JudoSensei' of JudoInfo and JudoForum: http://judoinfo.com/gonokata.htm

On the Forum, in the Kata section, the Go No Kata has its own heading for various threads.
Ohlenkamp, in the piece I just cited, quotes a very helpful description by a author named Cundy:

"Mr. Cundy's article [contains]:
The Go no Kata in practice is a complex of prearranged movement patterns, executed by two practitioners who engage in short bursts of strength matching exercises, which are then concluded by the application of a throwing or choking technique. For example, in the first technique, the exponents take a grappler's embrace, and then attempt to push each other backwards; they then reverse their efforts and attempt to pull each other forward. The pushing procedure is then resumed until the predetermined winner breaks from the pushing action, and utilizes his partner's momentum to execute a shoulder throw."

I don't have any other books on this kata. I'm just making this all up, otherwise.

How do we approach the principles in an ancient, nearly extinct kata? We begin through some humble analogies, experiences that we can all understand.
By the way, I mentioned my Aged and Wise Sensei and how he seems to know all this. He is not a kata man. I never did a day of kata in his dojo. I've accused him of cherrypicking concepts out of kata books, which he does not entirely deny, but every day, every class with him is a lesson in mechanics, body dynamics, and narrowing techniques into their tiniest and most critical components.
He's not done the Go No Kata per se, but I've seen him demonstrate every skill within it in one form or another.
Corky MacFarland deserves a bit of fame, if not a full on documentary by FRONTLINE or NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. He's a genius of a certain type, one of the very few among us whose most infinite natural talents square completely with his lifelong passion. How he learned this stuff over the years, we don't really know. He's an extensive reader, and this is a particular talent of his that I've written about before, the ability to transfer concepts from the printed page to the mat.
It's been a lot of trial and error over these past 50 or 60 years, he'd probably tell you. I think that's 90 percent of it. The other 10 - and I've written about the heritage of our 'style' before - comes (I believe) from a wild strain of ancient ju jutsu that was still present in Hawaii a century ago, travelled to Alaska, and survived in isolation.

All of this makes ME qualified to blunder into the Go No Kata, of course. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to pass along some findings, but here's the understanding I'm starting with, which I want to explain, so you'll have a starting point as well.

THE TUG OF WAR
With a partner, grab opposite ends of a rope, pull like Hell in each direction, and see who wins. Assuming it's a fairly even match, this is a struggle that demands total commitment. You throw your body as far back as you can, sacrificing balance completely - or even using that balance as part of your tugging force.
The problem is that if your partner suddenly let go, you'd go flying backwards. The Go No Kata, though it's a strength match, does not demand that kind of maximum commitment. In a tug of war, you define success as being able to move your opponent a certain distance. In the kata, however, you're concerned only with holding your ground.
Pick up the rope again, and have your partner give a good hard pull, just about as much as he can muster. This time, however, don't worry about moving him. Just hold your ground, and get a good, solid stance in which your back, arms and legs are all contributing - AND which will allow you to stay in place even if your partner suddenly lets go.

THE REFRIGERATOR DOOR
Years ago my wife and I bought a house in Washington DC and proceeded to pour tons of money into its renovation, much of which was needed to keep the 200 year old relic from swaying in the wind, and some of which was plain old yuppie ostentatiousness, including our fancy new kitchen.
We got one of those Subzero fridges that seemingly everyone must have nowadays. It wasn't the one with the (brushed?) steel exterior but one on which we laid a wooden panel that matched the rest of the cabinets. Oh, barf. I had no say in this.
At any rate, it was like having something the weight off a bank vault or freight car in the house. If I just casually reached for the door to grab something, more often than not I'd pull myself off balance while the door didn't budge.
Therefore, it became a drill for me to open the refrigerator using the lost skills of ancient ju jutsu: I'd plant my feet and relax, exhaling from my center. I'd grasp the door handle, and as I turned, I'd try to be sure that I could feel the effort of my turn in every part of my body - legs, feet, hip, back, shoulders, biceps, fingers. If I could begin by feeling the load spread throughout my body, then after a second I wouldn't feel any effort at all. That was my indication of success, that I could open the door without feeling it.
That's Corky's measure of success; you have to make each and every throw without feeling it.

THE HAND ON YOUR HEART
When I first arrived in his club, 10 years ago as a matter of fact, Corky had his hands full overcoming my wicked ways as a slinging, hopping uchi mata brawler. For a long time, I could never grasp the point of one particular demonstration. He'd have me lean forward like a big tree to where I was way off balance, 45 degrees or more. I'd stay stiff, and he'd hold me up with a palm on my sternum. From there, he'd say, "I've got to stay solid," whereupon he would proceed to walk and turn all over the place. He'd move out to the side, he'd turn and look in back of me, or he'd switch hands on my chest and turn and talk to the other guys while shuffling here or there.
Throughout this, I never budged. The force that held me as I leaned never varied, despite his roaming. This was also not unimpressive given the fact that my leaning constituted a decent amount of weight and how Corky maintained a significant amount of return force while being relaxed and mobile.
Then one day I was hanging a fancy dart board case on the wall in my office. It was a hideous process; I should have had help with all the measuring, placing, and levelling. Finally, I got the thing exactly where I wanted it to be and turned around only to discover that the friggin' screwdriver I needed had fallen to the floor.
I had to press one hand on that dart board to keep it in place while squatting down and reaching for the screwdriver with my other hand. The dart board was not light; this took some strength at an awkward angle. I also had to maintain tension in my body, especially my legs, while coming down and still pressing up with one arm.
I knew right then and there that this is what Corky had been talking about. It's strength, but it's moveable. It's significant yet relaxed. It's your whole body, but you can channel it to one limb or another as needed.

