We tried two of these tonight: one with a wrist grab and one with an elbow push.

I’ll comment on the elbow push because it is more effective on a guy who strikes and pulls his arm back right away (like the way boxers fight).

Assume hidari-ai-hanmi. The tsuki comes in and you slide to your 10 or 11 o’clock with your right arm and tegatana blocking your mid-sections while moving off the line of attack.  This is so the fingers of the right hand are facing upwards on the block.

Also, go deep! A little slide wont get you far enough behind uke’s recoil to jam him if you have to.

The left hand finds uke’s elbow and attaches itself to the elbow.

In one motion, nage’s hips rotate so nage will eventually face the same direction as uke; the right, blocking hand’s tegatana is now on top of uke’s tsuki wrist; the left hand on uke’s elbow extends in concert with nage’s hips rotating and uke’s momentum from his thrust.  If timed correctly, as with the physics of tenbi-nage, the uke should feel compelled to continue on his original strike path and be led in the vertical direction of the extension on his elbow; hopefully down.

Assuming hidari-ai-hanmi.  Tsuki comes in and with left tegatana (yes, outside hand) block at the elbow of uke as you slide out towards your 10 o’clock (you are beside uke now).  At the same time, from under the tsuki arm your right tegatana makes contact with uke’s inner elbow and you draw a large, off-axis circle like slicing an attacker with a bokutou.  This circular cut looks like a cut made from wakigamae, slicing overhead and then on the down slice it cuts off the legs of uke in one motion.  By the time your ‘cut’ reaches uke’s legs, he should already be on the way down to the mats in the opposite direction he was attacking from, spun back by your slice.

When I was practicing with Andrew Barron tonight, he suggested that instead of *blocking* with the left hand, instead cut down with it to send uke down and use his energy as he recovers to throw him.  It looked good for a while, but I was always tempted to crash into nage’s legs like the start of an MMA take-down.  Sometimes teachers say the uke has no motivation to spring up again.  So, we tried both and I felt more comfortable keeping the momentum of the attack and waza in the same plane: forward and reverse.

Also, when doing the slicing motion stay close to the uke because you must transfer energy to his whole body, not just flail his arm backwards.

今日は、後ろ両手取りから四方投げをする練習をしました。

そもそも、受けとしてきちんと手首を掴めていないため、相手が身体をひねっただけて私の手が離れてしまうのは

問題外、とベン先生に指導して頂きました。つくづく、合気道は受けと取りが一体になって動く事が大事だと感じました。

今日習ったポイントは、受けの腕をのばして重心を崩す事に主眼を置いていたため、自分の身体が受けから離れすぎていた

せいで技がかからなかった事と、入り身転換の際に今までは直線で踏み込んでいたのを、むしろ前足を軸にしてコンパクトに

回るようにする事でした。

四方投げは好きな技の一つなので、絶対上手く出来るようになりたいのですが、この技は色々ポイントが多くて中々完成度が

上がらなかったのですが、今日は少しだけポイントが掴めた気がします。

後は、杖の正面打ちで振り上げる際には両手で持ち上げるのではなく、前に出ている腕（？）で引き上げるようにし、

打ち下ろす際には後ろの腕で引き下ろすようにとのアドバイスでやってみると、ずっと力強くしかし楽に杖が振れるようになったので

これで正面打ち込みの時にヘタレナイで済むな〜と思いました。（＾＾）v

日本語で書き込みをしてみたけど、他の人が見たら読めないんじゃないかなあ？　スミマセン。

Nikyo can be done so in many ways.  Here are a few that I have seen:

• Two hands on the uke’s wrist and that wrist is pressed tightly against the shoulder of nage as in kihon.
• Two hands again, but the uke’s wrist is out a ways from nage (needs strength but adds distance)
• Uke’s wrist pressed against nage’s shoulder with one hand on the wrist and one hand on the elbow (beware sankyo kaeshiwaza)
• Like above, but the second hand comes under the elbow with nage’s palm facing him like looking at a mirror (good for backhand atemi)
• Two hands on uke’s wrist while te-no-ko is pressed against nage’s forehead (can henka into sankyo)

All seem effective if the nikyo motion curves towards uke’s hara.

When the uke does a gyaku hanmi katatedori, one option to offset him is to do a nikyo-like wrist rotation.  Let’s talk about the left hand.  What we did tonight was to do the opposite of that rotation.  That is, the being-grabbed left wrist rotates clockwise a full rotation.  From here a shihonage or a kokyuho can be performed.

However, what Ben Sensei said to do in case the uke has great strength was this: before the clockwise rotation, put both hands together as if to pray, then without moving the physical location of the wrist (horizontal or vertical) perform the same rotation clockwise and cut down.  The uke should be lowered and corked while you should be standing comfortably.

As the uke, it is important to let yourself be extended instead of pulling your arm back and trying to scrunch it up to your chest.  Ben Sensei demonstrated if the resistant uke does this, then it is easy to reverse your direction of flow and even wrap the uke’s arm around his head and choke him. So, being a good uke is important for Uke’s safety.

I was put on the spot tonight with Leevon as I hadn’t done this before. But, I thought it could start like shomenuchi shihonage (practiced on Wednesday) and as it turns out, it does.

I learned that taking shomenuchi as a blending, leading motion is way more effective than as a block: As the strike is coming toward my head, I step my back leg so I am about 45-degrees outside from my starting position.  (Not 90 degrees as if to do a morotedori kokyuho!). Then while blending with the strike hand, my other hand comes on top and my first hand guides it to the top hand. At the same time, I rotate my hips and direction as if to create an opening for shihonage.  Except, I slide my closest leg behind the uke so as to put our jyushin together as my closest arm finished the kokyu.

I know this is on the nikyu test so I paid attention when Dzung Nguyen Sensei showed this to the class I dropped in on. I was always curious how this would be done.

As the shomenuchi is on its way to my head, I extend my front arm and blend-meet his attack while my back leg slides so I am 45-degrees rotated from where I started. Then my other hand comes over his strike hand and I rotate my hips while grasping his tegatana; this then looks like a shihonage start from katatedori. I keep his arm extended and proceed as normal from this point.

Today I went to see my first Aikido teacher, Dzung Ngyuen, and we worked on some good techniques.

One of them was shomenuchi nikyo omote. It starts off as a standard shomenunchi nikyo up until the uke is lowered and his elbow is lower than his hand. From here it is followed by a little hara thrust as if to go into sankyo, except the te-no-ko is brought to my closest shoulder and a nikyo interlude is performed exactly like the ura interlude, then it continues as regular omote.

I had never seen this before. Previously I had only seen this interlude done for ura.

During a recent practice we were doing katate ryotedori kokyu work. A new person asked me why she couldn’t move from the uke’s strong grip. I told her what Ben Sensei  says, which is to do the ‘drink from a cup’ motion.

So she tried but it would not work.

The actual motion looks like bringing your hands to jyoudan kamae with a bokutou.  Though, if the uke is shorter than Nage then it is enough to bring the being-grabbed hand to the mouth area; when I work with taller partners I have to bring my hands to jyoudan kamae.

Thus she tried but still failed.

The next thing we discovered is that you can’t raise your hands straight up, especially in a morotedori grab. I find that if I advance or slightly lean into the area where my hand is being grabbed (from a 45-degree angle) at the same time as rotating my wrists upwards (going from chudan kamae to jyoudan kamae) and using my hip-rotation power, then I can unbalance a lot of people.