The Go No Kata is about adaptable, agile strength. Hold that thought. We'll see how many times I have to amend it.

Folks across the pond will be proud to know that the HMS IRON DUKE throws a good party - when they're not out scoring major cocaine busts or getting famous on YouTube and in the London papers for the manner in which they machine gun smugglers' 'go-fast' speedboats.
To my great surprise, a lot of the fellas devour American politics, which is my absolutely favorite subject matter for a cocktail reception. At another point, I was able to provide a few of the rock climbers with directions to a decent set of cliffs. In either case, they were plying me generously with my first Pimm's drinks ever and watching expectantly. Apparently the Pimm's can sneak up on you, but I held my own despite the heavy seas toward the end of the evening.
An invitation from another guest at the reception had the Flashmans out in the country horseback riding, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it: it's been the aggressive leisure schedule keeping me from posting lately.

The horseback riding got me thinking of Judo. It's all center of gravity based stuff. I've known that cavalry riders were trained to control a horse with their hips, the better to be able to wield a weapon or make it back if they were wounded in the upper body. However, it was watching my 11 year old daughter get an informal private lesson on our hosts' big and fast stallion that resonated most.
The owner was very good, showing her how to shift her weight and keep her balance. One of the interesting phrases she used was to 'make yourself and the horse all one,' which is to say, the rider should move with the horse. Still, it's you in charge, so you're moving independently in a way, yet only slightly, just enough to lead the horse's motion.
Young Flashgirl had this 1250 pound beast at a good gallop inside the ring; she also managed some pretty skillful figure-8's, all within half an hour's time. My Goodness, it's all related, I thought as I stayed out of the way, against the white rail fence. This woman should be teaching kata.

She might have her hands full taking on our next project. Well, maybe she wouldn't. If you were to hitch a horse to a VERY heavy load, would it drop its body in order to engage its strength in the best possible manner? It's that distribution of effort across the body's muscles that's at the heart of the next kata we'll be working on.

In the meantime, we're wrapping up the Gonosen No Kata. The other night I was flipping through the book and noticed that after that utsuri goshi, only two techniques were left. 'Let's knock these out,' I said to the gang. Usually, we work on one move a night, and I use that to create the context of the lesson. If we're going to be countering Ko Soto Garis with Tai Otoshis, for example, the idea would be to study each throw, along with its closest cousins, in order to be ready for the kata's lesson.

The other night, however, the last two techniques were helpful for further nailing down utsuri goshi. In one case, uke attacks with uchi mata and tori responds with sukui nage. It's pretty straightforward stuff; the only helpful observation we made is that tori has to run his scooping arm right up the center of uke's crotch and grab his belt in the center of his back in order to make the sukui nage as effective as possible.

I'll rephrase that. Tori has to run his arm up the middle in order to allow himself to move independently of uke. Yes, he's in the best position for lifting, but really he's in the best position for moving his entire body, which in turn allows this throw to transcend the size and power of uke.
That's the whole point of Gonosen No Kata, finding counters or movement that transcend all the sound, fury, and power of an attacking uke. The most fantastic moments have been discovering the relatively minor undertakings on tori's part that utterly demolish uke while he's charging in like a freight train.
For a sukui nage, a small tori can flatten a big uke if he's in the right place. He controls uke's center of gravity, and he only has to get his feet a quarter inch off the ground to drop him.

The other last technique is a Sumi Gaeshi on tori's part defeating uke's seoi nage. This one actually needs a little polishing, but, broadly speaking, it would seem to combine two skills we have down fairly well. The first is in tori's 'riding' uke's throw. We do this by way of yoko wakares and yoko gurumas quite a bit, as I've mentioned, the trick being to stay light and stay slightly ahead of uke's force in order to lead it, much in the way a rider leads a horse using his whole body and not the reins.

The second concept is what we call 'zip-lining', after those sling and pulley contraptions that ride cables strung from one point to another. We started by working on hikikomi gaeshis, which are pretty easy since they're head-on. Uke pulls downward; rather than end up bent over, tori drops. He's aiming his rear end for a spot right between uke's feet, and he ziplining on him, in the sense that he's hanging completely on uke's upper body and riding that in on his descent. Between his own downward force and tori's weight suddenly hanging off his lapels, uke is bent like a hairpin before his legs go up and over.

The sumi gaeshi counter to that seoi nage, therefore, would be a case of riding uke's motion, like a surfer slightly ahead of a wave, and then dropping on a zipline from that outside corner to the spot between uke's feet.

Surfing, horseback riding, Judo: luckily it's all the same thing, which is the only explanation for how a bunch of lunkheads, only a week after we didn't know what on earth we were doing, could hit utsuri goshi's back and forth, no problemo.

You don't lift him.

We got it. Necessity was the Mother of Invention in this case, faced as I was with a partner the size of a gorilla. I knew I wasn't going to be able to lift him, or lift him much, and that if I wanted to hit any Utsuri Goshis, I had to find the elegance in the throw as soon as possible.

Utsuri Goshi, as I mentioned last week, might not strike you as the most persuasive case in the Gokyo for elegance. Uke comes in, and tori blocks him, heaves him bodily off the ground, and breaks him over his hip on the return trip. In my limited experience with them, they've been wild and out of control affairs, traumatic enough in their falls yet even more so psychologically, in the feeling of having just narrowly escaped serious injury.

Despite giving away 80 pounds to my big man, I went in to practice with faith largely in two people: Kawaishi, who had been surprising us with elegance and efficiency throughout the kata, and my aged and wise sensei, who on countless occasions I had seen and felt move with complete disregard for an opponent's size or strength.
It has to work, I said to myself.

I also had faith in old Kenneth, the big guy, because he was showing me something important. Even though he could lift me and practically put my head through the ceiling tiles, he couldn't get into position for the hip throw. The ticket wasn't in going up, that helped confirm.

'All right,' I said when it was my turn, 'when you come in, I'm going to buck your legs out and not up.' The directions, after all, said that tori should 'strongly pull uke over his left shoulder.'
'I think I see it,' I told him. 'I'm going to rotate you in place.'

That was the whole ballgame. Imagine that if you were to film this, run it through the laptop, and then delete tori from the playback. You would then see uke come in for his harai goshi. His center of gravity would cross the divide in a fairly level line. It would stop suddenly and stay pretty much in place while his body rotated around it. (It would pop up a little.) His legs would come up and his trunk would go over to the tune of about 45 degrees. All of a sudden, he'd fold at the waist and hit the ground like a wet towel. A clean wet towel, I might add, since the fall turns out to be pretty safe.

In this case, uke is still getting up and off the ground from the standpoint that his legs and hips are rising so that tori may shift beneath them. The movement, however, is circular, not linear.

Hit a few commands on the laptop, delete uke, and watch tori. Tori holds his ground. He drops several inches, his arms make a clutching motion, and he bucks with his center, though leading with his left hip. The step with his left leg seems merely to continue the forward motion of his left hip, and all of a sudden he's making a classic rolling motion with his hips and trunk, for the end throw.

Kawaishi had told us everything we needed to know. Uke, with his center and upper body, comes 'on' and 'over' tori's center just as easily as he does in an O Goshi - and as it turns out, an Ushiro Goshi. When we didn't make the step with the left leg as tori, uke tended to wipe out to tori's left or uke's right, the result of a fabulous albeit accidental ushiro goshi.
Also, I thought of the most recent technique, that Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi answer to Hane Goshi, in which tori stays very close to uke yet goes around all his force and weight. Tori taps his ankle and uke continues to spin as furiously as Bugs Bunny's Tasmanian Devil, right into the ground.

If you run your laptop playback with both uke and tori in the picture, you'll see that tori's left hip is hitting WAY below uke's center to drive those legs out from under him. All the clutching with his arms is done at chest level, the better to keep his hips free to move.
(It might be easier to imagine the converse, bear hugging with one's arms around uke's waist. That's where you'll be if you're lifting straight up instead of making a circle. The second problem is that it staples uke and tori's hips together.)

We have to polish this a bit, but I'd call the evening a rousing success - if not a stubborn refusal to fail. Consider yourself blessed the next time you're stuck with a 250 gorilla (unless you ARE a 250 pound gorilla; in that case you might have to look for someone in the mid 300's). If you can drop one of them cleanly on a new technique, then you're on to something.

In Judo, certain people, and even certain throws as it turns out, really get to the essence of What Works. This can be someone who's a difficult uke, intentionally or not, or the utsuri goshi, the next item on the agenda in the Gonosen No Kata.

Of course, the entire art of Judo is geared toward filtering down to 'what works,' by way of shiai or randori. You can do what you want in various drills or the more 'cooperative' parts of the class, but when the matches begin, the truth comes out about the feasibility of what you've been practicing.
With any luck, another truth comes out, that it's a rapid integration of numerous separate skills, often in unlikely or unexpected combinations, that make it possible to bring down an opponent.

Think about that in the context of randori. You can't just fire away at someone with one concept at a time. That's a great way to find yourself stymied or countered pretty regularly. Instead, you have to think about getting yourself into position to execute - and a large part of that is paying attention to what the other guy is up to.
Imagine, for example, that your opponent is stiff arming you. The enemy has thrown up a barrier; you have to understand how to remove that barrier and continue the march toward the objective. This is purely a question of engineering. Figure out how you're going to breach that berm, or in this case, get past those arms.
The answer would be to get outside the lines of force they represent and hit them at almost any angle other than the one in which he's pushing. Then you have to understand something about tai sabaki and maneuver warfare, how to get out to where you can hit them advantageously. This could be some lateral steps and tight turning motions, which would bring his fists together, for example, and allow you then to make a run at his center from the wing, if you will.
If it were only that easy. Not only are you making a dozen different judgment calls in a split second - where is he, where's he pushing, where do I go, do I hit his arms with my arm or just my shoulder, then I can throw with maybe . . oh man . . he's changing, how do I turn, am I balanced - each one of these reactions or solutions you're coming up with means you have to recall hours and hours' worth of drilling.

They measure the power of computer chips in terms of how many computations it can make in a second. Those Intel Pentium chips are up in the billions per second, if I'm not mistaken. That's how one's Judo has to function. It's not a case of making up your mind about a technique and how fast you can come slamming in.

These challenges present themselves even in more sedate circumstances such as nagekomi practice or kata study. Sometimes it's your uke. In Washington, I had a fellow who was five foot five and 180 pounds. Throwing him was like trying to cozy up to a fire hydrant or tree stump. "I'm the Truth Squad," he used to declare to people learning throws against taller ukes, and he'd grin, knowing his fall wouldn't be too hard.

I went back up to Alaska for a visit and mentioned this to the aged and wise sensei. "Hit him with a slant," said the A&W One, and he showed me how a fore-and-aft tai otoshi styled stance could be applied in various ways. I flew back home 4000 miles and proceeded to slam the daylights out of the Truth Squad. Gravity had caught up to him. That was an engineering solution to the problem. Additional concepts had to be added to address the situation.

My big man here gets a little difficult sometimes, mainly when he doesn't want to take a throw. He'll become dead weight like sand settling in a burlap bag to deny you some, if not all, of your leverage. 'It's not your fault,' I have to say to the others when they botch a throw. 'Just get way, way down below his center to ensure it - or chop his leg out if he doesn't want to go.'
What is the harai goshi if not an engineering solution to an O goshi that won't go?

Sometimes it's the technique you're working on in kata practice that requires some Pentium level processing. The utsuri goshi is the response to a harai goshi in Technique Number 10. Uke comes in; tori blocks with his abdomen and proceeds to lift him up and back, high enough and far enough to shift his hips - his left mainly - in front of uke's, so that he may roll with a left sided hip throw as uke comes back down.
It's supposed to be fast, and simpler than the way I just described it: uke comes in - bang - tori pops him up in the air, does a quick switcheroo with his hips, and uke crashes down, breaking over his hips like a rag doll.

I've known for a while this would be a challenge, and the punchline is at this point: we're still working on it.
I had this done to me once before I even knew what it was. I was out in the Pacific, fighting a sensei who outweighed me by more than 100 pounds. I went in for something, brushing up against him probably like a blade of grass, and all of a sudden I was topsy turvy and watching the ground rush up at my face. I cartwheeled one way and then the other, after I had hit his hip. This is like a plane crash, I thought, picturing myself going through the cockpit windows.

His size advantage and heaving me so high in the air has led me to venture that his might not be the most Mifune-like technique to emulate. I've been tossing around a lot of words like 'precision' and 'elegance' lately, so I went into this round with the aim of uncovering the crux of the throw. It can't just be brute strength.
'Okay,' I said to the lads, 'we have to distill this to What Works and why. Kawaishi's teaching us how to do it. It's in the kata, in the things we've done so far. He's not just going to change the game and have us start yanking uke like he's a keg of beer. There's elegance here, somewhere.'

Thus, as last we left the old Yuurei-Do dojo, we were working at it one piece at a time, first the blocking, the lifting, and so on. We got the blocks and lifts, and I was the one who managed a complete throw before we had to knock off. However, I had to do it as a progression, and this is where the Pentium chip metaphor comes into play. I'd get a block, a lift, and then I'd step - but I'd realize the step had to be smaller. I'd go again. It'd be a bit better, but I'd have to keep in mind that the hips turn and then cross - and so on.
Each time around there was more information to add, more computations per split second, each one of them an engineering solution drawing from some night of drills long ago and far away. It's a lot of programming, in the computer sense of the word.

What Works, what murders opponents, leads to sensational stunts, and stands up to the filters of combat or Truth Squads? Hours of purposeful study. We'll get the hang of this and report back. The test will be a big throw on a big man - using the Pentium chips and not muscle.

As Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was released this past week, I read a very interesting article by Hollywood correspondent Kim Masters about her own father, who was one of the actual 'basterds' in World War Two. Stuck as a laborer in England, he had signed up for 'special duty' when he saw the notice. This is what turned out to be Troop X, authorized by none other than Churchill himself.
When they asked him why he wanted to join, the Jewish refugee who had escaped the continent only months before replied, 'I think part of this war belongs to me.' He was exactly what the force was looking for, someone with local knowledge, language skills, and a bit of incentive.

When Ms. Masters asked her Dad what he thought of the movie, specifically Tarantino's lurid violence, the bashing Nazis with baseball bats and such, he replied, 'It wasn't like that.' Troop X had been sent out to the mountains of Wales for special operations training.
'We killed people a lot more elegantly,' he told her.

That's our word for the day, class: elegant. Before you start picturing long, tall ladies in strapless black gowns sipping martinis at society balls, realize that it has two definitions. Something elegant is 'pleasingly graceful,' or in reference to things technical or scientific, elegant is 'pleasingly ingenious or simple.' In spite of ourselves, the other basterds and I managed to discover further elegance in the Gonosen No Kata.

First, however, the great MMA challenge I wrote about the other day did not take place. The reason surprised everyone: the young challenger was rushed to the hospital the previous evening suffering from chest pains. The doctors didn't seem too terribly concerned. Nor did the command, as he was back on full duty Monday morning, albeit with a new nickname, Heart Attack.

Quiet and shy Mike, smooth faced behind his glasses and seemingly always on the verge of a chuckle, is not someone to be trifled with. Years ago, on his first ship, he had a similarly interesting encounter. The ship was in port, and he was part of the crew watching a movie down in the galley. Mike was seated at the rearmost table. He got up and headed off for a moment, and when he came back he found a very drunk Bosun's Mate, just in from a night on the town, standing over the 'quals' Mike had left on the table.
Young non-rates should never leave their quals unattended. It's not done. These are the study materials and the checklist, essentially, of the skills to be mastered for someone to become a qualified crew member.
'I'm going to throw these overboard,' the BM2 informed him. Mike would have to start the entire process over, as a lesson.
The BM2 continued taunting him, threatening repeatedly to toss the paperwork over the side. Mike, trying to stay cool negotiating with a drunk and hoping the crisis would pass, could only repeat, 'Nah, come on, please, BM2. You don't have to do that. Behave.' The crew, absorbed in the movie and inured to Bosun's Mates chewing out non-rates, paid no attention.
Somehow, (and it's funny how this keeps happening to our meek, humble, churchgoing Mike) the conversation escalated to the BM2's declaring that he was going to kick Mike's ass, whereupon he lurched toward him.
Mike spun him and threw on a hadaka jime. It was utterly silent. The movie continued as the crew watched. Mike and his tormentor stood behind them, also facing the screen. The BM2 went limp, but fearing it was a trick Mike held on until he felt the drool run over his forearm.
Then came a moment's panic when he wondered what to do with the guy. He elected to prop him up at a seat at the table behind everyone else. Mike decided that it'd probably be best to turn in for the night, though prudently he remembered to bring his quals with him. He lingered long enough to take in the scene: the crew, motionless, riveted to the film and oblivious to the BM2, whose head was hanging so far beneath his shoulders that he was about to somersault into the middle of the room. Suddenly he came alive and reared up with a great heaving gasp, much to Mike's relief and the crew's surprise, as they all turned around and peered at him curiously.
He never bothered Mike again. I wonder if this latest guy intuited something about the prospects for Friday morning's rumble.

It was Kenneth, however, the big man, who was the man of the hour on our Gonosen No Kata technique.
Uke attacks with a right sided hane goshi. Tori blocks, dropping, resisting with his abdomen, and all that, and escapes to his right. According to the instructions, he then advances his right foot, then his left, and taking support on his left, he uses his right foot to bring off a Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi.

So there I was, following the instructions and narrating to the gang how this was going to happen - when they all saw a big problem right away.
'No way,' and 'You're too far away,' they said, which explained why my Sasae's felt like I was trying to pull a refrigerator away from the wall.
Kenneth, as uke, said, 'If you do that, here's what I'm going to do.' He came in; I bucked the hane and was in the process of carving an elaborate circle when he spun in for an ippon seoi nage that would have catapulted me across the room. 'You have to be really, really close.'

Luckily, my white belts, who can all kill me, know what they're doing. That sideways tai sabaki and those steps in the instructions are baby steps, practically just shifts of your weight. I padded politely around Kenneth's right leg and gave his left ankle a tentative tap - and the next thing I knew the two of us had pancaked to the ground, me on top of his 250 pounds, luckily, with a giant THWACK!
'That was it,'' observed Mike quietly, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the mat.
I managed to clean it up a bit, and each time Kenneth would hit the ground like he had just fallen out of a sixth story window. Holy Cow is this an elegant technique. You're making use of the tremendous potential energy in uke's body, namely the spring that did not unload, and you're tapping him in a completely vulnerable area, the ankle of his supporting leg.
Uke just seems to vanish; really he's spinning down to the ground with surprising violence. This will remind you of Technique Six, a 'Sasae' answering a Ko Uchi Gari. I think this one is faster. Stay out of the way. No baseball bats. If we can get the hang of it, and trust me that this is a pretty inglourious operation around here, then you basterds can, too.

'Hey, can we go over a few arm bars? I have to fight a dude tomorrow.'
'You have to what?'
'This kid at work, man. He's been talking some smack, so I have to tap him out.'

At least he said it with an air of resignation. 'I have to tap him out,' sounded like he had to go mow the lawn.
His Coast Guard unit has fitness hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, where guys usually spend the first hour of the workday lifting weights or playing hoop. One of the non-rates, a big, tall, raw-boned kid who looks like he could be right off the farm, and who has just been shipped to the island, has heard about Judo and been wondering whether that old relic has any relevance in the world of grappling nowadays.
I don't know the particulars, but the talk around the shop got to escalating, and Friday morning's workout was going to be the day to break out the mats.

My guy, Mike, is at an interesting junction in his martial arts career. He's a boxer - and apparently pretty good, training other guys and training with them on a heavy bag on other fitness days - and he has a fair bit of BJJ experience. The BJJ has made him bloody inconvenient on the mat. He has a very good instinct for getting his legs up between you and him, but he's discovering how the guard can be as much a problem for him as it is his opponent. It's a long way to go from having your legs wrapped around someone to getting your hips out and away so you can move and do something effective, especially with your feet.

We've been looking at a number of ground techniques from 'My Method' and seeing that Kawaishi, when he's on his back, most often puts his feet on uke's hips. When he's setting up a technique, one foot will always be on a hip to control him or keep him at bay, and then to stretch him out when he lays on the choke or lock.
We ran through various locks and crushes, and I said, 'Do you see what they all have in common? Tori is free to move. Every technique is light and easy to hit because you're away from him and just using what's available.'

This was interesting to Mike. So it's not drawing him in and going strength versus strength, he was realizing. Don't draw him into a guard; you end up pancaked together and trying to wiggle out from under him. Get away to where you can operate. Block his hips or chop a leg out from under him, and lock up the body part he's been kind enough to hand you. Don't grapple.

'Grapple' is a fifty dollar verb, from a writer's standpoint. It's so vivid, calling to mind great tenuous struggles, battles of strength fought in straining, shaking deadlocks. In another sense, one can grapple with a problem. In the days of fighting sail, opposing crews fired grappling hooks at the others' ships to draw the hulls together and commence the final slashing and hacking melee. In fact, in the Flashman books, Fraser often has his amorously accomplished title character engage in a healthy 'grapple' with one sporting lass or another.

That's all too close for comfort on the mat. Do not deal with his force, were the instructions, and the most sensible way to drill this was to send in my big man. 'Go get him.'
This helped Mike discover the reasoning behind the Two Second Rule. As they rolled, Mike wound up on top of the big man, in a mount, yet before he could skew off to a corner and sink a proper tate shiho gatame, the big guy, who has the bench press capacity of an auto lift, extended his arms.
Mike had such a good hold with his legs, however, he stayed and fought the arms, whereupon he was rolled.
That was a lesson learned. I made them rewind to that position. 'You're grappling. You can never fight to keep a hold. If you have a hold and he squirms, that's one thing, but the instant he can start deconstructing your position, by pushing your chest, or getting under your jaw in kesa gatame, let it go. You're gone. No hold is worth fighting for.'

'That's what George did,' said the big man, referring to the old student and friend visiting last week. I hadn't realized this, but apparently George thrashed him on the mat and made quite an impression: 'I couldn't even touch him. Every time I put my hands on him, he'd spin and twist my arms and come down somewhere else. Thats' what you have to do.'

The Two Second rule is all about keeping the grappling out of the fight. When you land somewhere, you have about two seconds to sink a conventional, proven hold - from Uncle Mikonosuke's very wide list - and commence a finishing technique, or you're gone. Spin off to somewhere else. You have zero seconds if you feel any kind of force on his part; go instantly.
Two seconds sounds like an impossibly short amount of time to land and lock up a finish, and by and large it is, but when you keep moving, uke eventually makes a fatal mistake, and there'll be an opportunity staring you in the face that ends it all in an instant.

We were all huffing and puffing at the end of things when I said, 'Hey, we have to hit a kata technique.'
It was a Koshi Guruma countered by an Uki Goshi. 'Don't worry," I said. 'This one is fast. The idea in this whole kata is completely the same as what we've been doing. You feel the force, get away from it, and hit him in an opening.'
Uke comes in for a koshi guruma, slant style, which is to say his right leg is extended, his knee pointing largely downward as his leg crosses tori's front. Like the kubi nage in the last technique that stresses how tori must be low and solid with his abdomen, this does much the same.
Tori drops and resists with his abdomen. He then steps over and around uke's right leg, first with his own right, and then his left. If he does this the right way, he immediately places the rear corner of his left hip below uke's center, and the left uki goshi is laughably easy.
I say laughably because the fellows laughed out loud at how quick and fun this one was plastering the guy to the ground. Baby step and baby step, tai sabaki turn, and he's gone.

When you drop that center to block his hips, remember, that's not a bulletproof position. "Let me show you a trick from the aged and wise sensei," I said.
I waved the big man over. 'I'm coming in for a koshi guruma. You drop with your hips forward, good and strong."
I came in and he stopped me cold. "Look at that. He's a stone wall. I can't move him - but if I do this right . . . .'
I screwed up the first time, using strength in my arm. 'D@mn. Hang on.' I took a deep breath and exhaled in a long sigh. I had to relax my arm and shoulder to the point where I couldn't feel them. 'Now watch this, Mike. From where they are now, my left butt cheek is going to push into him. My right is going to draw forward. They're both going to stay attached, though.'
Despite holding his position and fighting with his hips, the big guy floated over weightlessly and smashed to the ground.
'That's how they throw bears in Kodiak. You can't grapple.'

No war stories this week: George is headed back to the mainland, so the gang and I forged on, in a community center still shuttered by the weekend alert over the two storms in the Atlantic. 'Ana' flew by so fast she disintegrated into a just a few thunderstorms the other morning, and 'Bill' is out crashing around seemingly without any designs on land just yet.

The aim by the end of class was the Gonosen No Kata's seventh technique, a Kubi Nage countered by Ushiro Goshi. It's pretty simple stuff, yet I didn't want the lads spooked by a backward throw or stoked at the idea of giant suplexes.
Uke attacks with a right sided Kubi Nage, a neck throw. Tori resists with his abdomen, as EJ and MK say when they mean 'center', as he drops into a jigo-hontai defensive stance. His arms are at uke's waist, though this is not a bearhug. He drops further - which is very important - and rolls uke in a very simple, safe throw over his left hip and lower belly.

Really, the instructions say to lift uke as high as tori's shoulders, which is pretty easy to do if you grasp the intent of the technique - and it doesn't take too much imagination for Kawaishi fans to see how this could be a street technique from Hell. However, I wanted to make a point about efficiency as well as keep everyone willing and able to knock through multiple repetitions.
The approach was to show the lads that ushiro goshi is as simple and effective a leverage as any forward hip throw. 'Look at uki goshi,' I said. 'My hips are turning just a few degrees from where they started, and he's landing right beside me with his center right under mine. It's an easy throw, no big deal.'
We worked through a number of harai and hane goshis as well, and even got sidetracked onto ashi gurumas for a while. It was all the same idea: perfect position means perfect leverage. You don't need much turn at all, and uke falls like a rock.

'Here's the criticism,' I said at one point. 'In randori it never works out this way. If I'm fighting a guy, I'm going to have to hit a hane goshi in a less than ideal position. His butt could be way back and his arms sticking out. It's not what I'd like, but I'm going to have to go for it - which raises an interesting question: Go for what?
'I'm still going to go for his center. I'm going to have to jump in deeper and lower. It's going to be a way more dramatic event; I'm going to be much more bent over, but I'm still trying to take a bite out of his center with mine and roll him a few inches.'
Naturally I pick the best uke available for the demonstration, so I don't blow my point completely.

We did a number of yoko wakares and yoko gurumas, again presented as simple center to center stuff and as counters. That would make for a blog entry all its own, but we do these all the time as a means of teaching beginners balance in their O goshi's. They have to be counter proof. In this case, however, our O goshi-ers played relatively dumb while our yoko wakare-ers and guruma-ers practiced getting slightly out ahead of the throw, like a surfer on a wave, and rolling the bad guy.
Then came time to introduce ushiro goshi, a rear hip throw. We stuck with an O goshi attack and practiced getting our centers below the bad guy's by way of solid jigo hontai stances. We learned that in order to get the job done, tori's center has to be WAY down (like the book says, 'bends still more on his legs'). Tori doesn't have to use a bear hug or any upper body strength provided he's put his bladder beneath uke's rear end.
From there he doesn't need much lift at all. The turn and drop is just as easy as a nicely placed O or Uki Goshi. If tori does want to heave him to shoulder height, it's the strength of his legs and lower back that will do the lifting.

We got it wrong a couple of times before we realized we had to go that low, and that, I realized, is why the kata uses kubi nage of all throws as the attack for teaching this counter. If it were just O goshi or seoi nage, folks, especially strong ones, would get away with half-arsed ushiro goshis. Kubi nage is a genius choice.

Imagine being a samurai at a pivotal instant in battle, with your sword largely over your head and a clear shot at your enemy. You want to cleave the guy, but not desiring to bounce off his helmet, or, if he's not wearing one, get your sword caught in his skull like an axe in a stubborn log, you decide to take his head off at the neck. That means you'd have to enter his neck at an angle, just below the ear. You come in just under the jaw, and your blade would exit at the base of his neck, pretty much at his collar bone. In fact, if it were possible to continue the motion, you'd take his arm and shoulder off as well.

That's the direction of a kubi nage. As you come down on his neck in that slant, you engage him, which is to say your arm, chest and shoulders become a solid unit. You're still dropping into a deep fore and aft stance along the outside of his leg, bringing him down with you seemingly clamped to your side, yet the sensation for him is a straight downward plunge, glancing off you only slightly. It's deep, low, and fast.

What better way to show people the importance of a deep counter, the Old Masters must have been thinking. Anyone could get under a plain old O goshi, they figured, but if you can drop under a dropping throw, then that's saying something. Trust me: for this to work, you do drop like a champ - and that's why they want you to jack the guy high in the air, to show that you got down to where you belonged and you're using the right muscles to do the lifting.

Whether you do toss him high or just pop him and drop him, you're balanced and his center is right beneath yours when he hits the deck. Just like we established early on, your hips only have to turn a few degrees in order to do enormous damage.

We're going to keep an eye on Hurricane Bill. If he just turns a few degrees, he'll do enormous damage.

An old friend is on the island. George was part of Force 316, the club, as we called it, in Coast Guard Headquarters in DC from 2003 to 2008. He rotated out in early 2007; we haven't seen each other in two and a half years. Duties have kept him out of Judo for much of that time, though he's gotten involved in a sort of hybrid-MMA place recently. Despite being a bit rusty, he's holding his own, he's been happy to say.
The instructor there is apparently a pretty interesting guy, a military man who learned quite a few arts in his travels around the world. He has a pretty good understanding of what we're up to, as George described it to him, since a large part of his background is Japanese ju jutsu. He goes on to make an compelling point, however: what you're doing is great, but you can't sell Judo nowadays. I can teach the customers plenty of Judo, but I have to call it MMA.

I haven't had time to show George anywhere near all the 'new' things I've been up to for two and a half years. The first night we were fooling around, telling war stories between throws and once in a while dropping my young bucks with speed enough to be sure they respect their elders - when we weren't pausing to provide sage counsel and edification otherwise.
He had some good chokes to show on the ground, and we all had some good, rough scraps before heading off to catch up over a few drinks.

Two nights later we had to be a bit more constructive. In order to knock out a GNK technique, which I let slide the first night, we had to work up to it. This way I could catch George up on some refinements here and there and with any luck we could nail down the theory of Technique Six in the course of one evening.

Uke attacks with Ko Uchi Gari, his right foot coming in against tori's right ankle. Tori sidesteps to his left, placing his weight on his left leg, and then, taking advantage uke's forward motion, props him and drops him with a Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi, his right foot on uke's left ankle.

Our work-up to the technique was a case of 'Hitting them where they ain't,' to play upon the famous baseball phrase. For 'Sasae,' hiza guruma, O uchi gari, and Ko uchi gari, my point to George was that we were going to follow the positioning and line diagrams of Kawaishi's 'My Method' more strictly than before, since it's so good at showing how an opponent's center should be displaced to where he can't support it - most often as you're simultaneously removing the most likely means of doing so. You're sending that center where he ain't right now, or where there ain't going to be any leg under it, and you've got a base hit.

We knocked through the throws as I've described them. George knew all about the whole bodied mechanics; we've been doing that forever. The starting positions and leverages from Kawaishi were a bit new and different. (My theory is that despite having the book to the very same page years ago, we weren't 'ready' to absorb that part yet, since we were focusing on movement.)
I showed him the no hands O uchi gari, and from there, we went to a no hands ko uchi gari. This is not just bashing into a guy and scooping his leg out, I should say. It's getting your center against his, and having your feet underneath you so your whole body can move and keep its balance. It's more of a nudge than a knock, and the foot work is pretty subtle when you do it right. One of my young bucks, my Koshiki man, had the softest touch of all for the ko uchi gari's. It need hardly be said that we didn't go to the ground with the throws.

For the kata, this means uke is coming all the way in since he's trying to knock your center with his. That step to the left for tori turns out to be very small. Three inches is all that you need for his center to miss yours. He'll hit tori in the right hip and shoulder, but he's going to glance off.
Tori's going to turn with him, essentially sternum on his shoulder, which leads to the second reason that his step to the left can't be too large: he won't be able to get the prop with his foot.
This is very, very close quarters stuff. Imagine being shoved in the right side of your chest, right on the pec muscle, yet turning right where you stand. It's that close and that immediate. Tori just keeps the grip he has; he's live and balanced on that left leg. That turn, coupled with uke's forward motion, is uke's kuzushi, and tori merely has to keep his right foot beneath uke's center to prop him and drop him.

Uke's center is out beyond his feet according to the concept we've been working with, and he drops right on the tips of tori's toes. It's very fast and subtle.

Here's the caveat: I'm not sure it's the final version. Kawaishi himself instructs that strong arms should be involved in the ko uchi gari. The center to center contact is my idea for k.o.g., as a clear way to delineate lines of force. My guess is that Kawaishi really wants to attack the center indirectly, that a strong grasp of the gi and a whole-bodied and downward slanting ooomph pins an opponent's feet to the ground and breaks him structurally. (He's bending him slightly at the waist and forcing the opponent to put force in his lower back. He runs that broken structure back and down as he reaps the foot. Okano's version on YouTube is very vivid.)

In that case, it'd be interesting to see how the kata's tai sabaki would shake out. That is, if we're not fooling around telling war stories next week.

How nice to nail one right off the bat, for a change. Actually, I've written about this one before, as we started the GNK, since we were fooling around with this by way of introduction. It significance now is to remind us of the importance of throwing someone directly downward. That too is something I've written about recently, with regard to O Soto Gari, but this exchange is just plain fun. Some techniques are just about the simple joy of shooting a big gun and marveling at its raw power.

I'm talking about the Tai Otoshi counter to uke's attack with Ko Soto Gake. Uke comes in hooking his left leg from the outside and around tori's right. The hollow of his knee contacts the hollow of tori's. His torso is against tori's, and the aim is a high-low combination that breaks him right where he stands.
Tori however, maintains his balance; he maintains his bodily unity and verticality and functionality by taking a tai sabaki step backward with his left foot, in a little arc (we've seen before) that puts it behind his right. He lets uke draw that right leg across his (uke's) front, whereupon tori is in perfect position to slam him straight downward with a tai otoshi.

This is a fore and aft stance in the tai otoshi, in which the axis between tori's feet run at 45 - or really 60 - degrees' variance from the axis on which uke stands.
[Imagine you're looking down on the players from above and the mat is a round white circle - and in fact, the face of a clock. Uke stands smack dab in the center, facing 12 o'clock. His feet are on the line running between 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock. When tori hits a fore and aft tai otoshi position (for a right sided throw) his left foot, in front, is pointed toward 11 o'clock, or almost, and his right foot is pointed (pretty much) toward 5.]

This GNK exchange is a great technique for teaching someone tai otoshi. That's why I was doing this a few weeks ago with my new guys. In this case, they get the context for the throw; it's a response to a certain situation rather than a set of steps to follow, seemingly out of thin air.
Some time ago, when I was in Washington, DC, a beginner was trying to get the idea of whole bodied throwing, and he was asking about it in the locker room as we changed after class. I looked up to seem him standing, already dressed, with his dufflebag slung over his shoulder.
'This is the whole ball game right here,' I told him. 'Keep that bag where it is. Now, bend over to the side a bit. Put your ribs over your leg. Now, keep your arms relaxed; don't do a thing but turn your whole body so that bag FALLS off your shoulder.'
It fell to the floor straight down. 'I get it now,' he said.

The GNK tai otoshi is much the same. Your arms wind up at your shoulders. Every joint in your upper body is safe and sound and solid, and you're ready to engage uke at full height and corkscrew down with merciless force. I tell folks that the front leg bears 80 percent of your weight, the rear foot 20. The front foot is just about directly below your center of gravity. 'Go low with your left leg and long with your right, and you'll sledgehammer him.' Everyone loves this throw. It's wicked fast, and the fall is clean.

Poor Ko Soto Gake deserves some love as well, since it too illustrates how throws are best done directly downward. The problem, however, is that it works pretty quickly. If you get your center against your partner's and lock the hollow of your knee behind his, he's going to collapse beneath you. The two of you will come crashing down before you're done following all the directions.
This is because you're taking his center out from underneath him. His back is bowed, and he can no longer hold himself up. The way to practice setting this up would be about an arm's length from a wall, so you can brace yourself.
Uke faces you, his back about two feet from the wall. You come up, place your right foot at the classic apex of the triangle created between that and his two feet, wind your left leg around uke's right, and keep bringing yourself in and uke's leg out until you've made center to center contact. You have to 'acquire' him, or engage him by way of the gi, along the way as well, so you have the leverage you need up top.

Lay it on slowly, and as your partner starts bending backward, reach out with your left hand and brace yourself against the wall. This way you can break him in a controlled manner and feel how easy it would be to plant his bent body by driving your center straight down. Once you get your lines of force figured out, then you can start pancaking each other - or better yet, seeing with how little displacement on your part you can deck him - and stay on your feet.